South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Local: Churches get creative to hold Easter services.
Churches get creative for Easter worship
The Lineberry family of Boca Raton will wear their Easter finest on Sunday.
Father and sons will put on their button-down shirts and mom Kim will wear a bright yellow dress with matching jacket. At 10:30 a.m., they’ll sit down on their couch for Advent Lutheran Church’s online service.
They could wear their sweatpants and T-shirts, and no one would know the difference. But Kim Lineberry said she wants her sons, who are 11 and 12, to understand Easter is a different type of day from the many they have spent homebound during the coronavirus pandemic. She wants them to experience the ceremonies and traditions she cherishes even during these frustrating times.
“We’ll have communion with our own crackers,” said Lineberry, 42, a financial adviser. “We’ll have donuts after services because that’s what they always serve at church. Then we’ll do an Easter egg hunt around the house.”
Many families have been working to create a semblance of normalcy during the coronavirus crisis, but Easter has posed a new challenge for the Christian faithful: On the biggest attendance day of the year, churches are closed, forcing new approaches to worship and fellowship.
Polls show Easter is the most attended church day, with Christmas and Mothers’ Day following next. Although church attendance has been declining across the country, a 2014 poll by LifeWay, a Christian publishing company, showed 57 percent of Catholics and 58 percent of Protestants said they
planned to attend services on Easter.
South Florida congregations often gather for Easter sunrise services on the beach and offer several on-campus services throughout the day to accommodate the hordes who make a once-a-year connection to their roots.
Now, as the pandemic rages, churches have been brainstorming alternatives to keep the crowds connected and hopefully attract new devotees who will give them a try through online media.
That’s how Potential Church in Cooper City came up with its idea for baptisms over Zoom, the video communications app. The Rev. Troy Gramling said the church has been organizing Easter baptisms on the beach for 10 years, with at least 150 people baptized each year, and wanted to keep the momentum going.
One of the church’s pastors will host the Sunday Zoom ceremony, in which congregants will baptize themselves or a family member in a body of water, mostly bathtubs and swimming pools, Gramling said. The entire congregation will be able to watch the simultaneous rites on their computers.
“What we’re doing is just as biblical and even makes it easier for some to participate,” Gramling said.
Becky Brossett will baptize herself, with the help of her husband, in the pool behind their house in Miami Lakes.
Brossett, 44, a fitness coach, said she realized after a Dominican Republic hiking trip two months ago that she wanted to get baptized again.
She was baptized as an infant in the Catholic church but has been attending services at Potential, a non-denominational congregation, for the past four years.
“I’ve been waiting for the right time for a couple of years,” Brossett said. “There was an announcement after the sermon about the Zoom Baptism, and it all came together for me.”
Two other Broward churches have also found creative ways to let participants get as close as possible to a live ceremony while still abiding by social distancing rules.
They are offering drive-in services that visitors can watch from their cars and listen to on the radio or through social media.
At Sunshine Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale, cars will gather in the parking lot, and each car will get a ZipLoc bag with a prayer card, palm leaf and pre-packaged communion.
At Christ Community Church in Pompano Beach, cars are expected to make a semi-circle around a stage on the church’s three-acre property and will tune in to the service through a transmitter.
“We so long to be together,” said the Rev. Dylan Kallioinen, Christ Community’s pastor. “But no one is going to get out of their car.
Ken Mayville, a real estate agent from Boca Raton, said he will miss the pomp and solemnity of Easter at his church, St. Paul Lutheran. He and his family will watch services on a livestream on Sunday.
He remembers Easters as a child in upstate New York, where his family always had a “crazy surprise” for him after church, such as a kite or a bike or an extravagant Easter basket.
“You take it for granted that every year you’ll be able to go to the physical church,” said Mayville, 37, a father of two. “But this year we have to do the prudent thing.”