The Easter Bunny Hop

I have been entrusted to jumpstart the outreach endeavors at our church up here in Northwest Indiana. I have done a number of the standards: Handing out free cokes, providing free oil changes for single moms, doing the $1.00 car wash since my DNA is preloaded with the concepts of “small things done with a great love will change the world” and “sharing God’s love in a practical way.”

Those are always fun things to do, but I want to do something a little bit bigger this Easter. Are you with me?

I have been doing some thinking about 1 John 3:18 lately: “Dear children, let us not love in word or tongue, but in action and in truth” We have put this (scripture) into practical action with a church wide challenge we call Triple-P: Pray, Provide, Participate.

Triple-P creates a fun atmosphere that provides an easy way for many to get involved. We get them to search their hearts, and seek God with earnest prayer to find a need they can fill. Then we encourage them to find a way they can fill that need with their own resources and energy. This moves folks from "praying about it" to actually doing something about it in a move towards getting out of their comfort zone.

We are going to launch something big this spring to energize it. I am calling it the Easter Bunny Hop. In a bag will be eight plastic eggs. Seven of these eggs will be filled with wrapped candy. In addition there will be one golden egg with an outreach card in it.

The week before Easter we will give out these bags to everyone that attends the church with the encouragement to look for somebody they can surprise with some Easter Kindness. They will put the eggs in the front yards of neighbors for them to find eggs that the Easter Bunny left with a message of God’s love in the golden egg. A note will be taped to the front door to explain that the bunny stopped by and that there are eight eggs to find.

We are hoping to surprise many, including our church body in a fun and silly way to spread God's love on a most appropriate holiday.

Reprinted by permission form Steve Sjogren Serve!

Help Visitors Find Your Church This Easter

This Easter, some people might want to visit your church. This Holy Week, some out of town guests may want to visit your special services for holy week. You don’t know who they are.

God has given them spiritual thirst that propels them to seek a church. They don’t know where they want to go. So what do they do? They likely search the internet first. Will they find your church website? If they do, will they see your service schedule for Holy Week Easter?

What happened to me when looking for church in an unfamiliar city. I was in South Florida, visiting family and we wanted to attend a Christmas Eve service. Since my family had recently moved there, they were unfamiliar with any place to go, so our search was wide open. We did two things:

We asked a friend for a recommendation. When I asked him where that church was, he said 'use Google to find it'. So I went to Google and typed: “Presbyterian Church [insert city name here]. After all, I am an ordained Presbyterian pastor and every now and then would like to visit another church in my tribe.

The church my friend recommended did not appear in the first ten entries. I had to ask my wife what the name of the church was. Once I found the name, I could only find it in Google if I got the right name.

This church doesn’t have its physical address on its home page. That might help improve its appearance in Google for “Presbyterian Church [insert city name here]” With just a few small fixes they could rise to the top of Google quickly.

Does your church come up number one in Google for various keywords like your denomination and city? Maybe even for “Holy Week Services Richmond” or “Easter Sunrise Service Panama City.” What days and time are your special services?

Because it was Christmas time, we were looking for service times for Christmas eve. It wasn’t on the home page. It wasn’t on the calendar. It wasn’t even in the on-line newsletter. I couldn’t even find their regular service times on Sunday.

If you are having special services, can visitors discover it on your website? Hint: That information should be front and center in your home page.

We didn’t go. Since we couldn’t find the answer to our question at the website, we moved on with our search. Ultimately, because of some other scheduling conflict that materialized about 3 pm in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, we didn’t get to attend any church on Christmas Eve.

What can you do this Holy Week and Easter Sunday? My experience at Christmas left me wondering. How can your website help visitors find your church for special services? Are you planning special sunrise services this Easter? Are you planning special services for Holy Week, like Maundy Thursday, or Good Friday?
Make sure that information is front and center on your website for the week or two leading up to that event.

You don’t know who God might lead to your church. Perhaps someone hears the Gospel for the first time. Perhaps someone needs to come back to the Lord. Perhaps a new visitor who is moving in from another town.

Help them find your church as God prompts their spiritual thirst this Holy Week and Easter.

Reprinted by permission from Chris Walker, EvangelismCoach

CEO’s In Your Church?

Easter is the cornerstone event of Christian faith. On Easter the church celebrates the resurrection of Our Lord and His defeat of death, hell and the grave.

Studies indicate that more CEO's (Christmas and Easter Only) people attend will attend church next Sunday than any other day of the year. This makes Easter the prime outreach opportunity event of the year to invite friends, relatives and neighbors to church.

In Thom Rainer's book, The Unchurched Next Door, Dr. Rainer indicates that 82% of unchurched people are at least somewhat likely to attend church if invited. What’s more interesting is that only 2% of church going people ever invite someone to church in a given year. In fact, seven out of ten unchurched people have never been invited to church in their whole lives.

To capture the opportunity that Easter presents, our church Living Word Christian Center prints and distributes thousands of calling card sized invitations to our special Easter service "Unfailing Love". Easter Sunday will be highlighted by Pastor Mac's message as well as fantastic multimedia, special music, and a repeat of last year's impacting human drama "Everything”.

This Easter I have decided to chronicle my invitational evangelism efforts. Annie and I are inviting our neighbors, an acquaintance named Dan and a relative. Check back next week as I will report the results.

If you have invited someone to church please let me know. You could have a CEO in the pew next to you on Easter!