Our little church of 300 has grown to almost 2000 in the past 5 years, but our programming staff is still just me and 2 part time people. So we do it all with volunteers, and on that level I have the best people anywhere!
We began meeting back in December to decide on the theme for this service. Drawing on learnings from a conference we attended, we are not doing a ’stand-alone’ Easter service this year, but using Easter Sunday to begin a new series instead. We are using Tim Keller’s book, “The Prodigal God – Finding Your Place at the Table,” as the basis for a 6 week series and all-church life-group study that will begin on Easter Sunday. It is a fantastic, 6 week study of the parable of the prodigal son.
Since our message is not specifically Easter oriented, when our volunteer brainstorming team began meeting to plan the programming, we wanted to make the 1st half of the service explode with the hope and joy of Easter. Since we don’t have a video or dance department, but since we have great musicians here, we decided to lean into what we do best; worship and music.
Due to our smaller size, one trick we have learned over the past couple of years is to lean into elements that others have created and make them our own. Last year we took the “He Has Risen” video that Willow Creek had created (towardwonder.com)and stripped the sound track from it so we could do it live. We created a sound track with a click to it so the band and vocals could accompany it live. Then we put 3 drummers with large bass drums across the front of the stage, back lit them, and added live vocals, etc. It was a powerful opener and created an awesome opening to our service, but it didn’t require us to have a video department to create it.
This year we are taking that same idea one step farther. One of the volunteers on our team brought a video of the opener that Hillsong used for their worship conference this past summer. (youtube, Hillsong
2009 opening, the 10 minute version) It is a 10 minute piece that combines video and photographs on the screen with a dozen snare drummers across the stage and full band. Eventually it goes into the song “With Everything,” a song our church LOVES. So we are re-creating that idea. We are creating our own video/photo piece that starts with words similar to what they used: Christ died. One sacrifice for all.
Etc. These words and photos show during the opening instrumental run which we will play live, with 4 snare drummers creatively lit across our stage. As the song, “With Everything” begins, the choir enters and the words on the screen shift to the Easter theme. “Christ died. One sacrifice for all. They laid him in the tomb. He is not here, He has risen!!!” As the song ends, our drama readers will read the Easter story from Luke 24 while the synth/drums/guitars rumble on the last chord.
From there the lights come up full and we are going into some new songs we’ve been using here that have the Easter theme woven into
them: Rise and Sing (Fee), Let God Arise (Tomlin), Shout Joyfully (BJ Putnam). Between the opening Hillsong piece (snare drums, video, Easter story) and the worship run, we’re hoping for a great celebration of Easter and what Christ has done, then turning it over to our pastor who will take us into the first message of this new series.
This is definitely taking the extra effort and time we are all committed to giving on this crucial day of the year for every church, but it also feels doable for a staff of 1 and a bunch of volunteers. I know that many of us who are reading pages like this are guys like me these days that need creative elements that can be done without a large church staff or budget. Hopefully this will give you some new ideas on how to do that!
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