How to Survive Holy Week- What You'll Need

1. Protein bars and chocolate. But if you've given up chocolate for Lent you've completely messed things up. So, try alcohol unless you're trying not to aid someone else's addiction then just stick with cheeseburgers so that you can have a heart attack during the Good Friday service therefore increasing attendance by the EMT's who come with their sirens blazing.



2. Lots of bulletins. You need to create, edit, and then print with as many mistakes and typos as possible in your bulletins to give people who never ever come to worship something to do during the anthems.



3. Something to go terribly wrong with your building. Like the lights not working or a fire. Flash floods are hard to arrange since the great 'ark/rainbow' incident of Genesis.



4. Staff to become ill or temporarily disabled. This is tricky to accomplish, but it might be good if the flu went around your staff or at least some sort of digestive disease that no one can diagnosis soon enough.



5. Stinky flowers. Order as many smelly spring flowers so that all the people who have allergies come to worship on Easter will hate it and therefore never bother to return again until Christmas when you have stinky poinsettas and evergreens.



6. Indulgent foods. Make sure for the Maundy Thursday service you have stale hard to break bread for Communion. Therefore folks will not longer be interested in Jesus and presume he is as stale and unyeilding as this bread (it wil help you cut down on next year's attendance). Also, if you serve an Easter brunch make sure the food is unedible and looks unappealling. Makes clean up easier later when you drop everything off at the food bank.



7. Make sure you fail to sign people up to greet, usher, and host any of these special worship services. The less friendly people and less times someone new comes in contact with your people the better. Saves you time and money because who'd want their church to grow, anyway?



8. Boring music, dull sermons, ugly people... all of these points should be understood. everyone is more interested anyway in their socceer, baseball, senior year, prom, karate, and music lessons to worry much about God, Jesus, salvation, hope, and joy. So if the people are not interested, then by all means cancel choir practices and put only 10 minutes of study into your sermons.

I hope by now you realize that I really don't recommend any of these things in order to survive Holy Week or as some church workers call it, Hell Week. Each of us in spite of the busyness and long To Do lists must find ways and means to sit and soak in the mysteries of what this week brings for Christians around the world.

May you thrive in this Holy Week and not just survive!