Vertical Passion Week

What distinguishes Passion Week in a vertical church?

1: Passion Week is a week, not a day or a weekend. We give our people special materials and devotionals to work through personally. We give them music to listen to on their way to church. We are a church family and we love to remember and, ultimately, rejoice together. Check out the website TheDayJesusDied.com, where you will find our Good Friday service from last year and the devotional we led our congregation through this year.

2: The primary goal remains the exaltation of Jesus Christ—not the winning of lost people, which is a byproduct of God’s manifest presence and never the primary goal. (More on this: “Unafraid Witness” from Vertical Church.)

3: The focus on the cross and “Good Friday” is as important as the empty tomb and Easter celebration. At Harvest we’ve built a culture of somber reflection surrounding Good Friday services. People travel great distances to our original campus from all over Chicagoland, yet the attendance is 4/5 of our Easter totals. Everyone wears black, enters in silence, and leaves in sorrow. The service has not a moment of victory or celebration, because that’s the way it was originally. Not a single melody of joy, not a note of triumph! The cross and death of Christ are only seen as good—the greatest good—looking back. For the first disciples, the death of Christ was the end, the loss of who and how every hope might find fulfillment. They DID NOT KNOW or understand that Christ was not finished personally when He said “It is finished” (John 19:30).

Good Friday reflection is like being pulled back in a slingshot. Looking into the empty tomb and rejoicing from the depth of your soul are massively amplified through your heart awareness of what sin’s payment cost God’s Son. Of course you don’t need a service to do that, but it is our joy to serve our people by leading them down the road of suffering as a preparation to shout “Hallelujah!”

The Good Friday service is creative and immersive. This year our gifted media department, under Dallas Jenkins, has developed a short film to guide our reflection. Check out the trailer here. So excited.

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

4: On Sunday, nothing is subtle or secretive. Christ is Risen! Proclaim it from the house tops! People will show up with signs and banners and bright clothes. They will make themselves hoarse singing and shouting and celebrating from the bottom of their hearts. We try as best we can to follow the mental/emotional cycle of the first disciples that very first weekend. The music will be incredible and celebratory. The Vertical Church Band and hundreds of volunteers will be out in force taking the good news to each of our campuses across this great city. No felt needs, no subtle explanation to avoid offending people dragged into church against their will.

The compelling thing about the resurrection of Jesus is its life-altering, irrefutable reality. Don’t apologize for it or give the impression that lost people need to appreciate it. Lead the saved to celebrate it, and the Lord Himself will descend in saving power and call to Himself those He has been drawing. Get fired up yourself, Pastor. Think long and deep about the awesome, history-altering event. This spring I am concluding our two-year study in the Gospel of John. I will be preaching for six weeks on Christ’s six resurrection appearances.

5: Pray and lead your people to pray for God’s manifest presence in church this weekend. “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might tremble at Your presence” (Isaiah 64:1). This is Easter number 26 for Kathy and I at Harvest Bible Chapel, and I am undiminished in my delight. Listen my pastor friend, you may not have a parking problem or an overflow room or a shortage of bulletins. You may not have a 100-voice choir or a world-famous soloist or an orchestra or a movie (you can use ours next year). But you have the living Christ, you have the bloody cross and the empty tomb, and you can revel in that personally and from the pulpit just as much as any other preacher. I remember well the first time (year 5) we had to bring a few extra chairs into our single service in a small, rented high school auditorium.

Let our Father observe you seeing and savoring personally what we are leading others to celebrate. Pray now, and continuously ask the Holy Spirit to fall upon your church in power, because “when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

It’s going to be another AWESOME Easter.

James