What is Your Easter Follow-up for Easter Guests?

[James Nored]

 

Unless you are a church where all of the young people leave to go see their parents, your highest worship attendance this year will most likely be on Easter. I would guess that the average church receives at least a 20% bump in attendance on this day.

This is a good thing. However, we should recognize that many, if not, most of those guests who come on this day are there for other reasons. To make mom and dad happy. To get Easter eggs. Or to check off their religious good deed for the year.

Still . . .

There are definitely people who are there on this day that will be open to God. Maybe they came looking. Or maybe they will come and find something they did not expect--a loving people and an encounter with God.

But if we do not have a follow-up for this seeking group, it will be very easy for them to fall back on old habits of sleeping in on Sunday and making God something that they do next year.

A common follow-up on Easter is to announce a sermon series that will resonate with people. I think that this is good.

However, we should recognize that some people are looking for more. Like close relationships, or an opportunity to dialogue or ask questions.

So this year I am going to encourage people to put on their attendance cards (which we pick up at after the sermon) if they want to sign up to go through The Story of Redemption. We'll offer this as a Bible class study the following week, or start new studies with The Story of Redemption in people's homes. We put this offer on our Easter flyer and our bulletin, and I'll talk about it in our sermon. Hopefully, our people will invite their unchurched friends and family to sign-up for this study.

I'm praying that God blesses this and we have some good responses to this on Sunday.

What are you doing to follow-up with Easter Sunday visitors?