Sidewalk Prophets bring 'Great Big Family Christmas' to Oshkosh's Community Church on Dec. 17

The Christian band's annual holiday tour, which raises money for a local cause at every stop, adds a Thursday-night date on Ryf Road the week before Christmas.

The week before Christmas tends to fill up fast in the Fox Valley: school concerts, office parties, the last weekend of shopping. Sidewalk Prophets just claimed a night of it. The Christian band's Great Big Family Christmas tour comes to Community Church in Oshkosh on Thursday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m., a date announced Oct. 14.

Tickets are on Eventbrite, and the church is at 2351 Ryf Rd.. If this is on your family's calendar, don't sit on it: at least one Eventbrite listing for the date has already been marked as almost full, two months out.

Great Big Family Christmas is an annual run for the band, and it's built the way the name suggests. The shows mix Sidewalk Prophets' own hits with original Christmas songs and holiday classics, pitched for an all-ages crowd rather than a late-night club audience. The part that sets the tour apart happens off the setlist: each stop raises money for a local charity or a person in need in that community, and the tour says it has collected and given away more than $500,000 over the years.

Each stop raises money for a local charity or a person in need in that community.

This year's run plays Impact Christian Church in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 22, and reaches St. Lorenz Worship & Event Center in Frankenmuth, Michigan, on Dec. 5 before winding toward Wisconsin. Like Oshkosh, both of those stops are churches and worship centers, which is the point: it's a tour built for congregations and the families in them, not for arenas.

Why a church on Ryf Road and not a theater downtown? For this kind of show the room is part of the experience. Sidewalk Prophets usually headline rooms of about 1,100 people, so a church sanctuary is close to their natural size, and it keeps the night feeling like a community gathering rather than a concert you watch from a distance. It also means the audience will skew toward families with kids in tow, which is exactly who this tour is for.

A Thursday at 7 p.m. is a school night, so plan accordingly, but a 7 o'clock start is friendly to younger kids and to anyone driving in from Appleton, Neenah or Fond du Lac after work. Check the Eventbrite page for seating details and any updates on which local cause the Oshkosh show will support.

For a lot of Fox Valley families, the holidays already have a few fixed points. This could be a new one: a sanctuary full of people singing carols together, with the collection going to a neighbor who needs it.

Sources: Eventbrite – Sidewalk Prophets at Community Church, Oshkosh (Dec 17) (eventbrite.com); Eventbrite – Christian concerts in Oshkosh, WI (Great Big Family Christmas 26 listing) (eventbrite.com); FamilyLife – Sidewalk Prophets Great Big Family Christmas (Moon Township, Nov 22, 2026) (familylife.org); Frankenmuth Convention & Visitors Bureau – Sidewalk Prophets Great Big Family Christmas (Dec 5, 2026) (frankenmuth-convention-visi.locable.com); My Hope FM – Sidewalk Prophets' Great Big Family Christmas Tour (myhopefm.net)