Guest Post: Steve Fogg

Recycling Easter

Easter is the most sacred, most poignant and pivotal event of the Christian calendar. Easter celebrates the core message of the Gospel. That Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected.

Like most churches, it’s a very strategic time as we use our Good Friday Easter service as an outreach service. We all invite our friends, co workers, families to church (and they actually say yes. WOOT! Sorry. Just excited.) It is also one of the most resource intensive times of our year at Crossway. We go all out, no creative stone is left unturned to present the timeless Easter message in a timely way.

However this year, we are doing something even more radical, untried, untested.

We are recycling Easter.

No, we aren’t doing some Easter/Global Warming mash up.

We are recycling a previous Easter production. The branding. The songs. The drama. Every. Little. Bit.

Now, before you say bor-ring. Who would want to do the same production again? Think again. Here are just four reasons why you might want to reconsider:

1) Your recycled Easter service has the potential to be way better than the original service - Have you ever sat in a post Easter review and reviewed what worked and didn’t work? Imagine this unique opportunity. You have the chance make a previous Easter production even better. Haven’t you ever wanted to do that?

2) You would be stewarding your resources well – Times are tough for most churches. The global financial crisis has crunched church staff’s and slashed budgets around the world. Everyone is feeling the pinch. Imagine being able to re use the same props, the same lighting gear/setup. The same branding/marketing collateral that has already been created. All you may have to do is tweak a few colours to freshen it up, change dates and times and bingo, you’ve got a campaign done.

3) Free up creative resources for other series – Your video guy/girl, producers, preachers, singers, musicians all now have a little bit more margin to put more time and energy into another series. You’ve just maximised your creativity for another month.

4) Your congregation is more likely to invite someone who doesn’t go to church to the service – Think about it. Your congregation knows what to expect. Hopefully they will have even more confidence to invite their friends, families, work mates this time around because they know all about the service/presentation.

So how about it? Are you convinced? Concerned? Is your Easter production/service too much of a sacred space for you to recycle some or all of it?

Steve Fogg, our guest blogger, is the communications guy for Crossway Church in Melbourne, Australia. He’s a stealth super hero dad and father of 3. He’s the husband of 1 incredible woman, a son, and loved by God beyond what he could ever comprehend. He blogs at Clear and Simple. You can follow him @Stevefogg.