Easter is just around the corner. We want to help you get ready! Check out these 10 tips to prepare for Easter weekend.
1) Get an Idea
Special days like Easter deserve special attention. Find an idea that fits your values. Think big. Visitors show up on Easter so prepare with excellence. You may choose a more traditional liturgy, or if your faith tradition allows, you may sponsor an egg hunt. Ask yourself 3 questions. Why should they come to your church? What will they experience while at church? And, what will they walk away with when they leave?
2) Raise Funds
Big ideas cost big money. You may not have the funds in your budget, but God will lead His people to give. You just need to make sure to empower them by sharing your vision and making it easy for them to give. Using a ChMS that offers an online giving solution, like Realm, allows your people to easily give and your staff to easy track and report.
3) Update the Web and Social Media
Big ideas deserve a big voice. People visit your website and social media pages before they ever walk in your door. Use them to clearly communicate your idea to your members and potential visitors. Use profile banners, pictures, events and scheduled posts to get your idea out there.
4) Recruit Volunteers
Big ideas need lots of volunteers because there will be lots of work to do. Finding volunteers is easier if you’ve kept good records in your ChMS. You’ll need an easy way to communicate with them, and you’ll need a way to train them.
5) Set up Online Solutions
Big ideas take the right tools. Create a closed community in your ChMS, like Realm to manage group communications. It’s better to communicate within a private community than on your public web presence. Create an online event where people can register so that you can predict attendance.
6) Plan the Service
Big ideas take a lot of planning. Identify the resources you’ll need and make sure you order them in plenty of time. Review roles and responsibilities with team members. Practice transitions with your team so that you reduce awkwardness and dead space. Make sure volunteers are trained on new new technology resources you’re using and be sure to have a back-up in case something fails.
7) Promote the Event
Big ideas need a lot of promotion. Promote the event on social media with sponsored posts. Encourage leaders to share the event on their personal profiles, use search engine ad words to catch those people looking for an Easter event, hand out flyers, and send a mailer. There’s not one thing that works for promotion, but a successful promotion is a result of multiple touches.
8) Prepare to Connect
Big ideas bring in people who need to be connected to your church. People will show up, so be ready. Don’t let them be faces in the crowd. Make a meaningful connection. Hand out visitor cards or have a visitor welcome area set up where they can go to check-in and learn more about your church.
9) Follow-Up
Big crowds take a lot of follow-up. Make sure to enter visitor information into your ChMs. Create processes to follow-up with visitors, those who receive Christ, and those who ask for more information. Assign leaders to be responsible for each aspect of the follow up. Something like Realm’s Pathways works perfectly for this.
10) Give an App
Big ideas deserve the best technology. People who are engaged in your church will stay in your church, and nothing engages people more than their cellphones. Giving people a church app is a great way to connect with people where they are. A good church app allows people to see message threads and photos, post and respond to messages, discover and register for events, review and manage giving, find people they might know in the church, and control their privacy settings. No app does these things better than Realm Connect.
Want more ideas as you’re preparing for Easter? Check out our free guide, “Bigger Better Easter.”
