Man! I hear you.

I am thankful - we had a really good Easter service. Our pastor did a sermon on John 3 (Nicodemus and Jesus, regarding being born again), and referenced the Resurrection a number of times - he said "If the resurrection isn't true, we don't have anything to talk about". True dat.

Oh also, on "The Ultimate Fighter". Isn't all that Eldredge-tinged manly-man stuff so 2003 by now? Whatever church that was is a few fads behind the curve, I'd say.

That's the grand irony of the whole racket, in my opinion: that all these churches are copying each other and using TV shows and pop songs for their themes and then calling themselves "innovative" and creative.
It's not innovative if 100 other churches have already done it.

You know when I was growing up, my pastor very rarely focused on just the death and resurrection of Christ on Easter. It was often covered a few weeks earlier. The Easter Sermon was a more general service which laid out the entirety of the Gospel (including the death and resurrection of course).

Why? Because they knew that this was the only sermon a large number of the Easter congregants were going to hear for months, so they wanted to cover all the bases and not just dwell on the death and resurrection.

Now I first became aware of this over twenty years ago (more like twenty five), so I don't think that this sort of strategy is anything new.

My minister had been doing a series on Jesus leading up to the resurrection. It was so good. It’s a bit difficult to believe that you would hear a resurrection service on Easter.

This reminds me of a news story I read yesterday about all the ministers who reworked their Easter Sunday sermons around/about/in response to the whole Jeremiah Wright-Barack Obama thing.

Good grief.

Our church services yesterdat were "All Resurrection all the time".

Man, I love Easter Sunday.

My topic was "Why the Ressurection Matters" and I talked about why and how it should change their life, and how it affects EVERYTHING!!!!

I also did something different yesterday. I sprinkled my sermon around the songs, not haphazardly, but deliberately. So I would speak for 4-5 minutes, and then the choir or someone would sing. And I read A LOT of Scripture. The songs punctuated or emphasized the messages or the Scripture. It was all intended to be one big Easter Message, and I think it was effective.

I'm hoping to try some more of that kind of thing.

Dude, I'm on FIRE on Easter Sunday. I mean if you can't get fired up on Res day, then you're hopeless.

I guess on some level I know that this happens, but really I'm just speechless.

Milly,
It's good to hear about a CofC having an Easter/resurrection related theme this time of year! I distinctly remember the first time I visited my in-laws' CofC church on Easter. They made an effort to stay away from any and all Easter-related references - even in the music! I know it's their position to make the resurrection "part of every day" instead of just celebrating it on one "man-made holiday," but I remember leaving feeling such a heavy sadness. And honestly, I felt a little angry. I knew that many families were going home to egg hunts, bunnies and baskets, but they had made a point not to celebrate our risen Saviour. It all seemed a little backwards to me.

Jenn,
Yep that’s the CofC. We aren’t to celebrate Christmas either, because we are to celebrate them every day. I attend a different CofC we govern ourselves and have been viewed as being very wrong by other CofC s. You’re right they sit in church and listen to a sermon then go to the bunny day. For me the church that I attend is fine because it is so different. When I was looking at leaving not long ago I knew I’d walk from the CofC .


Then again from the discussion I had with my aunts SundayI’m going to hell for believing it’s ok for women to lead.

Hell bent and proud of it. ;-}

I talked to my grandma last night, and apparently their pastor (who's fairly new to the church) did do an Easter message ... but he was dressed as a clown at the time. And there were magic tricks. And other clowns. I always thought that my church back home was rather conservative, but things must have changed. A lot.

Un freaking real.

I did a magic trick during the children's sermon...now I feel guilty. :)

Left my clown nose at home though.

Clowns! For real! Yiks!

It seems to me that trying to celebrate Easter everyday (ignoring the historicity of the Resurrection i.e. that Christ did in fact rise on the third day after passover) often results in not celebrating Easter any time at all. We cannot avoind the ethos of American culture celebrating Easter commercially, so to deny Easter it's real significance (even if it is done in order to marginalize the commecial aspects of Easter) often results in marginalizing the founding event itself: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Why not then celebrate the day Christ was resurrected (which actually took place in late march/early April). I suppose people could say the same thing about celebrating their wedding, birthdays, etc., but it just seems to cheapen the actual historical event.

Christmas is, of course, different because biblically, Christ was born sometime in late March/early April as well (and because the Pagan Constatine was in charge of affairs of the Church at the time, based Christmas on a pagan holiday), but I still think it's fine to recognize Christs birth at Christmas time as well since it has become the cultural norm.