Lord knows the week of Easter can exist as a stressful, challenging, frustrating, adrenaline-laced time for most pastors. It continues to surprise me how much administrative work resurrection creates for the local church pastor. While Holy Week can generally be busy for the pastor, the workload can be particularly challenging for church planters, given that they often work with smaller teams, less money, and have more relationships to manage to get all the preparations done.
What I Remember About Our Church’s First Easter
I recall our first Easter weekend as a church plant six years ago. There was great excitement in the air. We nervously prepared our worship space with tables and candles where we would share a giant meal with our neighbors, friends, and family members. We left no expense—everything a meal needed, we got. I think we spent more on that Easter meal than we did overseas missions in that first year. Tim and Sara—two of our celebrated church chefs—prepared the most delightful eggs benedict thinkable to the mind. Our worship team prepared over and over and over again a series of songs that were new to our church. Finally, my wife set up the most epic Easter egg hunt in our front yard with two living rabbits that doubled as Easter mascots.
And I prepared the sermon about resurrection.
On Monday, I was absolutely exhausted. That is what I remember the most.
Easter took it out of me. In the midst of all the exhaustion, I am proud to report that the price of our work harvested some great lessons. I took notes that first year. This is what I told myself to remember to share with other church planters. These are three tips for a church planters first Easter gathering.
Three Big Ideas to Remember on Your First Easter
First, eat together.
We ate together this first year. Eggs benedict. I love eggs benedict the way a rabbit loves carrots—I feel a primal draw to them in the core of my bones. The food was good, but the conversation was super awkward. All of these people didn’t know each other. But oddly, in the awkwardness, there was a holiness.
While I’m generally a major proponent of the ministry of food (in, and, outside the church), I have come to believe that Easter affords a local church body the chance to pull out the tablecloths, plates, and utensils, and set the table for the church to eat together. This year proved it to me.
Neighbors love being fed. They remember it. I’m not sure they remember one other iota other than the fact that they ate off our tables, the food was descent, and they didn’t have to do dishes. Resurrection, for our neighbors, was a free meal.
Of course, it should be said, eating around Easter time is nothing new. Just before dying, Jesus sat with his disciples and shared a “last supper,” as it has come to be known. There, Jesus broke bread, gave thanks, and ate a final meal before dying to save the world. His eating didn’t end at his death—which is one of my favorite details of the resurrection narrative. Jesus continues to eat with his disciples.
In Luke 24, Jesus walks anonymously besides to disciples as they leave Jerusalem. Unaware that it is Jesus, they invite him in. After “breaking bread” again, their “eyes are opened” and they see it was Jesus. Again, Jesus eating.
Then, finally, John 21 tells how the disciples are all hanging out together in boat fishing. Jesus has already resurrected. And in his resurrection life, Jesus stands by the shore and calls out to his disciples. They hear him, come to shore with their newly caught fish, only to find that Jesus has already prepared a meal.
The fact is astounding: post-resurrection Jesus does a lot of eating.
He didn’t stop eating at his death. And the lesson for the church is this—he was not using hyperbole when he said “I stand at the door and know; whoever lets me in I will dine with.” (Rev. 3:20) As I recount in my new book A Glorious Dark, Jesus doesn’t just do “last supper,” Jesus also does “first breakfast.” He keeps eating with his people. And nothing suggests he has ever stopped.
Take this Easter as a gift from God to force the church to eat together. Break bread. Pass the salt. Let it be awkward. And do your neighbors dishes. And I bet you just about anything that if he is invited, Jesus will show up the way he did long ago.
Second, your sermon is important, but, not ultimate.
A week out, and I don’t even remember what I really talked about. It is a blur. Admittedly, church planters have a passion in their guts. Passion is required to start something new. And this passion can lead the church planter to prepare their best sermon ever for their first ever Easter thinking that it will draw the masses.
Again: I can’t remember what I preached a week ago. (Note from current day: I don’t remember what I preached the Easter after that. I don’t remember last Easter—other than to say I’m sure, generally speaking, I covered the topic of Jesus’ resurrection.) Easter isn’t about a sermon. Jesus won’t come out of the grave any more because our sermons were more finely crafted and to the point. Just talk about resurrection. And how Jesus resurrection has completely changed everything about your life.
The heavy lifting has already been done. I think preaching resurrection is a lot like the resurrected Jesus eating with his disciples by the Sea of Galilee. They bring all their fish they had caught. And like those first disciples, we bring our gifts, our work, and our efforts—our fish—to Jesus this Easter. For me, my little fish are my preaching abilities. Yet in the midst of bringing to Jesus our best (which we should), we must humbly recognize that Jesus has already prepared the meal that will truly satisfy.
Where did Jesus get the fish and bread? I don’t know. But clearly he must have gone on before the disciples to procure a few little fish and a few loaves of bread. Church planter: Jesus has gone far before you. Bring your fish; just remember that he brought his before you did.
Third—and this may be the hardest—laugh.
Laugh a lot. Laugh at yourself. Laugh at the church. Laugh at the suits people wear once a year to church. But more than anything, laugh at what you are proclaiming.
To this day, there’s a widely practiced tradition among Russian Orthodox churches whereby they’ll begin Easter morning services by going in a circle and telling a bunch of jokes—knock-knock jokes, priest-enters-a-bar jokes, even risqué jokes. This Easter joke tradition is a small attempt to retrieve what the emotions of that first Easter would have felt like: how completely and utterly comical it is that a person could actually rise from the grave and that a woman would be the one to instruct a bunch of dudes about the resurrection.
Easter is almost hilarious. I’ve often thought about the crazy-seeming things people in other religions believe. But, candidly, none of those things tops the fact that we gather once a year to tell ourselves that there was a first century peasant named Jesus—whom we believe was God—who was killed. Then, three days later came out of the grave.
That trumps them all. Scientology has some weird stuff; but nothing is as crazy sounding as the idea of resurrection.
But it is all we have going for us.
Listen, as a church plant, your first Easter Sunday will be riddled with mistakes. You will blow this transition, that song, some point in your sermon. And some take themselves so serious to get done, go home, punch their pillow, and live in guilt that it wasn’t perfect. But don’t do that.
Jesus is perfect, not our church gatherings about him.
Monday will feel challenging. You will replay in your mind all the things you should have done differently, how things could have gone smoother. Give yourself a break. Drink a glass of wine. Go on a hike. Drink an extra diet Pepsi. Your performance, dare I say, isn’t the main story of Easter.
If Jesus is resurrected, it is proclaimed, and someone else heard about it—that is a victory.
I almost want to say build in some mistake-making into your Easter gathering. Let it be awkward. Let it be weird. Let the transitions not go as well as they want. Yes, do your best to lead well and have things to plan. But don’t beat yourself up about it. You aren’t perfect. You never will be. Nor will your church services. Think of it this way: if things go perfect this year, every year from here on our will be down-hill.
Resurrection is so comical, insane-sounding. But it undermines the very nature of Jesus’ resurrection to think that the only way God can work through your church plant is conditioned upon whether your church services go off without a hitch. Don’t preach the perfect sermon. Don’t have the best songs. Don’t have the slickest service. Why? Those aren’t what we are celebrating this Easter.
Jesus is risen. Be at peace.
“Learn more at The Praxis Gathering!”
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