Believe it or not, Easter is just around the corner.
I realize with March snowfall totals increasing that makes it more difficult to believe but it is real and your Easter Sunday service will be here before you know it.
For many churches, Easter is the most attended service of the year. Several posts have been written on the topic about why that is the case so we won’t revisit too much except to say, Easter is a great chance to put your best foot forward.
Now, before all the haters start hounding me with comments that we should do that every week let me explain.
Yes, we should always do everything we do with excellence. Every week our goal should be to knock it out of the park and be better than we were the week before, but Easter is just one of those weeks that we should put extra emphasis on excellence.
Now, I didn’t say do something different or outside of the culture and identity of your church. If you’re a traditional piano and organ worship church Easter Sunday is not the week to pull out the Les Paul’s and Drums. It’s the Sunday to take that piano and organ and make it the best rendition of “Just As I Am” you can muster.
(Sorry, didn’t mean to spark the worship style debate there)
So why is Easter the week to put on our “Sunday Best”
1. You have the opportunity to reach people that may not otherwise step foot in your church
We all know that there’s an entire group of people that will only step foot in a church on Christmas and Easter.
Some are family members of your church, others just think it’s the right thing to do on those holidays.
Regardless, you have them at your church for a couple hours.
Now I’m not saying its time to hold them hostage and preach hell fire and brimstone to them. (And if you do then you might as well stop reading now.)
What I am saying is that you have a chance to speak into their lives that you may not have otherwise. Make them feel welcome. Make them feel accepted and know that Christians are not all weird and this church thing is actually a really good thing.
This post would get too long if we got into all the things we could chat about here so we’ll just leave it at the general rule that you now have people in your facility that may not otherwise have ever been there.
What are you going to do with that opportunity?
2. Easter is often the catalyst for the remainder of your year
To go in line with the first point, your Easter service can be the catalyst for the remainder of your church year.
Easter is a great opportunity to fire up some momentum in your congregation. In most cases, your Easter service will be one of the highest offering totals you’ll have for the year. As we mentioned in the previous point, you’ll have an opportunity to meet people that you may not have otherwise. There will be a quick influx of momentum for you to take advantage of.
Plan out the service but also go a step further.
The time to start planning your Easter service is several weeks before. Get your staff, leaders and volunteers to start planning with you.
Have your children’s leaders be sure to plan out your staffing levels so you can make sure every kid has a great time.
Get with your first impressions or welcome team and make sure they have the Varsity team ready to serve that day.
Do you have 2 services? Consider giving the facility a quick cleaning in between services so that the people coming to the second service have a great experience when they come in the door.
Those are just a few ideas but the point is to be intentional about the day. Plan it out now for what you’re going to do on that Sunday but also how will you de-brief and follow up?
Plan that process out as well so that you can use the momentum of that service for the remainder of your year.
3. Because Jesus
It’s difficult to reduce this idea into a short post but we’ll keep it there. While we talked about the service here we didn’t really get into the actual theology and part of your service where you just bring Jesus.
We can have a great looking, clean facility, friendly greeters and a fun time for the kids but none of that matters if people don’t leave hearing about Jesus.
While we’re not a site to help you be a better preacher or show you how to develop a great small group ministry, we do understand that after all is said and done, your church exists to share and glorify Jesus.
I cannot stress this enough.
It seems almost elementary to our ministry to say that Easter is the crux of our ministry. Easter is why the church exists (the cross of Easter not the service) and with that why wouldn’t we want the most important day of our faith to be done with excellence?
What does your church do at Easter to show excellence? Comment below and we can all help each other better reach our communities.
