4 Great Ideas for Easter at Home

If this is your first year taking your Easter services online, remember that even though methods may change, so will hearts.

To help you prepare for Easter online, we asked a few churches—NorthPoint, NewSpring, River Valley, GROW/Church of the Highlands, Champions Center, and Life.Church— to share ideas for inviting and engaging attenders in an online experience.  

Ideas for Easter at Home

1. Inviting People to Online Easter Services

• “Chalk the Walk” campaign—get families outside and involved in decorating the end of their driveways or the road in front of their houses with art and an invite/web address to church online.
  
• Give your families access to printable, colorable invites they can share with their neighbors or take pictures and post on social media. Or, mail families a colorable postcard to invite them to your Easter experiences. 
  
• Print yard signs with your Easter service times and URL.
  
• With so many people on social media, there are many ways you can leverage this tool to invite:
  • Paid strategies on Facebook or Instagram are fairly inexpensive. Use a video about your Easter services, one from your pastor addressing the community, or even an Easter graphic with a post about how to attend.
    
  • Encourage your attenders to record a video about their faith and invite their friends and family to church. A personal testimony is always moving and powerful.
    
  • Create graphics that allow your attenders to tell their friends when and how they’ll be joining your church online experience so they can invite them to join at the same time. Below is an example from River Valley Church.

2. Creating an At-Home Easter Experience

• Many churches are creating an at-home Easter experience with families, featuring videos, an emcee, and activities. These can be incorporated before your main experience or as a stand-alone event just for families. If you don’t have the margin to create your own, we have a few free options available. 
  • LifeKids Online Experiences (free on the Open Network)
  • Best Day Ever (free on the Open Network)
  • ISeeItProductions.com (free on their external site)
    
• Part of a great online experience is being able to quickly find how people can engage with you online. If it’s not a big overhaul, consider making a few changes to your church website to prioritize your online content in this season: how to view the service online, how to engage children, and how to connect after the service. 
  
• Deliver your sermon to an online audience. In this video, Life.Church Online Pastor Alan George talks about how he crafts his communication to connect to an online-only audience.
  
• Consider offering a post-service lobby experience after your service ends. This is a Google hangout or Zoom call that allows attenders the chance to “stand around and chat” for a few minutes after the service. Connection is key in this season of isolation.
  
• Build and share an Easter Spotify playlist with worship songs your church knows and loves. Share this before or after Easter to keep your church engaged in worship.
  
• Use this free video from NorthPoint to walk your attenders through communion at home. You could offer communion to-go bags for families to pick up at church, taking the necessary health precautions, of course. 
  

3. Engaging Volunteers at Easter

• Ask your volunteers to serve at Church Online at the same time they usually serve at your physical campus.
  
• Host a virtual huddle via a tool like Zoom or Google hangouts for some face-to-face time and interaction.
  
• If they normally wear a church t-shirt while serving, encourage them to still wear their T-shirt while serving online.
  
• Encourage them to take and post a picture on social media while serving.
  
• Host a training for your staff and key volunteers on how to utilize social media during this time, as well as helping them learn how to invite digitally. If you’re rolling out an invite challenge, this is a great way to kick it off with vision.
  

4. Easter Follow-Up

• Capture information during your online services and follow up with first-time guests and people who commit their lives to Christ, just like normal. Ask your pastor to record a video you can share via a text message or email. Or, go old school and call them on the phone. In this season of social distancing, a real, live person on the other end of the phone goes a long way. 
  
• If you typically host an event that allows new attenders to get to know your team and staff, don’t cancel these events—switch them to online instead.
  
•  Launch digital small groups post-Easter for all new visitors to stay connected. Let them know this group is just for them, and share about how they can get plugged in after the services and in follow-up communication. 
  
•  Share stories of life-change through the Easter service—make sure people know that life-change is still happening and  testimonies are still being celebrated!

Resources

We hope these ideas have spurred some additional thoughts into how you can reach and serve your communities well this Easter. We’d love to hear your ideas too; connect with us on Facebook and Instagram to share!

If you need sermons, graphics, worship music, creative assets, or other resources for your Easter experience, you can find them on our curated Easter page.