Episode 3 | An Easter Debrief

With this episode coming out the Wednesday after Easter we take you through a live debrief of our Easter service, the wins, the excitement, and the miss. Most podcasts will help you months in advance while you prepare for your Easter Service, we’re just going to give you our live debrief in hopes that it sparks ideas and excitement for next year.

And for Church goers, what ways can you strengthen your faith in the season following Easter? A peek behind the curtain of our own plans and ideas.

Easter Preparation

Music Department started planning for Easter the week after Christmas. In Savannah you need to book musicians a year out, our Music Director had a slight disadvantage that he was only hired 6 months ago, but this was the thing that was planned furthest in advance.

Marketing started about 2 weeks out from Easter, mostly all on social media and Ben spent less than $30 on boosting Facebook ads. The targeted ads were mostly geographical, but Ben and Molly share some other ways you can target social media users in your town and what audiences you can target and the timeframe to do it in. (We take a detour on talking about social media and best practices – on a list for a full episode).

Trinity United Methodist Church also does the Easter Egg Hunt on the Sunday BEFORE Easter.

Ben begun his sermon a few weeks ago. His goal was simplicity, what was the heart of the message and stuck with that. Ben’s theme was “Words Create Worlds” using the Luke text and the conversations that happen.

Easter Sunday

This is the last year that Trinity will do one service because our 11:00AM service had 284 attendees!! Beat the record of Easter service 220 and 230 and knocked Ben’s goal of 250 out of the park! Numbers matter because we are trying to reach ALL people. So that is the unit of measure we use in this aspect of hitting milestones.

Successes and “Not” Successes

Our “Not Success” was the livestream. Internet connection was not going to upload the livestream at all. Our strive for excellence had us change our strategy on the fly and adjust. Livestreaming from a phone wouldn’t give us the quality we want to put out there. We instead video recorded highlights of the processional, anthem and sermon and edited it all together that weekend.

View our highlight reel here on Youtube!

The only other hitch of the day was the coffee maker was unplugged and it took longer to heat up the water. No need to sweat the small stuff!

Our success list is long, and for the we are blessed.

Shoutout to our amazing team of Greeters! Hospitality was a success on Easter Sunday. Coffee, doughnuts and a team of 9 greeters stationed all around the property to make people feel completely welcome.

We also both agree that the music on Easter was phenomenal thanks to our choir, guest musicians and our amazing Music Director Dr. Jared Register!

Ben talks about how this Easter was the biggest collaborative effort. How he sent out thank you notes to EVERYONE who helped the day after Easter. It was a freeing effort, having so many people stepping up to lead and participate.

Ben also put a focus on welcoming all new people back for the series after Easter. How he sprinkled our core values throughout the service to let people get to know us better and what our priorities are. Also don’t let the Sunday after Easter be a slow Sunday, followup with a strong series to deepen the message.

Leaders – What Do You Do Now?

As a leader you can ask yourself the following questions to reflect on your service.

Did we do everything we could to welcome new people?

Did we executed as much as we planned going into it?

If this was a person’s first time EVER, was it the best representation of who we are?

If you fall short, that’s ok! How can you do better next year?

Church Members – What Now?

How can you use your talents to be of service? A church member offered to polish the brass for example.

Look for ways to go deeper in your faith through Sermon, Study and Service in this new season.