It was early 2011, we had been at Bearwood Chapel for a few months and one of the Trustees asked “Can we have a proper Easter?” The church tradition was Brethren and historically the movement has not made a big deal of the big moments in the church calendar. My response was
“Yes of course, provided there is an outwards looking, evangelistic focus.”
What I meant was that this wasn’t to be a trip down nostalgia lane for us. Over the ten years we were there we made a big thing od Easter, Pentecost and Harvest. When we had moved to two Sunday morning gatherings, we made sure that those Sundays brought the two congregations together. Yes, we had a few jokes about “The Combined Harvest(er) Service”.
At Easter our pattern was to make a thing of the whole week. Our Ladies Group usually had an Easter lunch on the Monday. We sometimes ran a holiday club or after school club for the kids. Wednesday was Holy Week Communion with a reflective feel. We would do something café style on the Thursday evening with music, interviews and a short talk. Good Friday started with breakfast and communion together and then we kept the building open through the day to encourage time together. We often had an arts day or family fun day on the Saturday.
Then on Easter Sunday, we went for it big time. We decorated the hall and the entrance with ballons, we handed out chocolates to people as they arrived and we sang a lot of joyful songs and hymns including a fair few of the traditional Easter classics, though sometimes with a contemporary twist.
I thought it was worth sharing a bit about our thinking behind this kind of approach, specifically with regards to Easter Sunday. To some extent it was context driven and this might not apply every where. However, my take was that there are different approaches to evangelism and they work best at different occasions.
Easter is not like Christmas, the cultural connections are not as deep in terms of what we might consider the sentimental side of things. Additionally, your main Easter moment coincides with your Sunday worship gathering. In that respect, I don’t think you are going to reach people with an offer to “discover the true meaning of Easter.” The nature of evangelism is less about putting on an event for non-Christians (you can do that on other days). Rather, it is about inviting people in to your celebration, encouraging them to join in and enjoy it.
What this means is that were seeker sensitive events tend to trim back on aspects of what you might find in a worship service, I wouldn’t do that with Easter. Rather, my aim would be to offer something that is rich and deep. Something that will satisfy the believers. They should enjoy the joyful worship and their should be encouraged, challenged and renewed by the griipping Gospel of the Resurrection.
The aim then is two fold. First, you want believers to get excited about Easter. This should be the best day of the year, the best Sunday service of the year. They should want to invite friends and family next year because they loved it this year.
Secondly, whilst the connection points are not quite there in the same way that they are for Christmas, they are there for a lot of people. I think this is especially true in Working class communities, in Latino and African/Afro-Caribbean contexts where there is some residual Christian heritage. What we found was that each year we would puic up one or two people who wanted to celebrate Easter properly.
How do you approach Easter where you are?
Faithroots 