With Easter in just a few weeks, you’re probably deep into prep for the big weekend. Whether you’re doing an egg hunt, planning your worship set, or just getting your volunteers ready, there’s a lot of focus put on this weekend.

Not to pile on, but there’s one more thing to consider for Easter.

What are you doing this summer?

In the past, in the weeks leading up to Easter, I put my VBS and other summer activity planning on hold. However, I realized that this was a mistake.

On Easter weekend, you will have more people come to your church than on almost any other day of the year. Whether they’re guests, CEO (Christmas and Easter Only), or all your regulars, almost everyone goes to church that day. Which means that it is a great opportunity to tell them about what’s coming and how they can continue to engage with your church community.

Even though many parents aren’t thinking about the summer, yet, in a few weeks they will be. You can get in on the ground floor of their plans. So many times I’ve had parents and volunteers say they can’t come to one of my summer events because they’ve already planned their families vacation. This is part of the reason why I do a parent meeting at the beginning of the year, but it’s also why Easter is the first big unveiling of our summer events.

The good news is that you don’t have to do a lot of work to start advertising your events on Easter, especially if you started back in January. But even if you haven’t, here are

5 Easy Steps to Promote Your Summer Events this Easter

1. Make Registration Available

The main goal for advertising at Easter is to have a way for people to sign up that day. At minimum, you can have a sign-up sheet to collect interest, but I think it’s much better to have all your registration set up and ready to go.

There are a lot of great registration sites out there. I personally like VBS Pro from Group publishing, but I’ve also used Fellowship One’s registration. This year, I’m giving Planning Center Registrations another try.

Regardless of what you use, you need to have a way to point people to your registration site either by link or QR code or both. When I moved away from paper registration a few years ago, I continued to use it for volunteers. It depends on your context and what your people are comfortable with.

2. Website

The registration link has to go somewhere, so I suggest building a website that gives all the information parents need to know. It doesn’t have to be elaborate and usually everything can be contained on what’s called a landing page. (A single page with a clear call to action and copy to create value and produce excitement for the event.)

I haven’t built my VBS site for this year, yet. But you can see my Egg Hunt one here. The VBS site will be similar.

I suggest you build the page on your church’s website so it’s easy for people to find. If you create your own website there is a lot to manage, and there's a good chance it won't show up on Google search results. 

If you don’t have the skills to create a page, ask the person over your church's website for help. Be prepared to give them graphics, pictures, and copy. The more information you can share with them the closer the site will be to your vision, and you don't have to spend a lot of time going back and forth fixing things to your liking.

There are some registration sites that offer their own website to host your forms. I’ve used several of these in the past, but a lot of times, I find them restrictive and generic. However, if you’re on your own and don’t know what you’re doing, these can be a great place to learn.

One year, I had a ton of summer events planned, so I created one landing page for all of our summer events with links to them. This took a little more work, but it gave me a central hub to point parents to instead of giving them multiple links to remember. Yourchuch.com/events is a lot easier to remember than Yourchurch.com/summer/kids/events/vacation-bible-school-2023.

3. Take-home flyer

Now that your website is built and registration is set up, you need to tell people about the events you have available. My first and most valuable tool is the take-home flyer. I’ll create a separate eye-catching flyer with all of my summer events and a way to sign up for them. This is where I’ll put my link and/or QR code for people to get more information and to sign up.

On the flyer, I’ll include the look, dates, and the price. If you have great pictures from previous events this is a great place to put them. A happy smiling face will beat a great logo every time.

Hopefully, on Easter, you’ll have unchurched people attend. So, make sure you stay away from churchy words or Christianese on these flyers. You’ll lose your audience really fast and the opportunity to build a relationship further.

So instead of saying contact Sister Margaret for more information, point them to a website. 

Instead of saying it’s in room 203 or worse, The Susan B. Anthony Memorial Hall, say it’s at the church and you can point them to the right place with signs and people when they arrive. 

Instead of saying you’re going to glorify God and lift him up, say we’ll have great songs and powerful message as we introduce your kids to Jesus.

You don’t have to hide what you’re going to do, you just have to speak their language. If you want to go the extra mile, ask an unsaved friend to look at your copy and see if they have any questions.

4. Social media post

If you’ve got your website up and a take home paper prepared, you’ve probably done all the ground work to create a social media post. After your Easter service, post a Call to Action inviting people to continue the fun all summer with these great events. You can create a carousel post or a video with all the pertinent info and send them to your website.

If you’re using Instagram, make sure your link in bio has the links to your landing pages so people can easily find your events.

5. Follow up email

I’ve written before that your email list is one of the best outreach tools you can have. On Easter Sunday, work extra hard to collect all of your parents’ information including their email address. Most likely you’re collecting some information from them when they check-in, but if you’re not asking for the email, you’re missing out on an opportunity.

A few days after Easter, usually Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ll send out an email thanking everyone for coming and inviting them to come back the following Sunday as well as signing up for the summer events.

The take-home paper may not have made it out of the car and the social media post may not have shown up in their algorithm, but an email may get their attention as it shows up in their inbox.

I will then continue to email them in the coming weeks and months as the events get closer to keep us top of mind. Usually, no more than once a week.

I have a lot more strategies for marketing VBS here, but the first point is to start talking about it at Easter.

I hope and pray this Easter be the best one yet where you see more people come, accept Jesus, and join your community. Showing them another way to get involved increases their chances of coming back. Leverage this opportunity to grow the kingdom and make an impact in your city.

If you’d like to read more about VBS you can find the posts here.

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