Thursday, March 27, 2008

Easter Church Launch

If you are going to launch a church at Easter this was the year to do it with Easter so early. However, I would advise against launching on Easter most years despite that being the "traditional" church planting wisdom and what much of the older literature says to do. Here are the reasons:

1. Most people, even if they are unchurched, want to go to a dress up, wear your bonnet, dress your little daughter in an Easter dress kind of traditional church- not a new church meeting in a school or movie theater. Easter is still a special day even for those who have not found their way back to God.

2. In most years, and in most places, the Sunday after Easter is the second worst Sunday of the year after the Sunday after Christmas. Kids are on spring break and families are travelling and recovering from the holiday. There will be letdown no matter how well your launch goes. It will be doubled if you have an absolutely awful second Sunday.

3. Depending on when Easter falls you do not have much time to begin building and keeping momentum before summer comes. The giant sucking sound is summer taking all your people away. You may or may not recover.

Some other thoughts:
God determines when you launch your church- listen to him! However, he does call you to be wise as the serpent in dealing the serpent.

I have found, in our mission field, the best time to launch is October or in the second half of January or first half of February to avoid what is above. At New Season we ended up launching the Sunday after Labor Day (another popular launch date) but I have found that persons still are not back out of the summer rhythms until October when the weather is colder.

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