Three Easters A Year Through Double Days
By Bill Easum

Topic: Helping your Sunday School grow.

Most worship growth comes in spurts rather than in increments. So it’s important to have two or three major pushes a year designed to grow your church forward in a significant way.

When I was pastor, I tried to plan for two or three Easters a year.   We called them “Double Days.” We would do various things to make this happen. Sometimes we would do Friends Day. Other times we would end VBS in Sunday worship by having the children sing songs they learned during VBS.

At other times we would flood various advertising media with ministry spots announcing a major interesting sermon series that caught people’s attention. One year we capitalized on the opening of our city-wide youth center where the Mayor was going to cut the ribbon and dedicate the facility to the community.

If you choose to do a Double Day you need to do several things in advance. Spend several weeks prior to the Double Day preparing your people to understand the biblical importance of sharing the Good News with their networks.

Tie all Double Days to the opening of a major four week series of messages with the first message being so interesting the title itself attracts people. During worship the week before the Double Day, give your people a slick handout to give to their friends and encourage each one of them to write down the name of two friends they are going to invite to the Double Day (do this at the end of the service).

The week before send out as many people as you can to put out door hangers announcing the Double Day. Add more hospitality people to handle the increase in people. Spend as much advertising the event as you can in whatever way works the best in your locale. Look for ways to get free advertising as well. It’s amazing what happens when a church plans for growth rather than waiting for it to happen.

From: www.churchcentral.com web site. September 2009