The RESURRECTION

At Easter, many churches scramble to welcome newcomers and nominal worshippers

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/DUSTY HIGGINS
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/DUSTY HIGGINS

For many churches, Easter Sunday requires an intricate balance between logistics and liturgy. Directing traffic in the parking lot, welcoming newcomers and adding extra services to make sure everyone has a seat, all while keeping the focus on the Gospel can be a daunting task.

At Central United Methodist Church in downtown Fayetteville, they’ll be utilizing a shuttle bus to help alleviate the shortage of parking. The Rev.

Steve Pulliam, senior associate pastor, said the shuttle will run from the Washington County Courthouse parking deck to the church continuously from well before the first service to the last.

The church has also added two services for Easter, up from the regular four. Two services are offered each at 8:30, 9:45 and 11 a.m., one traditional and one contemporary. But simply adding extra services isn’t enough because that middle service is the most popular and always draws the biggest crowd.

“They like it,” Pulliam said.

“It’s not too early and not too late.”

To ensure that there is plenty of space for visitors, Pulliam said regular worshippers have been encouraged to attend the early services. Even with the crowd dispersed among the six services, the timing has to be right to get one group out and another group in.

“You’ve got to be done in time not just so they’ll exit the building but to get more cars in the deck and in the lots,” Pulliam said. “For people coming we don’t want them to say, ‘There’s not room for me to be here.

Let’s just not go.’”

At Grace Point Church in Bentonville, the church team begins planning for the big day months in advance, what the Rev. Mike McDaniel calls “big picture” planning.

“We start getting into the nitty gritty three months out,” he said.

This year, the church has added an extra service and for the staff Sunday is an “all hands on deck” kind of day.

“We don’t want one service to be any less than another,” McDaniel said.

The newly expanded parking lot will help ease congestion and like at Central, some worshippers have volunteered to move from their normal time slot to make room for guests.

“I think any church should feel a great sense of urgency around the day, the importance of the message and around the opportunities,” McDaniel said.

Those opportunities are to introduce people to the Christian faith or motivate nominal Christians to get more deeply involved.

“Hopefully on that day some notional Christian who basically believes in the idea of Christianity but hasn’t interfaced with the faith will take a step forward,” he said.

Cross Church, a multi-site church based in Springdale, will have 15 Easter services in five locations this year, including at the new location in Neosho, Mo. Planning for so many services at multiple sites is a highly organized task each week but those plans are increased for Easter, said Andy Wilson, executive leader of ministry and operations.

The First Impressions team is in charge of logistics and is led by a minister at each campus who gets help from a slew of volunteers who perform such tasks as greeting visitors and shuttling worshippers from the parking lot to the door.

“We have a detailed plan every weekend,” Wilson said. “We rehearse, we train and prepare. With this weekend we’ve raised all that. We’re looking forward to it and anticipate we’ll have a lot of guests.”

Last year about 16,000 people attended Easter services and Wilson said he expects more this year with the addition of the new campus.

He said planning is essential.

“It’s critical because when people come in, we want them to feel welcome and have a great experience from the time they step out of the car,” he said. “Our goal every day is to share the Gospel and have people develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If that happens, we’ll feel really good about it.”

At Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, no extra services are planned but Mark Carter, pastor of business administration, said the church’s two services are usually packed on Easter. He said each week the church team puts an emphasis on hospitality so no additional plans are necessarily for Easter. The church’s weekly parking lot shuttles will also be running.

“We hope we have the same perspective regardless of whether it’s Easter,” Carter said. “Knowing this particular Sunday is going to be an extraordinary one, what we want to do is portray the true us. At the same time you are definitely heightened to the possibility there will be folks there for the first time.”

Carter said the goal every Sunday is for visitors to see friendly faces and know they are truly welcomed. Ultimately, the goal is to exalt Christ, Carter said.

“Every time we get together for worship we hope the name of Jesus is lifted high,” he said. “… We love to see people come to Christ.”

Fellowship Bible Church in Rogers will have 11 services in four locations throughout the church campus. A sunrise service will be outside, four services will be in the worship center, three in the family center and three in the student center. Dwight Mix, connections director, said about 15 volunteers will be directing traffic throughout the morning.

“We have 3,000 parking spaces, with two sides - east and west,” Mix said.

Worshippers attending specific services will be directed to one side or the other to help facilitate the flow of traffic.

“It will be busy,” Mix said. But with years of practice he anticipates the morning will go smoothly.

“We try to minimize the frustration so we are not distracting from why they are here,” he said.

For Pulliam at Central United Methodist, making sure worshippers have a good experience all around on Sunday is key. But the most important thing is to keep the focus on Christ.

“I think the big thing is, Easter will be a success if people really have an experience with God through worship,” he said. “We’re trying to be a conduit in helping people experience God and experience the story of the Resurrection. The follow-up is people come here and it’s maybe their first or second time and they want to keep coming back because they want to know more of the story and more about this God who raised his son from the dead.”

Religion, Pages 12 on 04/19/2014

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