Lessons Learned from 2021 Good Friday and Easter Services

Last year at Easter, most of the world was shut down because of the pandemic. That meant that most every Church’s Good Friday and Easter services were online only. That was a big change for people but we all adapted and for over a year have made some serious strides in our online ministry. Now, in 2021, we have more and more people coming back to in person gatherings for Easter.

Because Churches have become more comfortable providing digital and in person experiences over the past year, it has provided us more opportunities to minister to people in a variety of ways. So, with Good Friday and Easter services happening this past weekend, what were some lessons learned? Here are some I learned.

Posting Stories is very effective. We have become more active posting to our Stories on Instagram and Facebook and that has been a great. We have gotten more engagement throughout the weeks leading up to Good Friday and Easter than ever before. We also believe it helped make people more aware of what was happening which led to really good attendance.

Have a Launch Facebook Ad Party. This year we had a Church member make 1 minute long invite videos to Easter for us. We launched them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok all at once but we invited the whole Church to watch the video together when it launched. The reason being is that the more people we could get to watch when it launched the more likely others would be able to see it. And, it was awesome. We had so many shares, likes and comments in the first 30 minutes on Facebook that our views were so high. More people go to see it because we had a Launch Party.

Get Others Involved. As noted above, we had a member of our Church make 3 videos that were a minute long each promoting our Easter services. They were different than what we, as a Church staff, would make but that is what made them so awesome! It provided others another way to serve.

People want to come in person. At my Church we have been seeing that more and more people have wanted to come back in person. Even though it was a smaller crowd we were surprised by our Good Friday in person turnout at noon. And, on Easter Sunday I was so surprised and happy to see so many familiar faces I haven’t seen in a really long time and new people are who are looking for connection. It was great to see so many people. They really do want to be back with others.

Smaller Intimate Good Friday services are effective. We had 2 different kinds of Good Friday services at my Church. One was an Online Service and the other was an in person Prayer and Worship service. We set up for 30 seats and ended up putting out and addition 15 as more people showed up. We designed it to be a smaller, intimate gathering so it was really effective.

Recycle older Good Friday services as reflections. At my Church we have been doing Online Good Friday services since 2015. Because of that we have worship and messages online from those services. What we did this year was to take some of those older services, freshen them up a bit and offer them up as reflections to minister to people throughout the day on Good Friday.

Provide more opportunities for people to connect. Because people are not as excited to be in large gatherings indoors yet (and it’s not allowed in most states), we created a variety of other opportunities leading up to Easter for people to meet and connect. We did pictures with the Easter Bunny, an Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt and multiple Easter specific Online Groups for connection.

Conclusion

We can always be learning. This past year has brought about lots of learning in the digital ministry world. Now, as we transition back to some form of in person gatherings, we are learning a great amount. The more we can continue to learn and the more we can continue to adapt, the greater the impact our ministry will have on our community.

What did you learn over Good Friday and Easter? I would love for you to join me on April 5th at 4 pm EST for a Digital Bootcamp Clubhouse Room to discuss what you learned over Easter. I will be leading and would love for you to be part of it with me and share your learnings. If you can’t make it, comment below or share on Twitter tagging me (@tapounder) in your learning. I would love to hear what you learned over Good Friday and Easter services this year.

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