Don't Miss Easter While You're Leading It: A Word for Worship Leaders

Easter is my favorite Sunday of the year.

Every Sunday I aim to make much of a risen Savior, but Easter feels different. The excitement is palpable. The church comes ready. People who haven't been in months walk through the door. And according to Lifeway Research, 90% of pastors identify Easter as the day their church has its highest, second-highest, or third-highest attendance for worship service. You already knew that. You feel it every year. The room is electric before the first song even starts.

And that is a gift. Receive it.

But here is where I want to pump the brakes for just a moment, because the tendency on Easter is to go over the top. To put enormous pressure on yourself to do something amazing, something creative, something better than last year. I understand that instinct completely. But it is a dangerous one.

People call Easter the Super Bowl of the Christian calendar. And in one sense, the stakes are real. The room is full. Eyes and hearts are open. Many of those seats hold people who haven't been in church since Christmas, or longer. Yes, you should have been planning months ago. Song selection, creative elements, production, the arc of the service, all of it matters and deserves your best preparation. But here is what the Super Bowl analogy gets dangerously wrong: a Super Bowl is decided by a performance. Easter was already decided. Two thousand years ago, outside an empty tomb, before you ever picked up a guitar or stepped to a microphone. You are not here to win anything. It has already been won.

So set the pressure down. You want people leaving saying, "What an amazing Risen Savior" Not, "What a great service." Not, "What a great moment." The service is not the point. He is the point.

If you didn't plan as well as you wish you had this year, that is okay. Plan better next time. But today, let the Holy Spirit lead and follow Him. He has been pointing to the resurrected Christ long before you started building your set list.

Now. Here is what I want you to actually feel before Sunday comes.

Friday was awful. Saturday was silent. The disciples were distraught, hiding behind locked doors, convinced the story was over. All hope had seemed to be lost. He was dead. The best person who ever lived, the One they had given everything to follow, was gone. And then Sunday came.

The greatest thing that has ever happened on the face of this earth took place on that morning. Jesus walked out of that tomb, nail-scarred and alive, never to die again. He is who He said He is. The Son of God. The Messiah. The Risen King. And He is not here, because He has risen, just as He said.

That truth is rocket fuel for the worship leader. Let yourself feel it before you lead anyone else to feel it. Don't be so busy managing the service that you forget to be personally undone by the resurrection. Stand in your office, or your green room, or sit in your car before you walk in, and let it hit you. He is alive. You get to tell people that on Sunday. There is no greater privilege given to anyone on this earth on that morning.

Sing it like you mean it. Lead like it's true. Because it is.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.