From Rabbits to Resurrection: Tips for Sharing Christ at Easter

Having Easter as part of the cultural landscape can be seen as both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing that we have public recognition that it is Good Friday and Easter Sunday—the most significant moments in the Christian calendar. (Christmas comes a close third.) 

However, the secular idea of Easter replaces the glorious news of Jesus' death and resurrection with more mundane things—bunnies, chocolate eggs, spring break, and flowers.

When thinking about evangelism, Christians often want to work against the grain of these secularised versions of the season. After all, the heart of Easter is about the most important themes of life—sin, death, life beyond the grave, forgiveness, new life, and so on. So powerful presentations, preaching, questionnaires, debates and the like can seem the right thing to do alongside the traditional stuff that churches do at Easter, such as a Friday Meditation on the Cross, and Sunday celebrations with an evangelistic message. 

Going with the flow

But there are also more creative ways we can do outreach that will go with the flow of secular Easter traditions but actually introduce Christ’s message back into the conversation. Easter can be a great time for developing contacts and connections in your community. The best evangelism is, after all, about long-term investment in people and relationships—not a “hit-and-run” exercise.

This is where it is important to get creative about how we use Easter traditions. Here are some examples of events or activities you might host where you could make evangelistic resources available for free as a means of introducing the true story of Easter:

• Spring cleaning: Do a “spring cleaning” exercise with church members in your community. Collect litter up and down the main street of the town or village you live in. Get some high-vis tabards made with the church name and a contact QR code on the back. One church in Northern Ireland started doing a regular litter pick-up like this—just an hour each Saturday morning—and won considerable local support and interest from people who had previously not even registered the church's existence.
• Craft evenings: Crafting is not just for kids. There’s a large section of most communities that love crafting of various kinds—sewing, quilting, knitting, model-making, hat-making, etc. An adult crafting event could be where you make an Easter bonnet, or get creative with candles, paper, collages, etc. Doing an evening where there is a range of activities like this is appealing. You can promote them to the general community on platforms such as Facebook, Meetup and Nextdoor.
• Cooking: There are traditional foods to eat at Easter from all over the world. You can find some wonderful food activities for children here. But if you have a range of people from different ethnicities in your congregation, an evening or daytime event making and sampling Easter food Ideas can be a great way to celebrate the amazing diversity in God’s creation. 
• Board games: These are wildly popular with people at large. An evening of playing a variety of board games, with an appropriate Easter-themed talk, could reach lots of people. Chapter 1 of Dream Small has some good ideas for a talk around the The Game of Life.
• Egg-hunt trails: A whole community can be engaged with an egg-hunt trail—either in the wild, in an urban setting or in a shopping mall. Shop owners are usually delighted to display a nicely designed egg poster in their windows as it brings foot traffic to their store. Participants get a sheet and have to collect the store names (1 to 10) and then receive a prize at the end—a small chocolate egg, plus a little gospel leaflet like this. Almost any easter egg hunt can be adapted this way — collecting clues to the truth of the resurrection, for example. More ideas here.
• Story trail: Similar to egg hunts, but telling the Easter story, an easter trail for families can be constructed showing the events around Easter in comparable places in your town or village. There are a number of books that tell the Easter Story, suitable for various ages. You can download for free the images of books like The Easter Fix, A Very Happy Easter and The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross. Print these images out in a large format and laminate them, and use them as the basis of an Easter Story Trail. These can work well in or outdoors, with someone on hand at each station to give an explanation and answer questions. Some churches get people to dress up and act out parts of the story at each station.
• Make a bonnet: Another craft activity. It’s a fun family activity to make hats of various kinds—lots of ideas here. It could be followed by a talk on “What hat does God wear?”. People think of God as a policeman, judge, Santa Claus (gift giver), old man (flat cap), farmer (involved with nature), etc. But he wore a “hat” at Easter that tells us who he truly is—a crown of thorns. He is the Suffering Servant who is the King of kings.
• Easter art: Many people are interested in fine art—so printing off good quality copies of famous Easter-related art (royalty free from Wikipedia) and running an exhibition in your church like “The Art of Easter” can draw in and stir questions among a very different group of people in your community. There is a lot of wonderful commentary to edit and place beside the images on this website.
• Easter quiz night: Of all the events that people run, quiz nights are often the most popular. A sparky quiz master with some quirky rounds and prizes (including, but not exclusively, evangelistic books) will always draw the crowds. 
• Spoken word and poetry evening or slam: People love reading, storytelling and sharing poems. A structured open mic storytelling evening around the theme of Easter can be appealing—particularly if it is held at a neutral venue like a pub, library or community center. The Christians present will want to include some poignant material such as can be found here. But you should also work hard to include funny, heartwarming and personal stories about Easters fondly remembered.

As with all ideas like this, you will want to be led and guided by the interests and enthusiasm of people in your congregation and community. But the most important thing to do is to try it. Some of these ideas might not work for you, but others will.