The American Christian Church is facing challenges today that people never thought were possible.
But there is one major problem that pastors across the country face each year.
And this California pastor explained the struggle that church leaders deal with every year.
Church attendance booms on Easter and then plummets again
Church attendance in the United States is at an all-time low.
According to Gallup, just three out of ten Protestant Christians reported that they attend church every week.
Expanding the group to those who say they attend “almost every week” increases the number to 44 percent.
But that figure is still down from nearly 50 percent in 2003.
There is one exception to these numbers — Easter Sunday.
According to Lifeway Research, church attendance balloons during Holy Week and pastors see one of their top attended services.
“Today, 90% of pastors identify Easter as the day their church has its highest, second-highest, or third-highest attendance for worship service,” Lifeway reported on its website.
But attendance plummets to its normal lows the following week and pastors are left feeling discouraged.
One pastor called it the “Post Easter Blues.”
Pastors get overwhelmed by the Christian “Super Bowl”
Hal Seed is the Lead Pastor at New Song Community Church in Oceanside, California.
Seed publishes a helpful blog for his fellow pastors on pastormentor.com.
This year he published an article called How to Recover From the Post Easter Blues.
“Every pastor I know gets a little depressed (or a lot depressed) on the days following Easter. It’s natural. I call it the Post-Easter Blues,” he wrote.
Seed called Easter Sunday the Christian “Super Bowl.”
He said the problem is that “Easter comes and attendance peaks. Then it falls again.”
“We pour our lives into preaching, and meeting, and caring for people, surviving the week on less sleep and more adrenaline than we should,” he said.
Seed said that the numbers never return to the “old level,” but it would make dreams come true if “ALL” the Easter guests would return the following week.
“When they don’t, well, we’re human, and we get disappointed,” he said.
But the pastor did have some advice for his fellow church leaders.
Listen for “God’s whisper” and follow His “new directions”
The number-one recommendation Seed had is “do not take a vacation.”
The pastor said it is very common for church leaders to take a much-needed break following the hustle and the bustle of the holiday.
“The problem with this is, all our volunteers are exhausted too. If they follow our example, no one will be around the following weekend,” he wrote.
Seed said that the best way to deal with the Post-Easter Blues is to look to God’s Word.
Looking at the book of Elijah, he said pastors need to “expose [themselves] to God’s power.”
“While Elijah is standing on [Mt. Carmel], God sends a wind, an earthquake, and a firestorm to rouse him. The Prophet may have been drowsy, but those forces roused him quickly!” he wrote.
Seed encouraged pastors to listen for “God’s whisper” and to follow His “new directions.”
“After the whisper, God gave Elijah a new assignment. For three years the Prophet had been focusing on one event: the defeat of Baal worship. Part of his depression came from not having another big event to look forward to,” he explained.
Pastors are charged with immersing themselves in the Word of God and taking steps to advance His Kingdom.
Seed said church leaders need to keep their ears and eyes open for God’s next instructions and push forward on this mission.
Patriot Political will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
