Easter is a celebrated holiday in the American culture. It has lots of traditions built around it that families enjoy like Easter Egg hunts, family meals, and eating candy! It is not a commanded holiday for Christians. Christians are to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, not only on Easter, but everyday (See my post on how we celebrate the resurrection).
Through the years in the church of Christ we have debated how to handle these American holidays. Easter and Christmas being the two primary holidays of debate. For many in the church, Easter is treated like another Sunday. There may be no special mention of it, nor a sermon focused on the resurrection. For others, the Easter sermon may be focused on how we are not to celebrate Easter as a religious holiday and how our religious neighbors are in error when they do. In the third category and probably most common of late is to preach on the resurrection with little mention of the Easter holiday.
I have fluctuated between the first and third categories. Preachers can negatively see it as a time when all those not dedicated enough to come the other Sundays show up. I sometimes would continue a series or preach a special lesson with a resurrection or evangelistic theme.
Over the last several years I have changed. We at Seven Oaks now try to use Easter in the following ways. I will share the results of this effort below.
- Make a push for a large attendance. Easter is a time when folks consider coming to church. Why not encourage them to come to yours? It is a great opportunity to invite others. I began in 2011 with a concentrated effort of encouraging members to invite their friends and family for Easter Sunday.
- Preach a special lesson. I mark Easter on my preaching calendar when I am planning my sermons. I then spend time over the next several months thinking about the sermon. I want a sermon that is simple, evangelistic, challenging, and centered on the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. One year I started a series on the family on Easter entitled New Beginnings for your Home with the hope of then getting folks to come back for the other parts of the series. As one of our elders says, you want to take the “teachable moment” of the occasion and use it! Preachers, don’t feel compelled to spend the first five minutes of your sermon explaining about how Easter is not a religious holiday. Just get up and preach your lesson and convict people with the gospel!
- Use your egg hunt as an outreach to families. A few years back we changed how we approached our Easter Egg Hunt. We do it the Saturday before Easter. We have it on the church grounds and make it family friendly. We advertise on Facebook for the event and have good attendance from the community. This year we rented a bounce house and had over 80 kids 5th grade and below present. The easter bunny comes and candy is eaten!! This helps you minister to families and youth which is always a good thing!
- Plan your worship to be the best possible. The church leadership should expect to have a larger crowd and many visitors. So consider this in who is chosen to lead worship. The song leader should choose familiar songs that go with the lesson. Don’t spend the first 8 minutes sharing announcements. Preachers don’t push special programs or ministries before your lesson. Make the worship time focused on worship!
There is nothing earth shattering in these four things listed above. But I believe many churches don’t consider the opportunity that Easter provides. Our attendance figures have shown there is value and merit in this approach. We started this approach in 2011.
Year – 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Attendance – 260 248 264 243 255 350 306 325 369
Now granted, our overall attendance has also increased, but Easter Sunday has increased more.
How does your congregation use Easter Sunday as an opportunity?
