Easter At Saddleback Church

You may wonder how I can comment on an Easter service two days before Easter. I'm not psychic; I just go to a church that's so large they have to do 12 Easter services, including one a 7pm on Good Friday.

The message was an abbreviated version of Purpose Driven Life and was, as expected, directed toward the seekers in the crowd. Given all of the news about this book in the media in recent days (including today in The Register), a lot of visitors are coming to the church to find out what the hubbub is all about. I must admit that it's a little weird to attend an Easter service in which there's no mention of the Easter story, but I thought the message was well presented and will undoubtedly bring about many decisions for Christ.

Last December I was pretty hard on my church's Christmas Eve services, mainly due to the choice of music, much of which had nothing to do with Christmas. I guess it was a little jarring to come to a Christmas Eve service and not hear Christmas music, especially after being inundated with Christmas songs for the better part of two months.

I look at Easter services a little differently. I don't have quite the same musical expectation at Easter as I do at Christmas. For one thing, I haven't been hearing "Easter carols" on the radio for two months, and there's not as much easily recognizable Easter music (of course there's always the "gravy song" as my cousin called it - Up From the Grave He Arose). The general atmosphere surrounding the Easter season is also very different than the feeling of Christmastime, and especially Christmas Eve.

I thought the service was very well done. The musicianship and vocal skills of the Saddleback folks are always top-notch and everything is presented very professionally. We had a couple of my daughter's friends with us who have no church connection whatsoever, and I found myself trying to examine the service from their point of view. I think the music and message worked well together, though my wife had an interesting comment regarding the last song. The song talked about the "stone that was rolled away" (and was one of only three that had actual Easter themes), and she leaned over to me and commented that someone who didn't know the Easter story would have no idea what stone that song was referring to. They would not have learned the Easter story by attending this service.

All in all I left with a much more favorable impression of the Easter service than I did after Christmas Eve. I know their goal is to reach the unsaved, and I think this service will have a significant impact in the lives of many seekers.

UPDATE 3/29: Pastor Tom Holliday writes this regarding the attendance and response to the Easter services:

Wow! What a great Easter weekend at Saddleback! Over the 12 services this weekend there were 45,006 people at church. More importantly, 3,746 of your friends and family gave their lives to Jesus this Easter!

They're clearly doing something right.