March 22, 2023

Dear Christ Church and Friends,

I hope that you are all doing well.

I shared this week in our worship services about spiritual disciplines and that we need your help as Easter approaches. We need your help to welcome all of the people who will be joining us on Easter to celebrate the Good News of the Resurrection.

Easter remains a day for many who don't usually visit church/worship to check us out and spend some time with us. As such, our whole morning of Easter on both of our campuses will be focused on having a festive and joyous celebration to welcome both those who usually worship with us and all of the guests who will join us!

At our Fort Lauderdale Campus, one aspect of this celebration will be to make use of our beautiful field and location by having a mini-Easter festival, if you will, on the field. This will be in addition to our Sunrise service and our 9am service, which will both be on the field. The festival will be simply for people to linger a bit longer and visit with one another between services that morning and to show our community as they walk, drive, cycle, etc. by the field that we are here and that they are welcome to join us, whether it is on Easter or at any other time throughout the year.

We are planning to have simple games and light refreshments on the field to help facilitate this. A Kona Ice food truck will us join us for part of the morning too! We are also working to incorporate other Easter traditions into this morning, such as the Easter egg hunt and the Easter flower cross. Those details are still being finalized.

We will also be creating a great celebration at our Parkway Campus on Easter morning. We will worship that morning as well as have an Easter egg hunt after the service there!

So, this is where you all come in!

We need your help to make all of this happen, so we can serve and connect with as many people as possible on Easter and share Christ's love, hope, and joy with them. As I talked about this week, this is a powerful way to practice the spiritual discipline of sharing your time, talents, and treasures with others. Easter and Christmas are our Super Bowls, if you will. They are the most holy and important times in the life of our church and in our lives as Christians.

We are looking for team leads for various areas such as set up, welcoming and clean up. If you lead one of these areas, you'll have the freedom to lead this area as you see fit. Of course, we'll also need people to serve in these various areas. We have created a form where you can sign up to serve in the various areas that are needed. It can be accessed here: christchurchfl.org/serve-easter You may note your interest in leading a team in the comments box on the form.

Please let me know what questions you might have. If you have suggestions for people to serve as team leads or to serve in another capacity, please ask them to sign up!

Thank you all for all you do in the life of our church. I appreciate it and you. We're going to have a great Easter here at Christ Church United Methodist. I can't wait to celebrate my first one with you!

Have a great day.

Peace,

Pastor Nathan