Faithful churchgoers refer to their biannual visitors as “C & E’s” – Christmas and Easter Christians, the infrequent worshipers who pack churches to overflowing twice a year, then disappear for months.
In hopes of luring back the crowds filling churches today, metro clergy and laity are pulling out the stops. The Boulder Brass ensemble is playing at Trinity United Methodist Church’s Easter services, while the Queen City Jazz Band has had an Easter gig at the First Church of Divine Science for more than 10 years.
Special music, bilingual services, pageants and Easter egg hunts – including one held simultaneously with worship services, serving as child care with a spiritual flair – are intended to appeal to the folks accustomed to spending Sunday mornings in bed or at brunch.
“There is a market share of people we don’t have, and if we didn’t have Christmas and Easter, we’d never have an opportunity to reach out to them,” explained Hugo Venegas of Colorado Community Church.
“Marketers know that what they present on Super Bowl Sunday will either increase viewership the following year, or lower it. For the church, we have to understand that,” Venegas said. “Do you want to be pessimistic about them not showing up for 50 Sundays a year, or say, ‘I’m really glad you’re here’? If they have a great spiritual experience, you’ve heightened the possibility of having them come more often.”
Among the most innovative enticements is from the mainstream St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Highlands Ranch, which ran advertisements in Westword and The Onion, urging readers to “Come for the Resurrection. Stay for the Chili!”
The ad promised music played by Sing Sing, “the house band from a LoDo piano bar named after a prison!” It ended with a reassurance: “See church in a new way – we don’t like those TV guys either!”
“The idea came from a staff meeting, when we looked at how to accommodate 4,000 people in a building that seats about 800,” said Harvey Martz, senior pastor at St. Andrew.
“We said, ‘Let’s offer a fifth worship service at noon that might reach people who wouldn’t otherwise come.”‘
Martz figures the innovative noon service will reach four audiences – the twice-a-year Christians, amused nonchurchgoers, Sing Sing fans, and “the surprising thing for us,” Martz says, “our own people who say they’re going to one of the earlier services, but coming back for this because the music sounds neat.”
Clergy members adopt two strategies in addressing the twice-a-year Christians. Martz and Venegas favor welcoming the semi-strangers. Pentecostal bishop Phillip Porter belongs to the old school.
“Twice a year just doesn’t get the job done,” said Porter, whose holy day sermons take a stern tone with twice-a-year Christians.
Indeed, some churchgoers view the C & E Christians as a mixed blessing.
“We’re awfully glad they’re there, and they do raise the giving on those Sundays, and indeed we do hope they’ll be back,” said theologian and pastor Donald E. Messer, president emeritus of the Iliff School of Theology.
“They do probably mess up the usual seating arrangements – people do get in habits, and if you don’t get to church early on Christmas and Easter, you won’t get your seat.
“On the other hand, frankly, it gives the faithful rank-and-file members hope. If we work a little harder, a little better, sing a little more in tune, look what could happen! This church could fill up.”
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
