Post Easter Sunday

So your church probably had a large number of visitors last Sunday. You, as a pastor, gave them the best service programming of the year and preached your heart out. You preached the Gospel in creative and complelling ways. You saw new people respond to the message and surrender their lives to Jesus. You tried your best to follow up with all of your visitors. All week long you were given affirmation for what a great job you and your team did by both regulars and visitors alike. It was a ministry high to say the least!

This is what this past Easter Sunday was like for me and my church. But what do you do when you poured your heart out last week, and this week none of the people who visited or gave their lives to Christ the week before come back this week?? Didn’t these people love what they experienced the week before?! Didn’t they have an encounter with God just seven days prior? And wasn’t it in your church? What went wrong?

These are the feelings most pastors feel on Post Easter Sunday. As long as you glorified God and did all you could under the power and leading of the Holy Spirit, and the dedication and hard work of your entire staff, to advance His Kingdom, you hae nothing to feel bad about!

How and when people respond to the Gospel, and what they do after they have encountered it IS NOT UP TO YOU. It’s up to God and all those people are in His hands.

So on this Post Easter Sunday, don’t allow yourself to be depressed. Be confident in the saving power of the Gospel that you preached last week, and this week. And understand that it is likely that the visitors you ministered to last week will come back again soon.