Ok, so I know that title sounds a bit dramatic and pompous. I agree with you. But this past easter weekend we did just that. Let me share with you what happened.

Let me first say that last year I wrote a post called “When the Big Project Fails,” in which I detail an experience in which we bombed completely as a church and had less than average attendance. And you can read about our experience last easter here.

For this past Easter we did most of the same things as in our big last series last year. We did the Facebook ads. We had a banner outside our church.

We did do two things differently, though. And let me just say before I share what they were, that I don’t know how much this had to do with it. When dealing with some of these issues I think we have to walk and talk with much humility because ultimately we’re dealing with spiritual issues in which God is in control. So I hesitate to point to anything that our church “did” as the specific reason for growth. I’ll just share the facts of what we did and did not do.

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Easter is just a few days away. So here’s the question: will you be ready to receive guests that want to come?

I recently read a fascinating report by Bob Franquiz called  How To Think Like an Unchurched Person. You can download the pdf by clicking on that link. In the document he details his experience of what it was like being a first-time guest at a synagogue.

And the following are four pieces of information that an unchurched person will be looking for on your church website before they come:

1. Service Times. This probably sounds like a no-brainer, but many don’t have that info on their website. Someone should be able to find your service times quickly and without too much hassle. Do you have two service times? Do you start at 10:30am? Do you start at 11:30am? List the times.

2. Directions. Not only should you have the full address listed clearly, but you should also have a link where they can receive turn-by-turn direction through a google map. It’s quite easy these days to insert the Google map of your church address onto your website. For more info on how to do that click here. You should also include clear signage on the inside of your church to help them get around to where they need to go. There’s nothing worse than walking into a new place and having that lost feeling.

3. Service Length. You may list your service times on your website, but do you list how long the service actually lasts? People want to know if they’re going to be sitting there. If you don’t list the times, people may assume the service is three hours long. So share if it’s a 60, 75, or 90 minute service.

4. Dress Code. This is important. What’s the personality of your church like? Do people mostly dress in suits there? Do they mostly dress in jeans and shorts? If it is a more laid back atmosphere, but they come in a suit, they’ll feel quite out of place.

So how are you doing with those? This definitely made me do a double check on our church website. And I found things that I could tweak to make more clear. So if you found anything you need to change, jump on it now. Be ready to receive guests in your church this Easter weekend. So what do you need to add or change?

[image by guarsan]

So we’re now officially about one month to go before we arrive at the biggest church-going day of the year: easter. Which naturally begs the question, “what are you doing?” There’s lots of different things that many churches do, but I thought I’d share on a few resources that have come up so that you can sharpen your planning.

1. One resource is called PlanningEaster.com. It’s put together by Shawn Wood of Seacoast Church and they want to use that site as a resource to share what’s been working for easter programs.

From the site:

“Instead of live feeds at scheduled times, over the next four weeks, we’ll have different blog, video, and picture posts constantly being uploaded.  We will be hearing from leaders from different churches around the country on how they are creatively planning Easter weekend events.  Got an idea?  Submit it on the “Share” page.”

Of note, they’ve also started using the hashtag of #planningeaster on Twitter, so you could easily do a search with that hashtag and see some blurbs of what people are planning. I have to say that I really commend the spirit of such sites. Everyone realizes that it’s a big day, so why hold the most effective methods to yourself? Share it!

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We had a great Easter weekend service this past week at Carrollwood Church! On Saturday, April 11th, we kicked off a brand new series called “He Still Moves Stones,” which was well received. I got the graphic and idea for the series from Outreach.com.

In the previous post, I made mention of an upcoming tele-seminar that will help you prepare your church for an easter outreach. For those of you that won’t be able to attend, here’s a free copy of the How to Maximize Easter report. It won’t cover all the information that will be covered in the seminar, but it should give some good fundamental principles for what you can do.

Thom Rainer, in his book Surprising Insights From the Unchurched says that one out of four unchurched people will actually attend church if invited. Furthermore, we know many people are CEO churchgoers, that is “Christmas and Easter Only.”

I just got word of this myself and wanted to pass it along to those that are subscribed. It’s been shown time and time again that servant evangelism is one of the best ways to reach people. Well, a new website has been setup to serve as a hub for doing servant evangelism. Specifically, this is a joint effort between partnering churches across the nation to use the 7 days leading up to easter to do servant evangelism projects.