This Easter, Have Long Lasting Impact At Your Church [Tips & Checklists]

Easter (or Resurrection Sunday, if you prefer) and Holy Week are some of the most important times in the church calendar. And, if you’re trying to reach new people to have a long-lasting impact at the same time, it can make an already busy season seem downright chaotic.

I get it. To help, here’s a checklist of things to remember this Easter season – plus tips on getting it all done if you’re overwhelmed.

Let’s start with a checklist for your Easter outreach event.

Easter Outreach Checklist

Easter is a great, low-pressure opportunity to connect with and invite people who wouldn’t normally consider attending church.

Easter Sunday is an event in its own right, so if you’re also trying to host an outreach event, you’ll need to work through the things we mention later in this article from two perspectives: Easter Sunday itself and your outreach event.

Here are three things to remember when it comes to hosting an outreach event so your church has long lasting impact at Easter:

• Ads and Social Media. Outreach events are more fun when lots of people know about them and come. Consider running ads and/or posting on social media about your event ahead of time!
• Volunteers. Station your most friendly and cheerful volunteers at strategic places where they can have conversations with the people attending- maybe serving refreshments, face painting, or giving directions when people need help.
• Follow-up. At your event, have some way of getting contact information from the people attending, and then follow up. If you don’t already have a follow-up system in place, Easter is a GREAT time to start.

Still need ideas for an Easter Outreach event? we have just the thing here.

Checklist For Long Lasting Impact At Easter

Holy Week and Easter is meaningful – and busy!  Ensure your church is ready to invite and connect with guests this week across all the ways you communicate.

Print Materials

You’ll want to make sure you have:

• Invite cards, door hangers, etc. to invite people to Easter.
• Paper connect card with a quick form or a QR code to a digital form to connect and follow-up with people and make that lasting impact.

Social Media & Ads

Whether you share your Easter worship service information in a social media post, or decide to turn that post into an ad, here are a few things to remember:

• Geotargeted to your community. Nothing is more discouraging (or wastes more money!) than showing your ads to people who live too far away to come to your church for Easter. We talk more about how to fix this here.
• Service times and location easy to find. Put this info on your profiles, in your ads, and on any posts you make during Holy Week.
• Clear and compelling. Does it make people want to come visit you more, or does it confuse them? If you’re not sure, take our church social media audit.

Website

Aim for clarity, helpfulness, and consistency.

• Easy to find service times and location.
• Highlight special service times, too. For example, make sure people can easily find Good Friday information.
• Consistent Easter graphics. Everything should look the same across your website and social media.
• Make it easy for people to let you know they’re coming if they want to. Have a Plan Your Visit system in place on your website.
• Block time to update your website after Easter is over. People may want to come back next week! Make sure they’ll see when your regular service times are.

Looking for more tips on church websites? Follow Tyler on Facebook or Instagram!

Hospitality

Make guests feel more than welcome – make them feel expected

• Smiling, friendly faces volunteering on Easter. Some places you may want to consider having volunteers greeting people: the parking lot, the doors to the building, the doors to the sanctuary, and milling in the lobby looking for anyone who might need help finding the bathrooms or kids check-in.
• Prep gifts or other incentives for people to turn in their contact information. Have volunteers or leaders responsible for collecting that information, delivering the gifts, and making sure it gets entered into your follow-up system.
• Decide if you’ll provide food or some other reason to encourage people to stay a few minutes after service and interact. If so, ensure a volunteer or leader to be responsible for organizing and implementing that extension of hospitality.

Getting It Done This Easter

I know those are some chunky lists.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed about how to see long lasting impact at Easter this year, take a deep breath and hear these last three tips:

First, take a minute to get your bearings.If you don’t have one already, make a list of all the things you’d like to get done. Then, assess if there’s enough time, decide what’s most important, and delegate what you can.

Then, ask for help. We’ve outlined 3 steps you can take to get the Easter help you need here. Church staff and volunteers all understand that this is a crazy time, and they’ll want to do what they can to help.

Lastly, it’s okay to not do it all. If your to-do list is long and your time is short, do what you can and trust God for the rest. The things you’re learning now will come in handy next time your church has an event.

If you’d like more bite-sized reminders, motivation – and the occasional hot take –  follow Tyler on Facebook or Instagram.