Good Friday Service Ideas: 6 Ways to Make Good Friday Feel Special

Speaker 1 Good Friday is coming up quickly and you’re looking for ways to make your services feel more special this year, I have six things for you to try to make your Good Friday services stand out as different. And so the first thing you should try to make your Good Friday service feel different is to try a different style. You don’t want to have upbeat, joyful, loud music. You don’t want to have the big rock band. Try a different style. Maybe make it acoustic. Maybe get rid of all the fast songs. Maybe go straight into slow, sombre, reflective songs. Don’t even speak or talk at the top of service. Instead of greeting the church, just start quietly finger-picking your guitar or have the piano start playing a haunting melody. But you want to try a different style of music for your Good Friday services. And that leads to point number two, try different instruments. Maybe instead of using a full drum kit, you use an acoustic kit, or you use a box, a cajón, a shaker, a jembe, something more acoustic, more mellow. Or maybe you hire a cellist or a violinist to come in who can improvise and play on top of your band and give both sonically and visually a difference from a normal Sunday service.

Speaker 1 So excited about the cello. I personally like cello because it’s more warm and spooky and haunting, and it’s also bigger, larger, visually, so it’s easier to spot on the stage, your congregation will obviously see, Oh, there is something different. We used a cello this year, and we got a lot of comments from people about how much they loved it. I think it’s not just because it sounded great, but because they could see, Wow, that’s really cool. There’s a big cello on stage. So try different instruments. The third thing you can try is a different look. Change up your stage layout, move things around. Maybe put a big, rugged cross right centre stage, or put the band in a semicircle around the cross, or maybe have the band sit on stools so it feels less energetic and more reflective, or maybe put candles in clumps and patches around the stage or across the front of the stage, or maybe backlight your band and your singers and put zero front wash on them so that it’s just their silhouettes. Just in general, turn your lighting down more than you usually do for Sunday morning. Make the whole room darker.

Speaker 1 Those are just some ways that you can try a different look this year. Next, try a different flow, a different service flow. Maybe you cut the announcements out of your service flow, or maybe you put the offering at the end instead of in the middle. Or maybe you start with an instrumental prelude. If you have a cellist, have them play a spooky old hymn about the old rugged cross to start service out. Maybe have an extended scripture reading from an elder or a pastor. They read all of Psalm 53 in one long session while your piano player underscores them. Maybe use extended instrumentals where you put scriptures on the screen that rotate. In fact, I will give you the list of scriptures that we used at my church this year that we put on the screen while the cellist was playing nothing but the blood of Jesus. We had an extended instrumental with scriptures on the screen, and I’ll put a link below. You can grab those scriptures and use them at your church for your Good Friday service. The point is to try a different flow. The next thing to try is doing communion differently.

Speaker 1 Maybe at your church, the ushers usually pass out communion, but this time have the people come forward to receive communion at tables at the front while the band plays a song, and there’s pastors giving out communion to each of the people. Or maybe you have a loaf of bread up there and they’re breaking the bread off themselves and dipping it into the cup so it’s more tactile in nature. The idea is just do communion differently than you currently do it now. A few other ideas to make service feel different is to do the stations of the cross. If you Google it, you’ll find out how to do stations of the cross and put those around the back of the room and let people have an immersive active experience, or have them write down a sin that they recently committed. At some point in the service, have them take out a piece of paper, write down the sin, and then shred it up and throw it in a trash can on the way out of service, or light it on fire, maybe don’t do that, or nail it to a cross. I’ve seen churches do that.

Speaker 1 Where they have a little cross. As people walk out, they can nail their sin to the cross. Those are ways that you can make your Good Friday services feel different. It should feel different. And I would love to learn from you. So if you have other ideas that I didn’t share, please leave a comment so that I can learn and others can learn. So a comment below of what you’re planning on doing or what you’ve done in the past that has worked really well so that we can learn from each other. And while you’re there, make sure you subscribe to this channel and like this video. If you’re looking for a free community to be a part of, I invite you to join the free portion of the Worship Ministry Training Academy. We have over a thousand worship leaders from all over the world sharing ideas, asking questions, and learning from one another. So I encourage you to join the free portion of the Worship Ministry Training Academy. The link is below, and I would love to meet you inside. I’m there every day engaging with people, so I would love to meet you and engage with you and encourage you in your ministry.

Speaker 1 So thanks for watching this video. Click on whatever YouTube is recommending next. If it’s from Worship Ministry Training, be sure to like and subscribe, and I will see you in the next video or in the academy. God bless.