Easter weekend is upon us, and a couple of Winnipeg pastors are sharing what their churches are doing and what Easter means to them.
Abundant Life Baptist Church
Rod Neufeld is the director of youth ministries, Night Church, and community outreach at Abundant Life Baptist Church.
"We have a Good Friday service and Sunday service," Neufeld says. "We also have youth on Friday night."
While Neufeld says that they didn't use to have youth on Good Friday, all the youth want to come. Also, multiple students have asked him to explain the meaning of Easter to them.
"For Good Friday with youth, we're doing communion because that's pretty much what happened that night."
Taking the day to reflect on what the day means, while explaining to the students who have heard the story multiple times, or for the first time.
"I grew up going to church and I heard the same Easter message every year. Sometimes, we're so easily caught up in repeating what we've heard and that's one of the things I noticed when I started night church. We could go into a church and ask 100 people what Easter is about and they'd say, 'Jesus died for our sins.' Which to us means a lot, but to someone who doesn't know Him, what does that mean?"
Abundant Life Baptist Church is located at 1396 Plessis Road in Winnipeg.
Oasis Church
Alex Janzen is the middle school pastor at Oasis Church.
"Normally we run two services on a weekend but this weekend, we've got five. We've got two Good Friday Services and three Easter Sunday services with kids programming in each of them. The services are always impactful and creative, and obviously Sunday is very celebrational," Janzen says.
"The Lord has reminded me, even in the last few days, He is the treasure. We can do many things for Him, in lots of different and creative ways but over all of it, it's for His glory because He is the treasure to be found. This Easter weekend means everything that we can celebrate King Jesus and God coming and offering Himself to bring us to Himself."
Expecting that the services will be filled with regulars as well as some new comers, Janzen and the team at Oasis are looking forward to it.
"We're expecting many visitors as lots of our church has been handing out invitations for the last month or so."
Oasis Church is located at 940 Elmhurst Road in Winnipeg.