Easter Strategies

In case you missed our most recent newsletter from Ed (sign up here for future editions), here are some helpful tips for planning Easter services at your church:

• Easter is a team effort. Your entire staff should be focused on preparing for Easter services throughout the church. What songs will you use? How will you encourage children who are visiting for the first time to come back? How are you mobilizing extra volunteers? Are your service times on your website yet? Now is the time to start planning the worship, brainstorming the graphics for videos and the bulletin, recruiting extra help, and developing the message - as a team. (There's so much to say about preparing your Easter sermon that we're going to focus on that in depth next month.)
• Be strategic with your service times. If you've never added extra service times before, you might want to try offering expanded options for Easter this year. Keep your fingers on the pulse of your community and you'll have the best information to guide your planning. If everyone in your area works on Good Friday, then that afternoon might not be the best time to offer an additional service. Take into account the local school and workplace schedules as you target the times when most people will be able to attend. At Fellowship Church, we've learned that evening services leading up to a major holiday are our peak opportunities. And don't go overboard in adding services; plan strategically for maximum attendance at each one. You can check out our Easter service times here.
• Easter should be an anchor. When you're deciding whether to make your Easter service part of a series, be flexible. It's a great idea to change it up from year to year - maybe one year you launch a series on Easter weekend and the next year you use it to wrap up. Consider your annual church calendar, personal/family schedule, and spring break timing in your community as you plan. Whatever you choose, make sure to have a compelling follow-up. When we give those first time visitors a reason to return, we're planting the seed for a long-lasting relationship with the church, and ultimately, Christ. At Fellowship Church, we've varied our approach from year to year - check out our past Easter messages here. This Easter, we're doing a stand-alone message and announcing an exciting new series that will begin the very next weekend.
• Get the word out one by one. The best possible way to spread awareness about your Easter services is through word of mouth. Lives are changed and churches are built one person at a time. We continue to find that the majority of our newcomers visited for the first time as the result of an invitation It may not seem like one invite makes a difference when compared with the overall crowd, but remind your members that they've never locked eyes with someone who didn't matter to God. Make it easy for them to invite a friend, whether it's with tools like tear-off invitation cards in your bulletin and e-invites on your website or something as simple as using the bulletin itself as an invitation. Then you can put traditional advertising and marketing methods in place to support that effort instead of as a standalone strategy. And if you're going to try something like a direct mail piece, make sure it's exceptional. Hit it out of the park. Choose your words and graphics carefully with a goal of clarity and impact.