Every pastor I know gets a little depressed (or a lot depressed) on the days following Easter. It’s natural. Easter is our Super Bowl. We pour our lives into preaching, touching and responding to people, surviving the week on less sleep and more adrenaline than we should. Easter comes and attendance peaks. Then it falls again. Hopefully not to its old level, but we were secretly hoping that ALL our guests would return. When they don’t, well, we’re human, and we get disappointed.
How do you resurrect yourself up from the Post-Easter Blues?
There are a number of ways you might try. Here’s one I don’t suggest: Take a Vacation
Some pastors plan a vacation for the week after Easter. Why not? We’ve worked hard, we’ve earned it. – And if we’re out of town, we won’t have to see the inevitable empty seats the following Sunday.
The problem with is, all our volunteers are exhausted too. If they follow our example, no one will be around the following weekend, and whatever inertia was generated by a great Easter experience will lost by the abdication of the leader at the critical moment.
The Critical Moment for Leadership
The most critical time for leadership isn’t on the mountaintop, it’s in the valley. A leader’s finest moments come when the troops are down, not up. Picture Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings when the hordes of Mordor are surrounding his men. He shouts, “Someday the strength of men may fail, but it is not this day!” Or Coach Boone in Remember the Titans, when the boys are being ripped apart by racial tension. He leads them on a pre-dawn run through Gettysburg. Great leaders rise up when momentum is waning. For that reason, the Sunday after Easter may be the most important day of the year for the pastor to preach a great sermon.
A second approach to your post-Easter discouragement is to think rationally about what’s happened. (1) You are tired because you worked hard. This is how life works. And (2) attendance will be down because your once-a-year attenders all showed up for Easter. They won’t be back next weekend. Nor will your once-a-month, twice-a-month, or twice-a-year attenders. They haven’t left you; they’re just following their normal patterns.
Don’t allow others’ lukewarm attitudes to quench your fire for God. Instead, leverage the pain you feel to motivate a solution. Thinking rationally, what would it take to inspire those people to return the following Sunday?
Here are a few suggestions:
1. Get excited.
You’ve heard the adage, “The speed of the leader, the speed of the team.” If you are not excited about next weekend, nobody else will be either. But if you are over-the-top energized about what’s coming, your excitement will infect others. So, what type of sermon series would really excite you? Better, what type of series would excite you and the people you’re trying to get to return?
2. Launch a Great, Relevant Series
Almost everyone wants help with their family or marriage. Those two subjects are a universal draw. Another relevant topic is purpose. Rick Warren sold more books with this subject than any piece of literature short of the Bible. A matter that’s on everyone’s mind these days is The End Times. With turbulence in the Middle East and earthquakes in the Pacific Rim, everyone wants to know if we’re approaching the end of the world.
As you advertise the series, generate a sense of urgency by impressing on everyone how relevant/important/life-changing the next Sunday’s message will be. If this feels like manipulation to you, find a different topic or rewrite your opening message. The Bible contains the most relevant/important/life-changing material in all of history. Use it that way.
3. Offer an Incentive to Return
This year we decided to get creative about motivating our newcomers to return. Some might question this concept, but God motives us to get out of bed every day with the offer of sunlight and food and meaningful labor. Esther motivated Xerxes to return the following evening by offering a banquet. Most of what we do in life is because of some sort of incentive.
For years New Song has offered a free lunch to newcomers on the Sunday following Easter. This year we’re letting them know that if they fill out their Connection Card, we’ll mail them a ticket which could win them an iPad if they’re present at the lunch. Will it bring them back? We’ll find out soon.
4. Create a Follow-Up Event
Two weeks after Easter we’re offering additional incentives to return. We’re holding a special Family Experience for parents and kids. We’re starting Dave Ramsay’s Financial Peace University. We’re launching a Date-Night Marriage Experience. And, we’ll be using my book Future History (http://www.pastormentor.com/html/future_history__book.html) for a study of the end times. You may already have similar events coming up that just need a little advertising. If not, I’m guessing you can generate one or two fairly quickly.
Solutions like these will diminish the post-Easter attendance slump, but let’s face it: no matter what the attendance, you’re still going to be tired. How do you fight the desire to curl up in a ball from sheer exhaustion?
To a certain extent, you don’t. The Sabbath was made for man, and unless you put your pants on differently than the rest of us, you will need to rest. I plan to get a little extra sleep after Easter, but from experience I know that sleep alone does not refresh my soul. So years ago I looked at the life of Elijah to find out how to cure physical and spiritual exhaustion. What I found has helped me ever since.
Three Ways to Speed Recovery from Easter
After climbing Mt. Carmel, Elijah prayed down fire from heaven, executed hundreds of false prophets, prayed again until rain fell, then outran a chariot before taking a forty-day walk. Even with the eleven services we’ll be doing this year, my spiritual and physical workload doesn’t come close to matching Elijah’s. If he could recover from his massive exertion, I can too.
What did Elijah do to recover? Well, first, he slept. That’s on my checklist. Then, three things happened to him that enabled him to continue in ministry.
Elijah had a thing about mountains. After expending energy on Mt. Carmel, he recovered energy on Mt. Horeb.
1. Expose Yourself to God’s Power
While Elijah is standing on the mountain, God sends a wind, an earthquake, and a firestorm to rouse him. The Prophet may have been drowsy, but those forces roused him quickly!
In what ways to you experience God’s power?
I get energized by listening to Christian leaders teach on vision and leadership. I’ve never done drugs, but for me, listening to Bill Hybels speak on leadership feels a lot like what I imagine to be a drug-induced high. Bill’s opening talks at the Leadership Summit remind me of why I’m on this planet and why I signed up to plant a church. So every year I buy the Summit DVDs. Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel have a similar effect on me, so I buy the Catalyst DVDs too.
On Monday and Tuesday after Easter, I’ll watch a few of those messages. And my sense of purpose, hope and energy will elevate.
2. Expose Yourself to God’s Whisper
After his wind, earthquake and fire, Elijah experienced the still small voice of God. The Lord whispered to him, “What are you doing here Elijah?” which initiated an intimate conversation.
I have a chair I love to reflect in. After watching a leadership message, I’ll meet with God in that chair, where more often than not, the Lord brings me to a place of green pastures and restores my soul.
3. Expose Yourself to God’s New Directions
After the whisper, God gave Elijah a new assignment. For three years the Prophet had been focusing on one event: the defeat of Baal worship. Part of his depression came from having no more big event to look forward to.
Pastor, you’re a leader, and leaders need directives and directions on ministries to launch, people to pour into and new hills-to-take. Once the Easter challenge is behind you, listen to God for His next assignment – and don’t settle for something like taking up tennis, or joining a bird-watching society. Listen for how He wants you to build His Kingdom, and then gear up and got after it as He leads. For me, that means sitting in my chair with a journal in my hand, saying, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
These three steps (exposure to God’s power, God’s whisper, and God’s new direction) may look different for you than they do for me. But they restored Elijah to ministry and I believe they will help speed your recover too. We are in this contest for life, so let’s run with endurance the race marked out for us!
Great Stuff Hal! I remember you sharing this idea with me several years back...it really challenged my thinking and helped me make some adjustments in how I see the natural cycles of peaks and valleys in ministry momentum - INCLUDING Post-Easter. You're right on!
Posted by: Mike Fleischmann | May 07, 2011 at 03:11 PM