With Easter Sunday right around the corner, pastors putting their heads together to create the best experience for their congregations. Extra weight is added to the equation when considering the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, causing churches to go digital. This begs the question: what should your church do for Easter during COVID-19?

First off, this is a fantastic opportunity for you to stress the fact that we serve a powerful God during this time. Utilize this moment in history to increase the faith of your congregation. Take the time to pastor your people with a shepherding mentality.

Secondly, we believe that just because you cannot meet in person, does not mean you cannot engage in meaningful Easter activities.

We asked a large number of pastors what they are doing for Easter during COVID-19. Here are their responses:

1. We are porch delivering board games to everyone who registers to our Easter site, then taking their information and creating a new database for people to invite when we meet live again as well as inviting them to join us digitally.
2. IDEA: Write your Favorite Bible verse inspiring HOPE on your car’s back windshield and share your picture online. These were the exact instructions from one church. Their goal: “Spread the hope of Easter for the month of April and encourage others.”
   Their instructions:
   1) Purchase some glass chalk markers (Walmart , Amazon, Target pick-up).
   2) Choose a portion of your favorite Bible verse inspiring HOPE.
   3) Write your verse & draw this symbol on the back windshield of your car.
   (Go the extra mile & put the #hashtag on there too!)
   4) Take a Family Photo with your verse (or just the verse itself).
   5) Post your PICTURE on social Media with #RealHopeLives and TAG 3 friends encouraging them to do the same thing. Social Media not your thing? Just park your car in your driveway. Done.
   Let’s make the TRUE Hope of Easter go viral this year. Pun intended.

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3. We will have a “Drive-In” Sunrise Service around a hill with three crosses that we have built behind our church.
4. All I want to do is go to church and in for Easter.
5. We are doing online services. A live streamed Good Friday service jointly with a sister church. A simple readers theater with congregational singing. Easter Sunday AM will be pre-recorded and will include a segment for children, a worship team leading singing, a simple readers’ theater with each participant recording from home, a recorded zoom meeting response of “He is Risen Indeed,” another member leading in prayer from his home, and an Easter message by me.
6. We are trying to do an Easter Sunday parade through neighborhoods proclaiming he has risen from our cars
7. We are doing a drive through family communion service. We have the individual sealed communion elements and will have them set up to hand to the vehicles as they come in, in bags with the amount needed for the occupants of the car. They will drive underneath the awning where we have worship music and the ministry team will walk them through and encourage and pray for them as they celebrate Easter as a family but also with the church. Allows us to also take offering if needed.
8. On Good Friday, we will be hosting a Good Friday service on zoom. Our ministers are going forth presenting on the 7 last sayings. Our members will be instructed to prepare communion in their homes, and we will also partake in communion during this service.
9. On Saturday the day before Easter we will be hosting a trunk & treat where we will load our trunks up and allow our kids to fill their baskets up one by one. We are also allowing the children to hunt for eggs, one by one. After the event we will go live to allow each one of the kids recite their Easter speeches. (these activities will be done in an open field next door to our church) We also will be doing an Easter Tik Tok challenge that one of our teens created. Sunday mornings have been streamed live. We will continue with our same service program.
10. This week we are providing our families an Easter Week of activities and challenges. I do a daily devotional and then provide resources through FB so they can celebrate and learn throughout the week. We will have our normal Sunday morning service with a livestreamed message. This week we challenged our families to put up some greenery on the front of their homes and then on Easter Sunday add some red decoration.  In addition, we will share communion, but I will remind everyone that we should have a sense of loss because we are not together, and we should rejoice greatly when we first come back together. I am making two videos of church members this week that we will add to the service: One is the Lord’s prayer in a number of languages represented by our church from old and young alike.  Then we will have a bunch of our young people doing the Happy Dance to show our joy for resurrection. Both videos will have a bunch of editing, but it will be worth it to have the church see the faces they so miss. We will have one musician and a pianist playing one song.
11. We are having a good Friday digital experience called, “The Table to The Cross.” This is a family experience walking families through the final day of Jesus’ life!  Families can share communion together at the table with Jesus, pray with Jesus in the garden, thank Jesus for the suffering he endured and pray at the cross with Jesus. Then we are having six broadcast of an Easter Service that will be produced and deployed through our online campus.
12. Zoom Meeting for Good Friday with worship, message and Lord’s Supper. Saturday, we are doing a drive thru meal at lunch for the first 100 cars (2 meals each). Sunday, Sunrise Drive in Service (no bathrooms available, stay in cars) using FM transmitter.  Easter Worship at 10am on Facebook and Church website.
13. We are still doing an Easter service. On Saturday, we are taking Easter baskets to our kids and an Easter lily to each family.
14. We have had our staff making personal calls to our entire data base over the past two weeks to check up on everyone and pray for them. This week we are making a second round of calls to follow up and encourage our people to help us have the largest Easter gathering ever as an online gathering. We have special invites available for our people to use on all the social media platforms. Our service will include some special music, worship and Easter message.
15. We’re producing online Good Friday and Easter services at Eden Prairie Assembly (Minnesota).
16. We are doing an extended livestream and we are combining live with pre-recorded elements.  We are going to pre-record the worship and message and preservice and post service stuff.  Then our team will live in real time to transition between those elements.
17. Zoom Morning Prayer.
18. Going to have curbside church. We are a small congregation so they can stay in cars parked by the curb. I read scripture and give a msg of HOPE. Communion will be served by giving individual pkg cracker and a sealed small juice and a cup. Served by me wearing gloves and using a pizza paddle or tennis racket to pass the elements through open passenger windows. When they are then prepared, I will do communion. They can take the rest of the juice home with them. Praise God it is doable!
19. We are a small group that utilizes discussion during the message. We use Google Hangouts for Sundays right now.
20. We will do an online service and use our worship team to provide a cardboard testimony.
21. Still trying to figure that out lol. Streaming 4 services on Sunday, recording on Saturday, and having a special Good Friday service as well.
22. I’m open to ideas as well. I’m considering using my family in the live stream. Details aren’t finalized.
23. On Good Friday we are doing an online live service and for Easter we are doing the same thing!
24. We use GodTube/YouTube/email list with Yahoo/Gmail/Groups.io etc.
25. Doing devotionals (pre-recorded & sending them out). Wed Night Prayer Service continues on Zoom. Good Friday live stream (Day of fasting and take communion together during service). Side note: We already had yard signs printed up to promote Easter At the Assembly. We have 100 yard signs promoting our website.

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26. We have been trying to keep ministering as much as we can during this time. It’s actually launched us into some new ministry opportunities. As far as Easter…we have been waiting for a video switcher that would help us do a few more things for the online service but it’s backordered and not sure will be to us in time. Right now, it’s just streaming our service. Worship-preaching.
27. We will be conducting the service online, from my home. Therefore, we are planning to have pre-recorded ’specials’ and have several supporting videos in the service.
28. Our worship teams which, normally minster on 5 campuses, will be leading us in our homes on a prerecorded zoom call. I will be preaching from my home. The sunrise service opens in my kitchen with me sharing how hopeless that Sunday morning felt in the Jerusalem homes where the believers were sheltered in place, afraid for their lives. Then as the sun comes up, I am preaching from my backyard. One of the key points is how this Easter is better than any other Easter because it is more true to that 1^stPassover and that 1^st Easter when God was protecting His chosen people sheltered in their homes by the blood of the Passover lambs painted on the doorposts and the blood of the Perfect Lamb painted on the cross. I am going to remind our people that the 1^st Christians celebrated that first Easter and the days that followed NOT in churches packed with visitors but in locked rooms. I am going to encourage our people to look for Jesus to appear in their midst and show them that He really is the Resurrected Lord.
29. Easter Convention from Wed, Thur & Friday evenings. Resurrection Sunday morning service. All shall be produced by a team of 10 musicians, singers & media people.
30. We have already recorded our worship music. The sermon will be recorded on Thursday. Our digital team asked our folks to send us selfie style video testimonies that we’ll edit and include in between aspects of the service. We use YouTube live so it can premier at a specific time (10am for us), so people can post comments and prayer requests, and people can also watch it later.
31. We are having services transmitted on the Facebook page of the diocese.
32. Ultimately, at this time, we felt like the wise decision was to do online services only.
33. We are planning on recording a sunrise service to broadcast on Facebook.
34. We’re doing a number of different things this week. We will be doing a prerecorded stream on Friday for communion where I will lead my family through communion so that others can lead theirs. On Sunday morning, we are doing a Sunrise service, but it will be very raw or unplugged. No production, just a few people from various generations sending in recorded acapella songs and then I will lead a simple devotion and prayer. Easter we are streaming our 9am and 11am services, as we have been. We have some kids activities on the website that we will be encouraging our families to do with their kids. We are also doing a hashtag for families to share their Easter family pics. I’m also trying to encourage our children’s pastor to do a Facebook watch party, though he’s struggling with the technology. So, that’s what we’re up to this weekend.
35. We will have an online service. We also will have an online Easter egg hunt. We will hide eggs in our worship area and have the cameras show different parts of the worship area. So, everyone will be able to find the eggs and other “hidden” items we will place around. We will try to have a list of items and number of eggs to find.  Kind of like a I spy game. We will have drive through communion on Thursday evening from 5 pm – 8 pm (Maundy Thursday)
36. Friday we are joining with other churches to do a Hymn Sing using FB Live. Sunday we will have the usual elements of the service with singing and a sermon. Some ladies in my church are working on making a recording for special music using Zoom.
37. We are making it up as we go… 🙂 Service is online. Videos from congregation, mingled into worship experience. Mailed “Easter in a box” to families – great for kids. Celebrating and engaging our church to serve the community – giving 60 tons of food (in partnership with convoy of hope) to families and food banks.
38. Stream on Zoom and FB Live
39. Planning to use conference call to reach our people.
40. Here on the east coast we are being hit hard by bigger issue is what to do about funerals….and ministering to families remote who’ve lost someone. Easter is a prerecorded sermon. We also questioning is it right, even with a limited production crew, to live stream or record from the church considering the virus can transmit. For us it’s a matter of stewardship and care.
41. We are going to do an online service with Easter songs and Easter sermon etc. But after we are allowed to have public, in the building, worship we are going to pick a Sunday three weeks from there and prepare to celebrate Easter on that arbitrary date. I have been telling people not to let the Jehovah’s Witnesses get us so bogged down with the importance of celebrating Christmas or Easter on the exact perfect day, but to focus on celebrating on some day. So, we are going to have Easter in July, August, September or later depending on when our government tells us it is safe to go back to public in the building church.

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42. Due to the COVID-19 shutdown, we are doing what we have been doing – a slightly shortened service with praise team and pastor. The only difference this Sunday is choice of songs and praise team members will read some Easter-specific scriptures between the songs.
43. It is our plan to do an outdoor service which translates to a parking lot service. It has been difficult to find FM transmitters. We have one on the way, but it will not arrive until the end of April.  We are doing a Zoom Communion and prayer service on Maundy Thursday.
44. We’re using Life Church’s online.church platform, which we’ve been using for the last two weeks.  It’s a streaming platform that allows public/private chats during the service.  It will be 30 minutes with a special dramatic Easter video, a song by one of our worship leaders (pre-recorded from their home), downloadable coloring sheets for the kids, a special appearance of the “Easter Bunny” (puppet) with the Pastor, and a brief message.
45. We were planning on doing a combined “drive-in service” at our country club parking lot. But over the weekend the other three churches pulled out. So, we will be delivering “Communion packets” to all our members (and encouraging those out of town to have their elements available) so we can celebrate a virtual “Lord’s Supper” on our pod cast
46. We’ve got the kids telling the Easter story in a compiled video. I’d love more ideas!
47. Everything is virtual… Walking them through communion (this will reinforce the priesthood of all believers). We asked families to email in Easter greetings, that we will put in a video. I usually make fun of ‘peeps’ and throw them out to the crowd, this year we will show a video off YouTube of someone microwaving them. We will have an in-person Easter celebration when it’s safe to get together.
48. We are posting a different video each day of the week because of Holy Week. It is the Eyewitness Bible Series. Also, we are doing a drive-by Easter egg hunt in our community. Different church members have a numbered Easter egg sign in their yard. I hope this helps.
49. Here’s what we’re doing at Grand Haven Church of the Nazarene in Grand Haven, Michigan. We are continuing to run our Facebook Live service as we have been doing over the last several weeks, but we will add another avenue to reach more people in our community by partnering with local radio station WGHN 92.1 to broadcast the service over the radio airwaves. Another thing that we’re doing is having a children’s moment 15 minutes prior to our service starting at 11 o’clock. So, at 10:45 one of our children’s workers we do a kids moment with resurrection eggs via Facebook Live with her family from their home. Once they end with the children’s moment, we have a five-minute countdown and then will start I worship gathering online. I guess I’ll add, that for Good Friday we will use Facebook live to do a scripture reading and to take communion together. What we’re going to do is encourage everyone to have the elements in their home and then will participate by taking them together at the same time on Facebook Live.
50. Synchronous communion as we are led by a pastoral team member over the Internet.
51. We are having a day of fasting and prayer on Good Friday. It will culminate in an online Worship and Prayer Night at 6:30 PM (CDT). We will break the fast by taking Communion together during the service. We started a Saturday evening service 2 years ago and have been using that as our live streaming service since the Coronavirus outbreak and the shelter in place order. So, we are going live for Easter at 5:30 PM (CDT) and it will be available on demand on Sunday morning by 9:00. We were originally going to have 5 Easter services (Sat. at 4 & 5:30 and Sun. at 8:00, 9:30 and 11:00). Now we will just have the one and let people go on demand after the live stream.
52. We are sending out communion kits to our families with enough communion cups for the family, some candy, instructions and a small Easter card.  We’ll all take communion together during our live stream service.
53. We are going to use GoToMeeting and have an inter active virtual service. I want to keep our folks connected and thought this would be a great way to do it. We can speak with one another and see each other. If someone does not have a computer, they can call in and listen. Trying to bring people together in a social distancing world.
54. Share Your Testimony In Christ’ Week World Social Media Event.docx
55. We are having an online service and I will be preaching on I Peter 1:3 about living hope and then we will also be partaking of the Lord’s Supper together online. To do this I ordered a 1000 pre-made Lord’s Supper kits and announced to our people yesterday that they can come by the church office this week Monday-Thursday during the day or come by on Friday evening between 5-7pm and pick them up.
56. Instead of an Easter egg hunt, our congregation has been asked to participate in a Hope Hunt. We have been asked to take pictures of any sign of hope (blooming flower, cross in a yard, an act of kindness, etc.) and post it to our Facebook page using #OC HopeHunt.
57. I’ll be doing a live stream of my kids live show Anton’s Antics, free on my Facebook page, on both Friday and Sunday morning (Sydney time), replays also on Facebook and YouTube (edit) later. So that’ll make it Thursday night and Saturday night in the north hem.

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58. We are doing Easter online and encouraging people to prepare elements for communion on Easter Sunday. As well as encouraging our church family to invite others to watch. We are singing traditional Easter songs and sharing the love of God demonstrated through His Son Jesus.
59. Currently we are having Virtual service online. However, I am open to any ideas or suggestions for this coming Resurrection Sunday.
60. We are doing a virtual choir where I’m asking people to shoot a selfie video of them singing “O Praise The Name”, then editing them together like a giant Brady Bunch sequence. We’re also going to have a picture slideshow of connected to our church that are essential workers with a big “Thank You!”
61. We have an online stations of the cross event that includes our leadership team and a chalk art event where a few kids are going around town and putting scripture verses on approved sidewalks. And an online service for Easter Sunday.
62. Streaming the service on YouTube, Facebook Live and Church Online Platform….
63. We are providing a “Family Pack” – drive through pick up on Good Friday. Includes:

• Communion elements – to do with us online Good Friday
• Crafts, give away, curriculum for Kids Church – kids church online
• Eggs to have family Easter egg hunt

64. We have been straight out with all that is going on here in NYC.  We have a lot of people that have come down with the virus, we have families that loved ones have passed.  Many of our people are first responders, police, fire and work in hospitals. We will be passing out supplies from Convoy of Hope as an outreach to our city. Friday night Good Friday Service online.  We will be having virtual communion. Easter Sunday we will be doing online services from all of our campuses! We have called the church to a week of prayer and fasting for salvation as and healing. We also have a daily prayer service going on where people can call in and join with others in prayer!
65. We will be ministering on the Passover and encouraging all families to have communion together in their homes.
66. Sending the printed readings, the sermon, by email. Considering ZOOM but haven’t learned all the details.
67. Our church is having a parking lot service which has been approved by our County Officials. Members will remain in their cars during the service; there will be a parking space between each car. The only people not in cars will be, the band, praise team, sound team and me. When the service is over with, members will be given a plastic bag with Communion packs. Offering will be given as they drive out.
68. I’m going to be prerecording my sermon and posting it on the church’s Facebook page.
69. Doing the Easter sermon from home on Facebook live and also Periscope.
70. I’ll be doing my sermon from home again. I go live on our Facebook page and some in the church get their friends, neighbors and family to join with a host party!
71. We’re continuing our online service and introducing a collaborative effort with all of our worship team during worship (kind of like the Brady family, lol). We’re also setting up a few locations where congregants and the community can pick up goodie Easter bags for the kids, with kids and family activities in each bag. And we’re also celebrating communion by providing communion packs to those that want to pick it up at the location or by just getting their own elements as we celebrate the sacrifice and victory of our Risen Savior.
72. We are having our regular prerecorded service, during the week members will come by the church on set times and pick up prepackaged communion cups or for those who may not feel comfortable going out we will deliver the communion cups to them.  Then we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper at 7 pm online. I hope that helps, thanks for all you do!
73. One thing that we are going to do is a virtual Easter egg hunt. We had one planned for the 11th but of course it was cancelled. We are going to deliver a bag of eggs to each house and have the parents hide the eggs. I will do a live stream and do a virtual lesson on the resurrection using Resurrection Eggs, then the kiddos will go hunting.
74. For Easter I got one of my friends that I went to Bible School with to send me their live worship of 3 songs with lyrics & then I’ll put Chris Tomlin’s video on Resurrection Power. I’ll then preach & compare the empty church with the empty tomb. Then I’ll show Resurrecting as an altar call at home song. I’ll lead the people in prayer, and all this will be on our YouTube channel: Crossroads Newburgh. The link is on our Facebook page Crossroads Assembly of God – Newburgh, NY – Every Week (3x’s) gets better & better. Easter is going to be great. This has plunged us to learn so much & quickly.
75. At Faith we are streaming a Good Friday service in which I will share a message and we have one of our worship leaders leading in some music and we will close the service with communion. We have instructed folks to have elements ready and available to participate, and we have published a recipe for un-leaven bread. It is an easy recipe to follow and we are suggesting that families make this a family activity during the week leading up to Good Friday. We are providing supplies for Easter meals for those shut-ins who cannot get out to get the supplies for a meal. We are streaming an Easter service with special music, worship music and an Easter message of encouragement.  In general, we are doing all that we did before as a church we are just doing so via a different venue.
76. We are a small town (2500) on WV, we were running 75 – 85, Sunday night also had a Youth group up to 15 (ages 2 to 12), majority of their parents/ grandparents not attending Sunday morning. We may plan to do a parking lot worship service, IF the Chief of Police is OK with that, IF the Governor does not add restrictions this week. We will also record (hopefully) and have on YouTube and Facebook.
77. I am doing a LIVESTREAM online worship service. Since March 22 I have been doing this- yesterday was Palm Sunday and, in our tradition, we share Communion. So yes, I did communion. The feedback I had was wonderful because I had promoted this to other United Churches and to my previous churches as well. My service which is in the early stages will be traditional music, message and prayers- filled with a lot of hope and new life images. I will also be recording a children’s sermon regarding the eggs of Easter—this is something I used in different years—using small symbols found in empty plastic Easter eggs I will tell the story of Jesus’ death, resurrection and our celebration of new life with this.
78. We’ve been trying our best to shelter in place. Here in Indiana our Governor has place a non-essential travel ban into place. For the last several weeks daily, and on Sunday we’ve been getting together using video conferencing (Zoom). It’s really drawn us closer together as a church family and offered us the rare opportunity to dig deeper into God’s word and to make sure we’re all staying safe physically and emotionally. We’ll do the same thing for Easter morning service.
79. We’re doing a “BYO” virtual communion service via Zoom. I will lead participants through a liturgy, and everyone will participate using communion wafers, bread, biscuits, muffins, or cookies for “the bread,” and wine, grape juice, coffee, tea, soda or water for “the cup.”
80. Parking lot service. Preach from scissor lift. 5 member Worship team on large trail. Livestream.
81. We’re going to stream 9 lessons and songs (riffing on Anglican lessons and carols). Communicating the reality of Jesus victory over death and today hope.
82. This is what we are doing…individual videos to launch together: ‘Share Your Testimony In Christ’ Week World Social Media Challenge. This is a something God has put on my heart a few years ago. It’s been percolating within me and I think now is the time to pull the trigger on it.
83. We mailed out an activity packet to all families with children with gift cards to McDonalds and Little Caesars for all who participate. It’s a fraction of what we’d spend on Easter eggs. Still it will be nice.
84. On Good Friday, we are opening the sanctuary for individuals to come and have personal communion and enjoy some recorded worship, if they choose to do so.

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