Easter is here and you might be wondering: How can I make this Easter season a powerful one? There are 4 steps that all church pastors should take to prepare for an impactful and inspiring Easter season.
1) Set Goals and Brainstorm Ideas
When you start planning early, you have the luxury of being able to brainstorm new ideas, review past events and analyze “wish list” items. You want to know what your ideal outcome looks like so you can create a plan for reaching those goals. Now is the time to pull your team together and talk about or cast vision for your Easter-season goals. In 2022, some of your goals might include:
Reaching people in your community who have never been to church
Reconnecting with the people who used to attend church but have stopped over the last couple of years.
Expanding or improving your online church experience to engage with a digital audience.
Remember, depending on your staff, volunteer and financial resources, you may have to be choosy about which goal or goals you pursue. It is better to concentrate and focus on one thing and do it well than to spread yourself too thin and have ineffective ministry.
The next step in setting your goals and getting started on your Easter planning is to thoroughly evaluate all the ideas based on your goals. If you are focused on reaching out to unchurched families in your community, then make sure your services and activities are friendly and welcoming to those outside our faith. This may involve taking a hard look at traditions.
For example, if you “always” offer a Good Friday service but last year only 10 church members showed up, is that service really a good use of your resources and time and does it meet your goal of reaching unchurched people in your community? Maybe a Spring Carnival and Egg Hunt would be a better event?
Unfortunately, COVID will probably also play a part in your decision making process in 2022. While we would all like the virus to go away, the truth is that people in your community still have a wide-range of opinions about public meetings, masking and vaccinations, so realize that no matter what you do, chances are someone will be unhappy.
The pandemic also makes it more difficult to evaluate the past two Easters – in 2020 maybe you were exclusively online or conducted “drive-in” Easter services and then last year you were only holding services outside – those scenarios and the various virus strains make decision making for 2022 more difficult. The best advice we can give is to pray about it! Have your whole team pray about Easter and what God would have you do to reach people while keeping everyone safe and being good stewards.
2) Look at Your Budget and Invest Wisely
We all know that money is tight and so it’s more important than ever to be smart with your budget. But it’s also important to consider quality and cost-effectiveness and not just go for what is cheapest.
Don’t forget about time and “soft” costs – it might seem like creating all your own flyers, bulletins and promotions is “cheaper” but if your church admins (or even you), have to spend valuable ministry time trying to figure out how to design a social media graphic and load it to Facebook, is that really a good “value”? Some expenses are worth the money. Here are a couple areas where spending a little money can save you time and stress:
All-in-one Sermon Series Kits with coordinating tools – A church kit that includes videos, social media graphics, presentation slide graphics and customizable sermons is a smart investment when you look at the time and effort involved in creating all of that on your own.
The Easter Church Kits available from Outreach also have coordinated tools that match the kit themes so you can have all your communications pieces go together – from postcard invitations, to outdoor and indoor banners, bulletins etc…
Social Media Graphics and Ads – Unless someone on your staff is well versed in how social media business accounts work, this is one area that having a professional step in makes good financial sense. And the good news is just because you add an automatic posting service like Outreach Social, that doesn’t mean you are losing control and can’t also post one-off things from your pastor. What it does do is help keep your church front and center with your followers providing inspirational and shareable graphics that keep you in people’s feeds.
In addition to a posting service, if one of your goals is to reach more people online, then running a Facebook ad is essential. Here again, the social media sites can be complicated and you don’t want to waste money paying for an ad that doesn’t bring results, so a service that helps with professional graphics, online audience selection and reporting makes a lot of sense.
Direct Mail Invitation Mailing – Again, this is one area where it’s good to call in a professional so that you can ensure you are spending your money wisely. Sure you can “do it yourself” but the quality of the postcard, the ease of finishing the project and ensuring it’s received well by your community are worth a little extra expense.
Also a company like Outreach.com can provide you with services you can’t do yourself, like providing a list that gets you the lowest postage rates and offering postcard designs that incorporate the recipient’s name into the design. This service, known as “variable data” printing can provide up to a 300% higher response rate!
3) Create an Execution Plan
After you have considered and chosen all your options, the third step is to create an execution plan. This is the time to call in your staff and volunteers to talk through the details and ask for help getting them all done. As they say, “Teamwork makes the Dream work” and it helps take stress off you and your staff! It also ensures that you think through all the details and little things that are easy to miss but add up.
To jumpstart your planning, download the Spring 22 Easter nine-week planning guide – it’s free and gives you a starting point for discussion.
4) Cast Vision and Get Everyone Involved
After you have set your plans and have a team assembled to help you execute them, share your plans, goals and vision for Easter with the rest of the people who volunteer and attend your church.
This is an important step to get everyone on board and excited about what’s happening. It also helps ensure that everyone knows their role in making Easter happen! Be sure to ask regular church attendees to begin praying about who they will invite to your church and offer easy-to-use personal inviting tools to help make it easier.
Preparing your church for the big day is another important step towards building excitement. Decorating for the season, updating your interior banners and signs to Easter designs and recruiting extra greeters, parking team members, and childcare workers help reinforce that the Easter season is important to you and the church as a whole.
Easter is an important time for churches – it’s often the busiest season of the year! But with a little preparation and some good planning, you can make Easter a time when your church shines and people are excited to come back. Use these tips to get started!
If you want more help preparing for Easter, visit Outreach.com/Easter or call an associate at 800-991-6011.
