“We’re not going to interfere with your First Amendment rights to practice your religion,” DeWine said. “But I don’t know any religion that teaches that you should do things that endanger, seriously endanger, other people. I don’t know any religion that says it’s just OK not to worry about your neighbor.”
Roughly 80% of Americans celebrate Easter — with the average person spending about $140.62 on the holiday, according to Forbes.
Pastor Greg Nerger, who oversees children’s and youth ministries at Fellowship Church in Springfield, said it’s easy for families who celebrate Easter to be upset or frustrated by the governor’s order.
LOCAL: Clark County restaurants offering family Easter meals for carryout
“But this Easter should be a really fun time,” Nerger said. “This is setting up parents and families to get together in different ways and have a conversation about their faith, maybe in a way they never have before.”
Nerger said his advice for families this Easter is to “focus on the things you can control,” like reaching out to distinct family “you previously wouldn’t have had the chance to spend the holiday with.”
“You can’t control (the coronavirus). It’s outside of all of our control. What you can control is your setting. You can control setting aside half an hour to have a conversation with your friends or neighbors or family that’s across the country,” Nerger said.
Fellowship Church will livestream their Easter service on Facebook, and on their website, and will also offer an “at-home Easter experience for the whole family,” Nerger said.
“It’s all online and it’s basically got a video component with different things built into it. So there is the Easter story told in creative ways with games involving household objects,” Nerger said. “So it should be really fun time for families to take time to play these games and spend time together.”
Pastor John Pollock of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Springfield said he wanted members of his congregation to be together for the holiday, but didn’t want to jeopardize their health.
Pollock said attendance at their church is down “roughly three-quarters because of virus fears.”
In order to help ease the nerves of churchgoers, Pollock said the church decided to do a parking lot service for Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
“That way people can stay in their cars without worrying about coming in contact with anyone,” Pollock said. “They can roll their window down and participate in the service right from their car.”
Pollock said St. John’s frequently does services at a drive-in movie theater in the summer, so churchgoers are already used to the drive-up service format.
“People who come to worship have plenty of room to separate,” Pollock said.
As for his Easter sermon, Pollock said he will preach a message of safety.
“I’m just telling everyone to be safe and to continue to follow the instructions when they come,” Pollock said. “I’m looking forward to when we can all worship together again.”
LOCAL: Springfield neighborhoods participating in ‘social distancing egg hunt’
Maiden Lane Church of God Pastor Mark Martin, said no matter where or how families are celebrating, those participating in Easter this year should focus on a “very important message about where our world finds itself right now.”
“I’m emphasizing the importance of hope and the gift of hope,” Martin said about his Easter sermon. “I think that’s something people are really needing today. It’s not the first time our world has been in a crisis, and it won’t be the last time. We will get through this together.”
Maiden Lane is also live-streaming their Easter service on Sunday, Martin said. This isn’t a big change for the church, which had been live-streaming services for months before the governor’s order. Maiden Lane also archives services online and on their app to allow church members to watch services whenever they like.
“We were already live-streaming normally, so it was actually a fairly easy shift to go fully online,” Martin said. “In a lot of capacities this wasn’t a big change, but it was a big change for me to be speaking to no people.”
Martin said it’s been a transition for him to speak directly into the camera instead of preaching to a full church.
“Before, when we were live streaming, we were live-streaming our service so I was speaking to the people in the room, now I’m speaking to a camera, which I know I’m still speaking to people and there are people on the other side, but it’s a different feeling to know you are speaking to them through a camera,” Martin said.
Martin said he understands it’s “different” for families too, which is why he wanted to focus on hope for his Easter sermon.
“There is a quote, on the issue of hope from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote a letter to his father while he was in jail on Easter Sunday in 1943,” Martin said.
Bonhoeffer was a German evangelical pastor and theologian who actively spoke out against Adolf Hitler, according to Encyclopedia Britannica’s website. He was jailed and later executed after being accused of being involved in an assassination plot against Hitler.
“He has some wonderful quotes about Easter and hope,” Martin said. “Bonhoeffer wrote, ‘Good Friday and Easter free us to think about other things far beyond our own personal fate, about the ultimate meaning of all life, suffering and events; and we lay hold of a great hope.’”
LOCAL: Coronavirus: Lowe’s closing Easter Sunday to give workers time with family
About the Author