Yesterday, April 12, 2009, was Easter.  It was a good day.  As a staff member at a church, Easter is far from a day off!  We had morning service and then our family spent time w/ another great family in the church, and then back to church.  I had the honor of preaching last night.  I guess it’s no surprise that Easter evening service is not going to set any attendance records, but it was a good time, and the Lord helped me speak.

The lesson learned yesterday, for me, is that a church should never miss an opportunity to invite the community in… especially on a day like Easter.  We have a great Pastor and staff, and service yesterday was powerful, w/ video, music and speaking intertwined, my only nagging feeling is that we didn’t make a push for visitors on Easter.

We have glossy cards out right now in circulation w/ our church folks and ads running in local magazines for our “Family 911″ series in May, and I think that’s going to be great, I just think we might have missed it a bit on Easter.  It’s the most highly attended service/services of the year, and people are ready to be invited, people are feeling guilty about skipping the last 22 Sundays in a row, I mean, people are READY to get dressed up and come to church on Easter!

We had a great turnout, and 7 folks made decisions to follow Christ (Praise the Lord), I just left feeling like we could have reached more and touched more lives.  This is one of those feelings that will be a reminder to me.  I’m in student ministry and this reminds me that the end of school, the beginning of school, spring break, Christmas, these are all opportunities to blow it up and invite students in to a night of music, message and connection.

On a side note… yesterday, on Twitter, I posted, “Hey Satan – Boom, you’re roasted – Jesus is alive!”  If you don’t follow The Office, that makes no sense… I crack myself up, though.

- Charles