The Monday After Easter
James White
This is a blog with a very specific audience. I know it may exclude some of you, but it may be healthy for you to eavesdrop.
This is for all the church planters and their volunteers on post-Easter Monday, struggling to make it from week-to-week, as well as the leaders and members of established churches which are anything but "mega" – well below the 200 threshold in terms of average attendance.
I don't know how Easter Sunday went for you, but I have a hunch.
It was bigger than normal, but less than breakthrough. It was good, but not great. Your attendance was large, but not staggering; worth being happy about, but not writing home about. You are grateful to God, but now that Easter is over, there's a bit of a letdown. You wanted so much more.
It was, in the end, a typical Easter Sunday.
And you are normal.
When you lead a church, you can't help but dream, and dream big. I think that's one of the marks of a leader. But for most, it's not long before the dream comes face to face with reality.
When I planted Meck, I just knew the mailer I sent out (we started churches with mailers in those days) would break every record of response, and that we would be a church in the hundreds, if not already approaching a thousand, in a matter of weeks or months.
Willow Creek, eat our dust. Saddleback? Come to our conference.
The reality was starting in a Hilton hotel in the midst of a tropical storm with 112 dripping wet people, and by the third weekend – through the strength of my preaching – cutting that sucker in half to a mere 56.
Actually, not even 56, because our total attendance was 56. This means there were fifteen or twenty kids, so maybe thirty or so people actually sitting in the auditorium.