A Strategy for Easter—Part 1

Easter is right around the corner. We’ll be celebrating the death and resurrection of our Lord with our church family and the people from the community who only show up at Easter and Christmas. And you know they will be there. To them, they are “doing their religious thing” so they’ll show up and feel like saints because they actually went to church.

Regardless of why they are there, the big deal is…they are there. We have a great opportunity to reach out to these people and show them the love of Christ.

If you are in children’s ministry, I’m sure you have already either made your plans for Easter or you are in the process of doing so. If you are in youth ministry, you’re not worried about it because you know you’re not planning anything until the Saturday night before anyway…haha. Relax, I’m just kidding.

As we have been planning our Easter activities, some thoughts have come to mind that I thought I would share with you. I’ll segment them into five parts.

Part 1 is this:

Have a Strategy.

Sounds almost too simple. But many times we are working so hard and so fast that we don’t take time to formulate a clear strategy for our objectives. As it relates to Easter, I want to approach this strategy from two different points of attack:

1. The Strategy for Easter Weekend

What are the main objectives for Easter weekend in your ministry?

Take a moment and write them down. If you can’t articulate them, then you probably don’t have clear objectives for that service. No worries, deep inside your heart you know what you want to accomplish for that day. You just need to take a moment and write them out. From there, you can look at what you have currently planned to see if it will “move the ball down the field” (i.e., accomplish your goals).

It should address components such as:

• Guest relations
• Worship music
• Teaching
• Games
• Most importantly, sharing the plan of salvation.
• Etc.

2. The Strategy For What Happens AFTER Easter

What big events or activities are coming up that you could promote at Easter?

With the higher attendance at Easter, you have a great opportunity to share “what’s coming up” in your ministry. You may have fun activities, support groups for kids or other events that would interest the kids. This is a great time to promote those opportunities. But this isn’t something you can come up with the night before. It requires some planning. In fact, I think it’s more effective to put your big “activity investment” in an event after Easter as opposed to Easter weekend. That point is debatable. Maybe we’ll come back to that another time.

So as you approach Easter this year, make sure you have a clear strategy. Feel free to share that strategy with me. I would love to hear and share it with others. Send me your Easter strategy and ideas to susant@saddleback.com.