At Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, one of the largest churches in the nation, Easter was heralded in the bookstore with a 20 percent markdown on Bibles, to help get the word out.
Workers in matching shirts brought hundreds of chairs out of storage. Truckloads of potted mums, azaleas, Easter lilies and tulips arrived.
On the South Side of Chicago, at the Apostolic Church of God, the rotating schedule for church volunteers was suspended–this Sunday, all 60 ushers, 70 greeters, 175 broadcast technicians and 130 baptismal assistants will be on duty, making certain that this holiest of days goes off without a hitch.
Easter, the zenith of the Christian liturgical calendar, the celebration of Christ’s empty tomb, will pack churches to bursting Sunday morning, here and around the world. Once- or twice-a-year worshipers will squeeze in alongside regulars, while jammed parking lots test the holiday joy outside even the smallest of churches.
But when you have to accommodate 12,000 newcomers in addition to the usual congregation, you need logistical precision, the kind more common to military campaigns or stadium events than religious worship. The spirit may move people, but it takes trained ushers to get a crowd in and out of their seats before the next service begins.
At Willow Creek, one of the non-denominational institutions that gave rise in the 1980s to the term “megachurch,” spokesman Bob Gordon said an estimated 28,900 people will attend the church’s six Easter services this weekend–about 1,000 more than the average crowd at a Cubs home game last year. A usual weekend brings 16,000 worshipers to Willow Creek.
The Apostolic Church of God, the Pentecostal superchurch in the Woodlawn neighborhood created by Bishop Arthur Brazier Jr., expects 5,000 to 6,000 at each of its two major Easter services, with several hundred more attending a children’s service. That’s several thousand more than a typical Sunday.
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Another 84,000 or so people will watch the Apostolic Church of God’s signature televised Easter concert (videotaped April 5) Sunday morning on WCIU-Ch. 26.
The Easter concert, which involved more than 300 singers and musicians, took almost a year to put together, from choosing the music to the twice-weekly rehearsals, to months of technical planning, all leading up to the April 5 performance.
But that was not the end. The next morning, a crew went to work in the Saving Grace Control Room, a state-of-the-art television production facility just across the hall from the main sanctuary. Culling from 150 minutes of footage on five cameras, the crew finally whittled the concert down to its televised length of one hour.
With the concert behind them, church officials say the Easter services differ little from regular Sunday worship, except perhaps in the crush of the crowd and the spirit of the day.
Rev. Byron Brazier, assistant pastor and son of Bishop Brazier, said Easter services, like typical Sunday services, will culminate in an altar call, when those in the crowd who have not been baptized are invited to come forward and be immersed on the spot.
The church is ready for them. In a well-appointed locker room just off the sanctuary, special robes and non-skid slippers hang ready. Different teams on the baptismal committee lead the candidates forward, help them to walk through the full-immersion pool and then escort them up to a prayer room where the new Christians sometimes find themselves speaking in tongues.
“More times than not they do,” said Byron Brazier. “People are filled with the Holy Spirit.”
But if he can predict the size of the crowd within a few dozen people and outline the order the service will take, Brazier refuses to guess at how many people might be moved to join in Christianity’s most basic rite Sunday, when the baptismal theme of rebirth dovetails with the Easter message of resurrection.
“There’s no way to tell. That’s like trying to forecast where a tornado is going to strike. Nobody can predict when the Lord will take hold of people,” Brazier said.
At Willow Creek, a troupe of seven actors rehearsed overtime last week to prepare the drama “Hunting for Easter,” which they will perform at each of the Easter services.
The script, aimed straight at the non-believers who will be testing the waters at Willow Creek this weekend, tells the story of a little girl who judges Easter by the amount of chocolate the Easter Bunny brings her. As events unfold at a family celebration, however, the girl discovers that Easter is found not in a full basket but the empty tomb.
“The service is understandable to those who are not yet sure Christ is there,” said Rev. Lee Strobel, a teaching pastor at Willow Creek. “We try to present it in a very practical way. . . . It’s application-oriented.”
To get that message across to 5,000 people at a time requires a substantial support staff. More than 350 employees hurried through the halls of the 352,000-square-foot complex last week, hauling equipment and murmuring into walkie-talkies.
Some of the work is directed at the services themselves, which are announced on video monitors in the church dining room. But Willow Creek also tries to draw people into the Easter message through the nearly 100 other ministries it offers, from support groups to financial advice to the bookstore, where an entire section is labeled “Top Ten Devotionals.”
“These will move fast,” volunteer clerk Grace Carnesciali mused as she pointed to a shelf filled with $5 “Jesus” videos.
Carnesciali, who has attended Willow Creek for 18 of the church’s 23 years, said the careful orchestration of activity helps those in the crowd concentrate on the message.
“They preach the word of Christ, then they show the word in drama and in music,” she said. “Nothing is done haphazardly here; you can always be assured of excellence.”
Though the style is different, the same emphasis on the details runs through the operation of the Apostolic Church of God, where more than 2,000 volunteers do everything from feeding and clothing the homeless to giving French lessons.
Hospitality greeters have a different job than ushers, and each receives hours of training before they represent the church. They learn what to say and how to say it, how to help congregants with special needs and how to put their own moods and attitudes aside.
By the time Easter Sunday rolls around, the machinery is already in high gear.
“Everything is in its place,” said the younger Brazier. “It’s too big to manage individually. You have to trust that TV is here, that the hospitality is in place, that the ushers are ready.”
That scale does not appear to daunt those who will be in the crowds Sunday morning. They maintain that amid the masses, the message is still personal.
“It’s not overwhelming,” said Debbie Kreml, a child-care worker and longtime member at Willow Creek. “People have access to something that is very pertinent to their lives.”
Still, even those who find strength in numbers recognize that there is a need for more intimate moments on communal holidays. At the Apostolic Church of God, the Sunday banquet that draws hundreds each week has been replaced with a smaller group meal, while the 4 p.m. worship service has been canceled altogether.
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“We believe there are times when people should be with their families,” Brazier said.