Celebrating Easter
The Good Ideas, the Bad Ideas, & the Depends on Your Church Ideas
Photo by Shayla.
Easter can be the biggest Sunday of the year. Attendance can be great as extended family and the non-churchgoing Significant Others all go to worship together with the regular church attenders.
We pack the service with great music and an uplifting message. If we’re lucky we do a few baptisms as well.
From churches that worship 60 - 700 on Easter, here are some ideas to add to your Easter mix.
The Good Easter Ideas
Offer a 7 or 8 a.m. 20-30 minute celebration service by a lake or garden at a parishioner’s home. Enjoy a large pitch-in breakfast after it. For one church this was a great way to bring together families of multiple denominations as well as give an easy entry service for non-church people.
Offer a resurrection service on Holy Saturday or early Sunday morning in your church’s Memorial Garden. Invite everyone who has a relative or friend interred. Celebrate the resurrection, while acknowledging the reality of ongoing grief.
Have a wireframe of a cross outside the church where people can bring flowers to add to the cross. Offer free flowers for those who forget to bring some. Have some ringers set to put flowers where there are gaps.
Put all music in the bulletin so no one has to fumble with hymnbooks so everyone can sing with the notes and the words.
Put all scripture reading in the bulletins so the Word is easily seen.
Make sure the children’s message is child friendly and doesn’t involve asking questions which can make new kids feel left out when they don’t know the expected answers (generally good advice for any children’s message - ask questions in Sunday School).
Consider a sermon series that doesn’t end on Easter but continue for 2-3 more weeks so people are incentivized to come back to hear more.
Consider one of the musical pieces to be from the modern canon to surprise the congregation.
Offer a casual service that starts 15-30 minutes after the largest service time. This can be overflow, but also something for those who want different.
Photo by Wendall Jacober.
Stop Bad Easter Ideas
Requiring tickets for Easter services. ADD MORE SERVICES
If your church must use tickets, find a way to save the prime service times for church visitors, by leaving 20% of the tickets ungiven for those prime times. This will give space for people to come who did not plan ahead or are new to your church.
Letting the mobile choir/musicians/speakers park near the church building.
An atonement sermon. Especially an atonement sermon that doesn’t unpack to a non-church level what it means to say that “God required Jesus death.” If this theology is central to your church faith, then be ready to make it understandable for me as a visitor who can’t get my head around God requiring Jesus to die to break the power of sin and death. Couldn’t God’s love break the power of sin and death without a human sacrifice?
A sermon that is depressing. Find the good news. Smile and preach it like it IS good news.
Using only professional musicians. Mix it up to show how a variety of gifts are used in the Kingdom.
Sitting in the pews and complaining how we used to have more people.
Sitting in the pews and complaining that these “Chreasters”1 took your parking (pew) place. This literally happened to me in 2017. Lady next to me greeted me, then leaned to her church friend and complained about These Chreasters who took her parking space. It was my first time in worship at that church ever. Last time too.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska
A Good or Bad Idea - Depends on Your Church Community
Hot cross buns - These are often served at coffee hour or in the waiting space as people wait for the last service to empty. In some places, this is a delicious addition. In other places, these become fodder for jokes which can embarrass the people who prepared them. Do nothing to create distractions on Easter.
Golf carts to help people in the outflow parking get to church on time. You may need an insurance rider. Often this is not expensive but is a good idea.
Shaking hands after a service. If this slows the transition to the next service or if it prevents the clergy/musicians from having a ten-minute break, it can hurt the effectiveness of worship leadership for the later services.2
Allowing people to take easter flowers home before all the services are over. In some places, you will have enough by the last service to still look festive. In other places, the chancel looks depleted after the big service people take THEIR flowers home. Have a pick-up time for flowers after the last service or on Tuesday morning, making sure someone waters on Monday.
Requiring the Senior Pastor to preach all the services. Mix it up to give the congregation a choice, as well as to ensure the pastor has energy all morning to celebrate the resurrection.
In Conclusion
I bet you have some more ideas to share. Please add them to the comments. And please share this with your church leader friends. We all need to keep the flow of ideas going as we celebrate the joy of God’s love for everyone in Jesus the Christ.
Christmas and Easter only churchgoers.
At the big church, we had five services on Easter morning beginning at 6:30 a.m. This was a long morning. Staff was required to be present for all of it.