Blog | Keeping the Church’s Post-Easter Momentum Alive
Keeping the Church’s Post-Easter Momentum Alive
One of the best church weekends of the year – Easter – is immediately followed by one of the most difficult weekends of the year. For several weeks (or months), you and your team spend hours planning, organization, and executing tasks for Easter services, only for all the momentum to come to a screeching halt when it’s all over.
We get it – Easter takes all your focus and energy, and by the time it’s over, we’re all left with a mixture of emotions. On one hand, it’s incredibly exciting to see the lives changed on Easter morning and to celebrate alongside staff for finishing services that have been in planning for a long time. But on the other hand, it can feel difficult to get back into the regular swing of things the following weekend. How do you keep the Easter momentum alive in the following weeks – both for your team and for the congregation?
Keeping Post-Easter Church Momentum Alive
Balance is so important in ministry – balance with time, energy, focus, and just about every other area of life. And I think it’s safe for all of us to admit that our lives are a bit out of balance by the time Easter is over. We’ve spent the last several months running around (and the leading couple weeks to Easter sprinting.)
What that means is that the following weeks after Easter need to be prioritized as a time of rest and reset for staff. This doesn’t mean that excitement will die out. In fact, the quickest way to kill post-Easter excitement is running your staff on empty until they’re completely burnt out and checked out.
So with that in mind, here are a few ways that you can help keep the post-Easter momentum alive in your church for both your congregation and staff:
Prioritize Rest
Your staff knows that work still needs to get done, and you can trust them to do it. But creating a few extra gaps in workload and schedule can help to tip the scale back into balance from the pre-Easter sprint.
Take an all-staff hangout day and do something fun. Go bowling or out to eat. Have a BBQ and yard games. Get together for a relaxing hangout at the church. Whatever it is – you can afford to give your staff a day off, and these types of events are often the “recharge” that staff need to feel refreshed to get back into their regular schedules.
Make Services Newcomer Focused
Let’s face it – church can be a weird place when you’re new to it all. On Easter, churches tend to do a good job of keeping strange insider language and “Christianese” out of the mix, but once the holiday is over, we often return to our regular routine.
We’re not suggesting that you change who you are as a church, but in the month following Easter, keep the question in mind, “What does this all sound like to someone who has no frame of reference for church or Scripture?” Raising hands while singing together, referencing verses like “this is my body and blood” during communion, and words like faith, belief, and everlasting life are everyday rhetoric for those of us in the church. But to someone who has no familiarity with any of it, it can push them away if they’re not given proper context.
Explain things, give context, describe why we do things the way we do. It can help to keep people excited and engaged with the message and what the church stands for!
Family Events
If you want new people to stay engaged with the church, give them a reason to come back! Those of us who grew up in the church or have been involved for several years treat it as a part of our weekly routine, but new people are often wondering whether or not they should come back and why.
Set up family events in the weeks and months following Easter to keep people engaged and excited to attend! Throwing kids events in the mix is a great way to get families involved at your church and their kids excited about coming back!
About the Author
Chris Fleming is a professional musician from Minneapolis, MN who has played with artists such as TAYA, Big Daddy Weave, and Jason Gray. He is actively involved with the worship music scene and has contributed as a drummer, music director, song writer, and producer for various worship artists and churches locally and nationally. Chris is the Motion Designer at Motion Worship, helping to create motion background collections and countdowns for our subscribers.