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31 Ideas for Your Church’s Easter Sunday Impact

Easter Sunday

Churches shared out-of-the-box Easter program ideas for communicating the transformational message of the cross at their Easter Sunday service. Here are their Easter service ideas:

BEFORE EASTER SUNDAY: INVITING YOUR COMMUNITY

1. Easter kindness.

Easter is often more inwardly focused than Christmas and Thanksgiving. This year, mark Easter weekend with a significant act of service to your community (restore hiking trails, host a dinner for the homeless and underprivileged, hold a blood drive, run a 10K for a local women’s shelter, etc.) and invite your community to join with your church.

2. Easter signs.

In cities where increasing restrictions are affecting public signage, creative churches are using silk-screened, corrugated plastic yard signs. Planted on church members’ front lawns, the signs invite neighbors to Easter services and church outreach events.

3. One card. One guest.

Hand out printed invitations to Easter services to all of your regular attendees. Ask them to pray for one person God is leading them to invite. Members either mail or hand-deliver the invitations to those people they’ve been praying for.

4. Palm Sunday reflection.

The Sunday before your Easter service, invite your community to join you for a meaningful time of spiritual reflection. Consider creating sacred spaces that guide people through the events leading up to the cross. It helps prepare people mentally, emotionally and spiritually for the Holy Week. You may want to borrow from the liturgy of other churches to help create the sacred environment.

5. Email Easter Sunday invitations.

In addition to direct mail, signage, fliers and other materials, promote your Easter service with an e-card that can easily be forwarded along with a personal note from your members.

6. Spring cleanup.

The week before Easter Sunday, host a huge, community-wide garage sale to benefit a local charity or cause. Offer a tax receipt to any donors and even offer to pick up larger items. Make it a fun community event by providing food, music and fliers promoting your church’s Easter program activities.

7. Egg-vitations.

The Sunday before your Easter service, give children 10 plastic eggs with candy and an invitation for their friends and families to attend the Easter service. It is great to see children involved as inviters.

8. Last Supper re-enactment.

Attract art appreciators to a Maundy Thursday drama of the scene, using Scripture as a script and DaVinci’s painting for costume and backdrop inspiration.

9. Artists at the Foot of the Cross gallery.

Turn a multipurpose room into a gallery of crucifixion art, poetry and music created by people of all ages. Invite the community to participate.

10. Easter Parade to go.

Contact a local senior center or assisted living community and asked if your church may bring residents a nostalgic evening of the Irving Berlin classic film, popcorn and lemonade.

11. Messiah Live!

Host an evening of live orchestra presenting Handel’s oratorio. Engage your city’s orchestra for a special Easter program.

12. Free car wash.

Organize a car wash free of charge with no strings attached. Just leave a small Easter card with your church’s Easter Sunday activities in each vehicle.

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Outreach magazine provides fascinating stories, field-tested ideas, and insights for effective church outreach. Awarded both secular and Christian recognition for excellence in content and presentation, Outreach magazine serves as a fresh stream of practical resources and tactics for pastors, lay leaders, and ministers in all areas. Outreach magazine also publishes the widely sought Outreach 100 issue, annually featuring the top 100 largest and fastest growing churches in America. Personalities featured on the cover of past issues include Erwin McManus, Franklin Graham, Josh McDowell, Dan Kimball, Francis Chan, and others.