5 Easter Preparation Tips for Your Church

[Tom Pounder] Today we're going to talk about five Easter prep things that you can be doing right now for your church to make this a great experience this Easter for people coming to your church. Are you ready? Because it's time. [Announcer/Intro Voice] You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network. [Tom Pounder] Hey heroes, welcome to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. I am Tom Pounder, your host. And this is the podcast where we're bringing ministry leaders and we talk about how to do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today I'm excited to have my friend Adam McLaughlin coming on because Easter is right around the corner. But there are things that you can still be doing right now at the time that you're listening to this. that you can be doing to help make easter an amazing experience for people who come to your church probably for the very first time he shares well we actually use a blog post they wrote for churchbanners.com he shares three but we added actually two more so we have a total of five easter preparation tips that your church can be doing right now they can still do right now So I want to encourage you to listen to the tips and see how you can be making these adjustments or add on to what you're already doing for Easter. So I'm really excited to have them on the podcast. But before we get into the interview, I do want to highlight the church.digital. At the church.digital, we've got lots of different content, whether it's blog posts or whether it's podcasts or whether it's training and resources. If you go to the church.digital, check out the equipping page, the podcast page, the recent post page. You're going to get lots of great encouragement for your mental health. and also for your ministry and personal life. So I want to encourage you, go to thechurch.digital right now and get all this great information so you can be encouraged in how to do ministry more effectively today. All right, you ready to hear Adam share those five tips? Let's get an interview right now and talk to Adam McLaughlin. All right, with me right now is my friend Adam McLaughlin. Adam, how are you, man? [Adam McLaughlin] Hey, Tom, I'm doing well. Listen, I feel bad that I had to set my alarm to get up for our 10 o'clock call and I was six minutes late and you sent me the Zoom link at like 6.38 this morning. [Tom Pounder] Well, this begs the question of where in the world are you today, Adam? [Adam McLaughlin] Well, I could tell you, but then you'd want to kill me. However, while everybody else is having a snowstorm, I happen to be in Cozumel, Mexico. [Tom Pounder] You're still in Mexico? I thought you'd moved away from Mexico. [Adam McLaughlin] No, we were actually somewhere else in Mexico, and then we moved here. And now my internet's way more reliable, so we can actually do this podcast here. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, for the record, Adam and I have been trying to do this podcast for probably a few months and he's been torturing me with pictures of beautiful sunrises and beach pictures and his family. And I'm like, and they're all in shorts and all sorts of stuff. And I'm like, man, I wish I could be with Adam right now. [Adam McLaughlin] Well, Tom, I wish I could be with you, but I wish you were here with me. So I wouldn't want to come to DC in February. However, you could join me in Mexico whenever you'd like. [Tom Pounder] Yeah. Okay. That's good. I just have to update my passport. I don't think my passport is up to date. So I have to do that. Well, Adam, it's great having you back on the podcast. I love having you on it. And today we're going to talk about Easter stuff. You know, you wrote a blog post for churchbanners.com, and I'm going to include this in the links. But about Easter preparation and how that thing is how you can wow your guests, your church guests this Easter. As we jump into it a little bit, let's just talk about the importance of Easter. Why is it so important to wow your guests this Easter? [Adam McLaughlin] Well, I think Easter is an important time because people who don't usually come to church are coming to church. They're coming because mom wants them to or it's the family thing to do. When I was in church communications, we used to call them Christians, which are Christians who come for Christmas and Easter. And so you have an opportunity on Easter that you're going to probably have a larger attendance than you would any other time of the year. And that hopefully doesn't surprise anybody. And the reality is you have an opportunity while they're there with you to try and get them back. and it's easier to get somebody to come back once they've had a great experience than it is to get them to come the first time so you don't have to worry about getting a lot of these people to come the first time usually it's mom's guilt trip that's going to do the trick however you do have an opportunity now to try and get them back a second time [Tom Pounder] Well, I agree. And again, now we're still in the midst of this pandemic stuff going on. And even from here on out, people may think, well, people aren't going to be coming to Easter services as much. But the reality is they will. They will come in person for Easter services. And if not, they're going to attend online. And there's a lot of online options out there for people to attend. And so it's really important that you're. in-person experience and your digital experience are really top-notch and that you really put a lot of effort into because it may be the person's very first time experiencing church again either in person or online so you have some great points here and i just gonna i'm gonna roll through them with you and i just want you to kind of talk about them a little bit more in depth uh and how that applies again in person and in digital so the the first point you make is to have your first impressions team or your hospitality team your welcome team with an all hands on deck okay so what does it mean to have the all hands on deck stuff [Adam McLaughlin] It means that anybody who is usually on the schedule gets scheduled that day. So, you know, if you usually are doing two weeks a month, you know, maybe your greeters are two weeks on, two weeks off, then you want, okay, for Easter, we're making the exception. You're going to do a third week this month, right? So everybody who can be there is there. And the reason we want this is you're going to have more guests than probably most other weekends of the year. So you want somebody who can point people around, show them where the classrooms are, show them where the restrooms are, show them how to get to the auditorium. But not only that, you want people to feel welcome right away. You know that the percentage of guests that are going to be there is higher than the percentage of guests that would be on any other weekend. and so having extra people at the entrance to your parking lot lets people find your parking lot because people are waving and pointing maybe they're holding handheld signs that says it's great to see you maybe they're standing at the front door waving so that somebody in the parking lot knows exactly which door to get to so just imagine a guest probably isn't showing up 20 minutes early to to show up for church if they're a little bit hesitant about going to church they're probably showing up five minutes before and and probably more likely five minutes afterward And that on top of the fact that there's a larger crowd means it's going to be a little bit more difficult for them to find their way around. They might not know which door they're getting to. If they show up five minutes late, the last thing you want them to do is to have a hard time finding a parking spot and then not sure which door to be in that front door. That means they're going to be like coming into your auditorium 20 minutes into your experience. So having all hands on deck that weekend really gives you the opportunity to create a smooth. um flow for your guests so they know exactly where to go where's your parking lot entrance where do they park where's the entrance door where's your kids how did they get to the auditorium all those things rolled in having more people in place is always better than having fewer [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's a great point, Adam. And my question for you now is, would you recommend like this team maybe have the same T-shirts or would you have like lavaliers, special things to really identify people so that if someone has a question on what to do, people are easily recognizable? [Adam McLaughlin] Yeah, I think that's definitely a great idea. Now this really depends on your church's culture. So for some churches, a t-shirt that everybody in the guest services team matches, that's perfect because maybe everybody wears t-shirts to church anyway. Or if you are typically a church where most people wear suits, then a lavalier, you know, or a... a lanyard, I should say, makes way more sense, right? Because people can still dress up how they want. And sometimes people are more dressy for Easter. So then they're more hesitant to wear a t-shirt. You know, they want to dress up in their Easter best, so to speak. So maybe in that case, a lanyard makes a lot of sense. You know, in some cases, maybe the best option is a baseball cap, because if you're in the parking lot, that's the thing that's going to stand out above the height of all the cars that are parked would be a baseball cap. uh so it really depends but there is definitely some value to for two reasons number one so your guests can identify somebody who's part of your church and can give them directions but number two if somebody starts giving them directions about where to take their kid it's helpful to know that that person is actually authorized to give them directions about where to take their kid not just somebody who walked in off the street so some kind of identifier is really helpful [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. And now if we look at this from a digital perspective, you know, I think that it's awesome to have an all hands on deck to from your online team. You know, think about your chat host. If you have only one chat host per service, you know, you're going to get more during the Easter services. So have two or three chat hosts. Double up on your chat host so that you can have more people talking and engaging with people. because i remember early on in the pandemic when everybody was online we we were overwhelmed constantly with people chatting and talking and it's more than just one person can handle you need to have multiple people on there so from an online perspective oh definitely all hands on deck make sure your social media team is in place if you have a photography team or someone who takes photos get them there you want this to be the service or the services where you're capturing a lot of digital stuff and your team is all there helping out and supporting what's going on with the church as a whole. So that's awesome, Adam. Your next point that you said is really set the atmosphere in the parking lot. What do you mean there? Yeah. [Adam McLaughlin] Well, if you pull into Disney, one of the things you notice is they're playing music right away. So take this back. In psychology, we know that how you set the stage or how you set the environment continues through an experience. You know, back in the day, there used to be this thing when you would go see a play called an overture. And the overture was the orchestra would play a song to set the stage or to set the mood so that everybody was sitting down and everybody was ready and everybody was listening. So if it's a high energy overture, then when the play starts, you're getting ready to be excited about what's coming on the stage. If it's a sad overture, then you're getting your you're kind of getting in the mood for, oh, something's going to start off not so great. Right. and so your parking lot is kind of like the overture you're kind of setting the stage so find music that matches the style of your church matches the energy and the excitement that you want people to have coming into your church um you know maybe that's in in some cases that might be high energy music because you have a high energy service and a high energy experience in other cases it might be something like more like coffee shop music in the sense that you want people to come in calm relax have a great conversation not let music get in the way of that conversation but but set the atmosphere and the other thing you can do is visually there's a lot you can do in your parking lot to kind of help people understand what their experience is going to be like so realize that any guest who shows up is hesitant to some extent right at any point in time they're willing to go back to their car and leave and so what you want to do is remove the barriers to entry or remove that hesitancy as much as possible so creating a consistent experience from sound in the parking lot that continues through your foyer visuals in your parking lot maybe you have light pole banners that you're going to put up You're going to have people holding handheld signs that match your Easter design, that people are going to see in your foyer, that people are going to see as they walk into your auditorium. Or maybe your t-shirts are specific for Easter, and those colors and styles and designs match whatever they're going to see when they walk into the building. So really, unfortunately, the parking lot often gets ignored. And I know this because I've been a first-time guest at 52 churches in the last two years. COVID put a little bit of a damper on that, but you know, often the parking lot gets ignored and people try to start creating an incredible experience at the front door. And while that's great, what it does is it negates the people who pull into the parking lot, get butterflies in their stomach and decide to drive away. or people who kind of walk up to the front door and you can see them a little bit hesitant. Maybe they lean on a tree out by the front door for a little while. They're deciding if they're going to go in or not. You've missed the opportunity to create an experience for that person that encourages them to continue their experience into the foyer. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's so true. I agree with you completely because going into a parking lot for the very first time and you don't even know where to go. Like, I think we as church staffers think, oh, yeah, it's just natural. You'll know where to go. Well, no, it's not as easy as possible, especially if you have a separate door for maybe your kids ministry or your student programming. You need to have those right visuals, which again. OK, so. Well, let me hit on a digital thing and then we're going to go into your bonus one real quick because I think it ties into this. But I think from a digital perspective, you know, your service doesn't start at 8 o'clock. Your service can start at 7.55. And so creating a pre-service, if you don't have one already, is a really good thing to do because then it really enables people to get to know you and your church. And so that's something that we've been doing at my church is we have a five minute countdown leading up to it. So if someone does show up early, which again, they're not always showing up early, but if someone does show up early, they know what to do. They're acquainted with the screen and how to do that. So there's some real things digitally that you can prepare them before the service starts. And again, your chat hosts are going to be really important. Make sure your chat hosts. are on the service online well before the start of the service trying to interact and engage with people the more friendly and hospitable you can make it the better the experience that people are going to have when they when the service starts um so well let's go into this bonus section before we get to your third point but you talk about in your bonus about wow your guests with easter visuals and i think the parking lot visuals are one of that so but what do you mean by wowing them with easter visuals do they have to be something different or what are you talking about [Adam McLaughlin] Well, I think the more that we create the feeling that we're doing something intentional for Easter, the more people feel like they've shown up for a purpose, right? So let's go back to the Disney World example. If you show up to Disney World and you don't see anything that has to do with the Disney characters, it's essentially another theme park. however if they if you've shown up and they've done something specific right they cut those front hedges to look like disney characters they have statues of the disney characters now there's something specific there's a specific reason you went to that theme park but i think there's something that tells your guests that you were excited to have them you're excited to welcome them that you prepared something special for easter It's like if you're invited to somebody's house for the first time, you're just getting to know them and they say, hey, why don't you come over for dinner? And when you show up, you know, they throw a delicious pizza in the oven. You know, that's. fine and you'll enjoy their company but it's not the same as if when they called ahead to ask if you have any preferences they called ahead to ask if you have any allergies they've got a homemade meal the table's entirely set you know something about knowing that people were expecting you is really really welcoming and so i think we have to do that for our easter guests so on top of the visuals that usually create maybe that's a sermon graphic or um you know some images in your foyer do something extra for easter and and my big i'm a big proponent of an easter photo booth because everybody is usually dressed up for easter they or they have extra people there they have extra family at their church that don't usually come so they'd love to have a photo and you create a photo booth that somewhere ties in your logo and of course you know people are going to post that on their channels to promote your church on social media and it also shows that you did something extra for easter so i'm a big proponent i'm a big fan of the easter photo booth [Tom Pounder] Yeah, you and Ben Stapley, you guys love to talk about the Easter photo booth, but I think it's really important because like you said, everyone is usually dressed up a little bit nicer for Easter and parents, you know, it symbolizes the start of spring and parents want to take a family picture. So if you simply have an Easter photo booth available, that's great. And, you know, you can go really simple on that. You can just get a bench and get some nice like little shrubs that you can get from Home Depot or Lowe's. It doesn't have to be a fancy thing that you order months ahead of time. It could be something that you really put together, put a little heart into it and creative this where people want to take a picture around it. But then again, you know, they're going to share it. And I like what you said about the logo. If you include a hashtag in it, that that's awesome as well. um so i think that creating visuals like that is awesome i love all your analogies uh adam to disney i mean so you should write uh if you haven't ever written one you should do one of here's disney here's the church how can you know because you're right the disney experience is a magical experience they want to create that magical experience for you and we should be creating great experiences for people at church as well [Adam McLaughlin] okay here's one more bonus for you a quick bonus to take that disney analogy if you book a trip to disney they send you a package ahead of time with like your wristbands and all the things you're going to expect pictures of your hotel room a map to get on the train all those things what i would love to see more churches doing this year is to do a here's what to expect at easter video and put it on their social media channels 48 hours before their easter service so that people who are going to come for the first time know what the parking lot's like, they know which door to go in, they know where to take their kids, they know what they're going to see when they get into the auditorium. The familiarity will do wonders for their comfort level. [Tom Pounder] That's a really great idea. I'm going to take that right now instead of take it to my church. But you're exactly right there. I think that would alleviate a lot of stress and anxiety that families might have. I think that's a great idea, Adam. So thanks for the extra bonus one there you gave us. Okay, last one that you have highlighted is, I think this is so awesome. Hold the door for the guests as they leave. Don't kick them out, but hold the door for them. Why is that important? [Adam McLaughlin] There's so much opportunity to look at every single step of the process in somebody's visit to your church, that thinking that as soon as your service ends, that your responsibility is gone. They've still got all kinds of interactions. They're still going to go to the information center for more info. Maybe they're going to pick up a first-time visitor's gift, or maybe they are following up, you know, if your church is... says you know if you want prayer for something then you know come to the information center or or come to the front of the auditorium we'd like to pray for you that's another step their kids area that's another step we've been to kids areas we have three boys uh and my wife and i have as we travel we visit different churches and this is a lot of where i draw my experience from but we visited kids areas where the directions to get to the kids classrooms were really helpful but the directions from the kids classroom back to the parking lot were virtually non-existent right and as all the the the you know the teachers are packing up their class and the guest services people are putting away all their their things and they're heading home we're like wandering around a building where everybody looks busy and nobody looks available to help us trying to find the parking lot because you know maybe it's one of those one-way hallways where you go in one way you pick up your kid at the classroom you go out a different door and now i'm not sure where to go so it's not just about getting people in the building and getting them into your service getting them into your auditorium leave help them leave and be excited to come back it's one last opportunity if you hold the door for them and say see you next week that that could be the tip off they need to think you know what i am going to come back next week or part way through the week to remember you know what i got invited back i should go back or i'm going to go back um and to just say like okay service is over see you next week you're leaving all kinds of what i would call in marketing touch points or opportunities to continue to make the impact you've already made you've left all that on the table if you just walk away when service ends [Tom Pounder] What I love about your points here, Adam, are that it's not rocket science, but they make a huge difference and a huge impact that we don't normally think about. We've been so set in our ways about how we're doing things that we don't normally think about it this way, but... we really do have to really fully embrace what a first timer is going to look like because they're most likely to come to this service. And so thinking through in-person, thinking through digitally, what can you do to just make that nice extra touch that's going to make all the difference to say, I want to come back. You know, I've heard different stats throughout about how people make their decision about whether or not they want to come back within the first few minutes. And so if you're starting at the parking lot, they may have already decided this is a great church even before they get into your building. And so I think that really makes a huge difference and can really help people get back in the swing of, hey, I need to go back to church, you know? [Adam McLaughlin] Yeah, and what's important to, I think it's Greg Atkinson who has the statistic that within the first seven minutes of driving onto your parking lot, people are deciding if they're coming back. I don't think they've decided. I think that's still all up for grabs, but they're starting to decide, right? And it's easier to create a yes, yes, yes, yes. yes yes yes environment from the beginning then a no no no no no and somehow in the middle switch it to a yes yes yes yes yes it's not impossible but uh it is important yeah [Tom Pounder] Well, Adam, this is awesome. I really appreciate this because, again, Easter is fast approaching. And again, it's not like people have to scrap their plans right now and what they're already doing. They can really implement a lot of the stuff that you just highlighted, these five points, and really make it that extra touch point that's going to create a cool opportunity for them this Easter and for you. I mean, so I think this could be really great. As we wrap up, any final thoughts about Easter or anything coming up? [Adam McLaughlin] Well, I think the most important thing, here we go, Tom, hop it on my soapbox. Excuse me. most important thing is that through every piece of communication you're driving home the culture of your church and so just because some other church did something and you thought it was cool doesn't mean it's a match for your church now just because some other church did something and you think it's cool and you think it could work customize it so it feels like your church you know if your church is the dress-up church where everybody dresses in suits all the time Don't do T-shirts for your volunteers just for Easter, right? You know, we already talked about that example. If your church is the high energy church, don't do coffee shop music in your parking lot. If your church is the traditional church, don't do high energy music in your parking lot. That's not going to match what people experience when they come in. So in my mind, consistency builds trust. And the way to create consistency is to know who you're about and drive every decision through understanding your church's culture, who you're about, and how you want to make a difference in your community. [Tom Pounder] That's great. That's a great wrap-up point right there. I think you're 100% right on. It has to match your culture. Don't go out of that and just embrace your culture, no matter what that is. So embrace it. So Adam, as always, it's great talking to you. Where can people find you? Again, I know you're writing for churchbanners.com stuff, and I know you got other things. So share where people can connect with you. [Adam McLaughlin] Well, my church communications blog is adammclaughlin.net, silver medal of domain names right there. But I love hanging out on Twitter. So if anybody wants to chat with me, come find me, Adam underscore McLaughlin on Twitter. And McLaughlin's not the easiest to spell. So just go look for Tom Pounder and then look at his friends list and I'm there. [Tom Pounder] i i'll make it easier for them you know um and i'll just include all your links in the show notes so that perfect connect with you uh you've got great stuff um you're doing awesome i love talking with you so adam thanks so much for being with me today thanks for having me tom All right, so what did you think? What did you think about what Adam had to share? What point that he made or tip that he suggested speaks to you most right now? I would love for you to share that. Definitely put it in the comment section below or hit me up on Twitter, at TAPounder. I would love to carry this conversation on a little bit more and hear what your thoughts are and what you're also doing to prepare for Easter, make it a great experience for the people coming to your church, people who are already coming to your church but also people who are new coming to your church this Easter. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, so definitely comment on it or hit me up on Twitter. All right, here is where that wraps it up for another episode of the Church Digital Psychic Podcast. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go and subscribe to it. It's on YouTube. It's on the Digital Bootcamp Facebook group. It's at the Church Digital. It's at... iTunes, and Spotify. Go find it. Click on the links and subscribe to it because you want to get these every single week. We've got lots of great content coming out every single week and lots of great interviews and topics that we discuss with people who are in the trenches doing ministry right now and the people that we can really learn from. So go subscribe to it right now, or you can also, again, go to thechurch.digital today. All right, here is where I hope you have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week. Until next time, have a great one.