Ladies and gentlemen of church tech, you’ve got just under four weeks till Easter.
You have time to get things done. All is not lost!
Now, take a deep breath. I don’t want to add to your stress, but I’d like to ask a few question to help you think through your process.
Social Media
1. Have you updated your page and group images? I always change our cover photos, and sometimes, I change the Page’s avatar.
2. Have you given your people some images or pre-written phrases to share on social media as a way of inviting their friends to your Easter services/activities? In the past, I’ve created a page on our website with media for our people to use, but sometimes, it’s just easy to ask them to share what our page posts or ask them to change their avatar.
3. Do you have any blog posts or social media posts scheduled to go up on/during/after Easter? For three years straight, I’ve posted a Good Friday (contemplative and mournful) and a Monday-After (upbeat and victorious) playlist on our church site. I also try to schedule Scripture shares that align with the Easter timeline, i.e. the Last Supper on Thursday, the Crucifixion on Friday, the Resurrection on Sunday, etc.
Church Building
1. Have you looked critically at your building recently? One of the best things you can do for your church for Easter is to a walk around and look at things through the eyes of someone who doesn’t know or love your church, yet. You’ll be surprised at some of the things you’ve grown accustomed to. My pastor is great at this. On the marker board in our office is a list of things that he identified three months ago that need to be fixed. Let me rephrase that: there’s the remainder of a list of things. You see, once we identified the issues, we’ve been chipping away.
2. Are you physically prepared for the crowds that you’re hoping show up? Make sure you’ve got extra bulletins/newsletters, extra visitor packs, and so. Check the janitor’s closet. Do you have enough paper towels and toilet paper? Do you know where the plunger is? Seriously. If that’s going to be an issue one day out of the year, it’ll be Easter. At our information booth, we give our peppermints, and so for Easter, I have to make sure we’ve got plenty of extra. At our coffee and donut bar, we have double what we usually have. If you want a crowd, prepare for one.
Church Tech
1. Is your equipment all operational? We have two speakers under our balcony and one in our main array that blew. We fixed the driver in the main array speaker and are contracting with a local company to install new under balcony speakers. It’s stuff we would do anyway but Easter makes for a good deadline.
2. What music/visuals are you presenting to your guests? About a month ago, I realized how old our pre-service playlists were. I’ve since added a few new songs and taken out the ones that sound the oldest. Remember, your guests might not much Christian music and probably won’t know which ones are new or old, but they’ll be able to tell which songs sound dated by their style. And then visuals–if you do announcement slides, make sure you’ve got some fresh stock photos, backgrounds, etc. We had a “Silence you phone slide” for years. We eventually deleted it, and part of why we deleted was the fact that the stock photo was of an iPhone 4, and it was 2015.
That’s it for now. I can hear your pulse getting quicker and can see your pupils dilate with anxiety. Take a break, and I’ll be back with more questions in a few days, focusing on your teams. Until then, if you think of any questions that we should have asked, please add them below!
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