POCATELLO — As many as 2,000 people are estimated to have attended a recent live Christmas nativity at Grace Lutheran Church in Pocatello, according to the church’s pastor.

That estimate is based on the number of cars that filled Grace’s parking lot during the three 20-minute performances of the Christmas nativity held outside the church.

Grace Lutheran Pastor Jonathan Dinger estimates there were a total of over 500 cars there for the three performances.

Several parking lot attendants were kept busy helping direct vehicles to open spots.

And that doesn’t count the people who had to be turned away because there wasn’t enough space to fit in everyone who wanted to attend, Dinger said.

“It’s disappointing when you can’t accommodate everybody,” Dinger said.

The performances included three live camels, 32 performers and impressive lighting effects.

And it was broadcast via short-range FM radio transmitter to people’s car radios in the jam-packed parking lot.

“It was great,” Dinger said. “We were just really delighted with it.”

He says what really drove their effort, which started about a month and a half ago, was that so many other traditional holiday events have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our whole thought through this pandemic was to figure out a way to do it safely,” Dinger said. “This is a new thing for us and we kind of thought about it and poked around with it for awhile.”

They even invited people from other local churches because the pandemic has resulted in the cancellation of so many local faith-based Christmas events.

Dinger said folks leaving after each of the three nativity performances seemed pleased to have had the chance to attend.

“People were gracious,” Dinger said. “As people drove out people were just very grateful.”

And that’s a testament to the power of the Christmas story, he says.

“What’s so cool about this is it’s a story people love and know, and they love to see animals,” he said.

Dinger said there are so many things to the story that are rich and deep and do bring hope.

“For people of faith it’s a tremendous boost — a tremendous foundation,” he said.

He adds that it also puts things in perspective when times are hard and it gives people a chance to celebrate despite difficult times.

After each nativity performance, the traffic moved smoothly leaving Grace’s parking lot as a new host of vehicles arrived to take their place in a near constant stream.

“Considering it’s the first time we tried it, it went very efficiently,” Dinger said. “There were no accidents and nobody got mad.”

He said a lot of people liked the performances and sent positive comments via social media and emails. He said they even received positive comments about the live nativity from people overseas who watched the livestream of the event.

“We try to livestream pretty much everything we do,” Dinger said. “So many of our members are vulnerable older people so we try to include them.”

He said about 350 people viewed the nativity via livestream.

In retrospect, Dinger said the event didn’t take as much time to pull together as might have been expected.

“There’s a lot of talented people connected to Grace,” he said.

So he can just call somebody to handle the lights or bring in bales of hay and it moves along smoothly, he said. And it was all volunteer — no one got paid.

Still, Dinger said there were probably hundreds of hours of effort put into the production.

“What made it work was the ability to delegate it to so many other people who could each take a piece,” he said.

And the end result was worth it, Dinger said. The performances and music were amazing.

“Even the sheep bleated on cue,” Dinger said.