Equipping Members to Share Your Church This Easter

When you combine people seeking for a church at Easter with the power of your members sharing your church, this time of year can have a great impact for your congregation and God’s Kingdom. We all know the stats. Easter is a time of year when people are more receptive to going to church. And we also know the number one way people find a church is through a personal invite. So as Easter is quickly approaching, it’s time to make sure you’re equipping your members with ways to share your church.  Here are some quick ideas.

• Make resources available online. Maybe it’s an invite card, a poster or something else that members in your church can print or send to their friends as a way to let them know about your Easter events. The Chapel in Grayslake, Illinois, is always great about doing this. For Easter this year, there’s a poster people can print out to hang at their office, local coffee shop or the like.
• Make Easter easy to share on social media. Are you posting things to Facebook about Easter weekend? Encourage members to use the share feature to put that information into their own News Feed. If there’s a promotional video or testimonial you’re showing during a service, put it on YouTube so members can share the link or post it to their social media accounts. Whatever it is, make it easy to share.  It’s simple for members to post this stuff to their feeds. It’s less confrontational and awkward than some other invite tools. It lets them talk about your church in their normal streams of communicating with friends.
• Use your online sites as a hub for information. Try centralizing all of your Easter weekend information in one place. That way it’s easy for members to share a link or point people to one place to learn about all that’s going on. Include the basics, like service times, but go further to explain what the experience would be like.  If there are annual traditions, like a kids event, show pictures from the year before. Like anything for visitors, give a realistic impression of who you are and what they can expect.
• Give good insight to what the Easter weekend services will really be like. Some church members can be a little nervous to invite someone to church because of fear that the service will be something out of the normal. After all, Easter can be a time where your services are a little different than normal.  Let your members know what will be happening. Communicate what the experience will be like. Be specific. That way they know what to expect and aren’t surprised or embarrassed when their friend is sitting right next to them in the service.
• Equip members with language they can use with friends. For some people in your church, they’re just not sure how to engage in a conversation with a friend about church.  It can be weird. Give them some conversation starters. Equip them with language about Easter and your vision as a church so they can be more comfortable in sharing your church with a friend. Talking about this with your congregation can be a great complement to the resources you provide for them online.

Those are just a few ideas. How are you equipping members to share your church this Easter?