5 Reasons to Go to Church on Easter . . . Even if You're Not a "Churchgoer"

Why Should I Go To Church On Easter?

I've been thinking about getting a gym membership, but I'm not a "gym person." And that's a bigger deal than you might think. I've never been to a gym. My people are not gym people. I have put a lot more effort into avoiding locker rooms than I have ever put into my health. 

And so no one needs to convince me that the gym would be a good thing for me. I know I need it. But there is just a huge psychological hurdle and a lot of inhibition to overcome before I get there.
It's much the same with church for people who don't think of themselves as "church people." And I sympathize with that.

But Easter is one of those times when the intrigued and the desperate, the hopeful and the nostalgic have a pretense for overcoming their inhibitions about coming to church. But that's also what makes it hard. No one wants to be dismissed as a "Cheaster" Christian (Christmas and Easter.) If you, or someone you know, is struggling with this tension I want to give you five good reasons for attending church on Easter, even if you have no intention of going again.

Five Good Reasons for Attending Church on Easter, Even If You Have No Intention of Coming Again:

1. God is real and he asks us to join others in his worship and makes promises about the blessings we'll enjoy when we do. Easter is as good a time as any to "taste and see that the Lord is good."
2. As a visitor you might worry about being conspicuous, but Easter is the sort of Sunday where a good church will have prepared for your arrival but where its attention will be focused on Jesus, not you.
3. Your motivation in visiting a church is less important than God's intention in drawing you. I can't speak for any other church, but if your motivation for visiting mine is to get material for a snarky op-ed, I will welcome you. If you want to get someone off your back, I will welcome you. If you want to scrutinize every word from the platform hoping to hear something you can hold against us, I will welcome you. 
4. My worst Sunday morning church experience was still a better use of my time than what I would have been doing otherwise.
5. Do a simple cost benefit analysis. There is the chance that the service will drag, that you will feel uncomfortably out of place, and that you will end up regretting having gone, in other words that you will have wasted a morning. But there is also the chance that you could end up spending an hour at the intersection of time and eternity having your life changed in the most wonderful way. Let the possibility of the one outweigh the possibility of the other.

And if you've never been to church before and you show up on Easter morning at Furnace Brook I will take my cue from you and head to the gym on Monday morning. But I'm confident of this: good as the gym may be, the church could mean better things for your soul than the gym could ever mean for my body. If my body gets fit it will still be mortal, but on Easter I will celebration Jesus' resurrection from the dead and the hope that resurrection gives me for my own.

​Hope to see you there!

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