Contrary to what we’ve done in the past, we purposely toned things down a bit for Easter at CCV.
- No Good Friday services.
- No Easter Eggstravaganza attracting 2500+ to our campus.
- No major marketing initiative throughout the community.
- Few worship service elements out of the ordinary.
The decision was primarily financial in nature, but in some respects it was also our way of testing the waters philosophically.
A question I’ve been wrestling with is “Could churches making a big Easter ‘splash’ actually be doing more harm than good?”
The questions I’ve been asking myself are:
- Did Jesus ever envision “special” Easter worship services on “Easter” in the first place? Where in scripture do we find support for this? The early church certainly never made a colossal deal about “Easter” the way we do today.
- If our goal is to get people to come back and eventually come into a growing relationship with Christ, what happens when non-Christians actually come back the next week and find ½ the people and ½ the energy?
- Does the “event-oriented” nature of Easter services in evangelical churches take away from the work of the Holy Spirit? In other words, can we be misled into thinking that the buzz and momentum in our Easter gatherings are anything other than good old fashioned manufactured American “hype?”
- Does placing special emphasis on creating compelling Easter services actually help create a culture of “C & E Christians” (Christmas and Easter visitors only)? In other words, when we bring our “A++ Game” on Easter, do we raise expectations in the mind of visitors so high that all other worship services pale in comparison?
Your thoughts?
