We have gathered some resources to help with the preparation of your Easter services no matter what stage of re-opening your church is in.  

A lot of these resources are aimed at Children’s Ministry (on Zoom or in person) simply because they can be less church-specific, but we do have some song suggestions included at the end for songs to use in your service!

 

Kids

1) Helpful teaching material for Kids Ministry

Our first recommended resource is the Gospel Project. It has free Easter session materials for all age groups from pre-school aged children up to adults. The sessions normally include Leader resources as well.

Another resource we found that is made up of a range of activities is on the Faith in Kids site. They have advice for setting up an Easter trail, suggested Easter events for Easter weekend and they even have an escape room! If your church is putting on your service virtually, Faith in Kids has some suggested lesson outlines or activity ideas for parents who want to continue discussions about the Easter story in their families at home.

 

Younger Children

• Children’s Ministry Deals is offering some free resources including Easter colouring pages (which could prove to be very handy for younger children); Easter programs and skits and Easter Sunday Children’s Ministry Curriculum.

Older Children

• Crossroads Kids Club did a tour of the locations of Israel mentioned in the Easter story and told the Easter story with relevant Bible verses as they went. We found this an encouraging look at the gospel story that really pushed home the truth of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

 

2) Easter Songs (Kids)

Here are a few song ideas for your Easter children’s ministry:

1.  Happy Day – This song is very upbeat, bound to get the children dancing and we’ve linked a video with some dance moves you could try!
2. O Taste and See (Bethel Kids)- This is another good one to get the children dancing to (although we wouldn’t recommend the dancing on the chairs!)
3. My Lighthouse (Rend. Co. Kids)- This song is a much-loved favourite. The video has a brightly coloured background, clear and easy actions and lyrics on screen.
4. We Believe (Easter song)- This song is slower than the others but talks directly about Jesus coming to save us. Although there are actions, they are in the corner of the screen and not easy to see, so they may need to be learnt beforehand.  
5. He’s Alive,He’s Alive- This song celebrates the resurrection and talks about God’s plan to rescue us. It’s an upbeat song that hopefully will get the children dancing and singing along in no time.

 

3) Crafts ideas

If you are doing the children’s ministry virtually, there are a few things that you should take into account. The first thing is material requirements- you don’t want families to have to specially buy in new materials to complete the craft. So, we need to use materials that people are likely to have in their houses. Another way to get around this could be to send your children gift bags with all the materials needed to complete the craft (dependent on church budget and the size of your children’s ministry).

If you are doing the children’s ministry in person, you need to take into account reducing the risk of spreading coronavirus. Trying to get children to adhere to covid-safe measures can be really difficult but doing even a little bit to try and reduce the risk is always a good idea. This could be something like looking at your children’s ministry room and seeing if the chairs could be spread a bit further apart around the tables? Or in terms of crafts trying to avoid any type of stickers that need licking to stick down, blowing up balloons or anything to do with sealing envelopes.  

Without further ado, here’s some pages with handy ideas:

1. Although perhaps a more unconventional source, this photo gallery of ideas in Country Living for crafts based off of the Easter story has a variety of ideas, with different levels of materials required.
2. This RedTedArt blogpost that we found starts off with a range of picture ideas from Pinterest and further down the page, categorises crafts into different types e.g. handprint crafts, decorating a cross, etc. Many of them have instructions too!
3. Here is another blogpost that has a lot of good craft ideas for Easter Sunday but also for Holy Week. Some of the crafts here are even food based (which could be pointed out to parents as a possible extra to do after church, or at some point in the holidays).
4. This Ministry to Children webpage has quite traditional crafts ranging from easier to more challenging which could be helpful in planning for a class with a wide age-range amongst the children.
5. Sunday School Kids has a collection of unique ideas with instructions on how to make the crafts listed and gives suggested age-ranges for the children doing the craft (which is definitely a bonus!).

 

4) Games

This is an area that can also be tricky in a socially-distanced or virtual way so we made two lists, one with suggestions for churches that are meeting in person and one for those that are meeting virtually.

In-Person Games

• Relay Race- Split the children into teams. Have a chosen child in each team who needs to get from A to B but can only stand on leaves (big palm leave shapes cut out from paper). The rest of the team’s job is to create the path by moving the leaves so that the team leader can keep moving. First team to get their leader to point B wins. (The idea is to remind children of Jesus riding a donkey over palms in the triumphal entry).
• Hard Boiled Egg and Spoon Race‍
• Bible Verse Easter Egg Hunt- Get hollow eggs and fill them with one word from a Bible verse. Get the children to go on an Easter egg hunt and figure out the verse. Fastest team to figure out the verse wins a prize.
• Hard Boiled Egg Rolling Race- Get the children to decorate an egg and have a competition to see who can roll theirs the furthest with the least damage.

Virtual Games

• Easter Egg Hunt- Hide the eggs and get the children to direct you through the screen to where they think the eggs are.
• Charades- Act out the words to the Bible verse like charades for the children and make them guess the words of the verse.
• Act it out- Give the children one minute to act out one bit of the Easter story or to do a freeze frame of how they think different people would have reacted in the moment e.g. the disciples faces when they heard Jesus was alive/ when Jesus was arrested/ etc.
• Race- Send the children to look for different things around their house e.g. ‘hunt for something yellow/something you can drink from/etc.’ and first one back wins.

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For your Easter Service

It was difficult thinking of ways we could help support you in preparing your services but one area that did spring to mind was the music. Here are some suggestions of songs that you could include in your Easter service this year:

1. ‍Glorious Day (Living He loved me)- Casting Crowns
2. In Christ Alone- Stuart Townend
3. Man of Sorrows- Shane and Shane
4. How Deep the Father’s Love for Us- Stuart Townend
5. Nothing but the Blood of Jesus

 We hope that this has been a help in your preparations for your Easter service and if you have any other useful ideas or crafts that you’d like to share, let us know on our social media! Or if you think we’ve missed something email us at info@thechurchoffice.co.uk.

We pray that your Easter services are a blessing to your church and communities and that through our preparations now, people will come to know Jesus.

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