{"id":254,"date":"2011-03-18T19:10:11","date_gmt":"2011-03-19T02:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/?p=254"},"modified":"2011-04-06T20:45:33","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T03:45:33","slug":"easter-is-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/?p=254","title":{"rendered":"Easter is coming!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before we know it, Holy Week, with all its activities will be upon us. It feels strange to me that it&#8217;s occurring so late this year. How are you preparing for it? Are you planning something traditional or non-traditional to celebrate our Lord&#8217;s resurrection? Last year, I went to a sunrise service in Kona, Hawaii. At one point, as a part of the service, we were all surprised as a helicopter flew over and dropped thousands of plumeria blossoms upon the worshipers. Not only was it a beautiful sight, but it also engaged the sense of touch and smell. Plumeria have a wonderful fragrance!<\/p>\n<p>Last year, George Barna wrote an article about people&#8217;s understanding of Easter. His main point is that people understand Easter more as a religious holiday, but don&#8217;t know about its Christian meaning. You might find it to be helpful reading in your preparation.<\/p>\n<p>How many of your members\/participants are active in inviting others to your Easter service? 75%? 64%? 50%? According to Barna&#8217;s report, only 31% are active in inviting a non-church going person to Easter worship.<\/p>\n<p>To read the article, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.barna.org\/barna-update\/article\/13-culture\/356-most-americans-consider-easter-a-religious-holiday-but-fewer-correctly-identify-its-meaning?q=easter\">click here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before we know it, Holy Week, with all its activities will be upon us. It feels strange to me that it&#8217;s occurring so late this year. How are you preparing for it? Are you planning something traditional or non-traditional to celebrate our Lord&#8217;s resurrection? Last year, I went to a sunrise service in Kona, Hawaii. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-easter","category-missional","category-worship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}