Why we’re thinking big for our Easter outreach

Big seasons like Easter provide the perfect opportunity for MiTs to lead and learn. Here, Kevin Kirkland shares about Easter as a trainee minister at Rugby Elim

At one of our leadership retreats we reflected that while Easter is obviously a big event in our church, we probably underplay it. That led to us deciding we’d like Easter to have even greater engagement with our community.

From that we came up with some exciting ideas, and as MiT I’ve been involved with preparation and helping my lead pastor Jon Skelton and the team to put the programme together.

We don’t usually put a lot of weight on Lent and typically leave people to decide for themselves if they want to do anything for it, but last year we introduced our “40 days of kindness” initiative. We’ve been encouraging the congregation to consider how we can have an impact on others’ lives, played out practically by intentional acts of kindness every day during Lent.

For the Easter weekend itself we normally have a Good Friday service, which is reflective and intimate, then an Easter Sunday service. For the past few years we’ve coupled that Sunday service with baptisms and created a community day around it. Jon and I split this between us and take responsibility for planning, leading and preaching.

Key events like Easter are ideal for our MiT portfolios. They’re a chance to write up anything we’ve learned, any experience that’s come out of it, anything we could improve on and anything we felt God was saying to us, all of which I’ll discuss with Jon as my supervisor.

On one occasion, we’d planned for baptisms in the service but felt it was right to open this up and invite people to follow God’s command to be baptised. What followed was a significant moment. The Holy Spirit led us in a powerful way that day and it was an incredible time.

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.