Obviously, the “main event” of your church is the Sunday morning service each week. That’s no secret. But as you know, there are a lot more things going on within the walls of your church that you offer to your congregation. You most likely have environments for children to attend. You probably have a separate time when your youth group meets. You might have Sunday School classes before the main service, or Wednesday night services for people to attend. While these weekly events are all wonderful and vital to your church, there is also a lot of value in having occasional special events at your church to mix things up a little bit.

That being said, here are a few examples of special events you can host at your church to encourage and engage your congregation. 

These are great to put the focus on worship through music rather than a message. You can have anywhere from 7 to 10 songs, based on the length of the service and then you could share a short devotional towards the end. This is also a great time to have communion together if you wanted to incorporate that. The main focus here is to give your church members space to worship the Lord outside of Sunday morning.

You could have these once a month or even just once a quarter. Either way, there’s something very powerful about dedicating certain services throughout the year to focus on prayer. You can ask people to submit prayer requests ahead of time if you want. Or you as the pastor can lead part of the prayer service and then have people split into groups and pray with and for each other. Just as Scripture tells us, where two or more are gathered in His name, He is present, and prayer services are a great way to foster community with the Lord and within your congregation.

Whether it’s a summer kickoff, a Christmas gathering, or a back-to-school bash, seasonal gatherings are great opportunities to engage people in the community and allow your members to invite their friends, families, and neighbors to the church. Fun social events like these are a little less intimidating than Sunday morning, so they allow people to “get their feet wet” at the church and get to know some people before they attend a service. So if you’re looking for ways to focus on outreach and welcome new people into your church, these events are a great place to start.