The area’s city-wide Easter service will be celebrated Sunday, April 1, from 6:30am to 8am at 1st and Grand Boulevard under the bridge (near the River Market Area) in Kansas City. It is, of course, free and participants are encouraged to come and put on the garment of praise as they watch the rising morning sun cast shadows over our city’s skyline.
The service is the culmination of the hearts desire of one man.
Larry Olson sees the local church as a body where each part is essential. Having all the parts present determines how well it functions. Want to run? You need two legs. Want to see depth? You need two eyes. Want to speak? You need a tongue and lungs to force air through your lips.
Olson believes I Corinthians 12 that states the parts we sometimes think of as minor are actually very important. Just as God created each part of the body with a particular function, so too does the church have many parts, all necessary for fulfilling God’s will in our community. His particular passion it seems is to stress the importance of small churches in the bigger scheme of God’s plan.
Can the church you attend say, “We do not need the church down the street or the church downtown or the church in the suburb?” Can the big toe or the little finger go anywhere without the rest of the body?
An Easter Extravaganza
Olson has organized what may be the only city-wide Easter event in Kansas City this year––The 2018 Easter Sunrise Extravaganza. Big churches with million dollar budgets and small churches with no regular office hours are all encouraged to participate as well as individuals without a regular church home. The location of the service is near the River Market Area in Kansas City, which for Olson has tremendous spiritual significance.
“Has not God, through His son Jesus, provided us with ‘power and light to go into the market place’?” asks Olson. “There’s a need to have an event and a place where all the “churches in Kansas City” can lay down the things that divides us and raise up the one thing that unites us–Jesus Christ who died for all of us and is risen! Jesus has given us the victory and we need to express that in unison as one body.”
Olson understands that many churches have their own special events on Easter, and that is why he has organized the sunrise service so that it will not conflict with those events and may even compliment those events.
Olson says this is a service that celebrates the fact that not only did God give us victory over sin through the resurrection of Jesus but also victory over our circumstances / divisions.
“Is there a better time than Easter 2018 as we are in hard times that are only going to get more difficult?” Olson asks, “To see the churches in Kansas City lay down the things that divide them and to raise up the one thing that unites them.”
Jesus said, “. . .that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us that the world may believe that you have sent Me.” (John 17:21)
Olson is confident that the Body of Kansas City will be blessed for “Together we can do much more as one body–one church, functioning as one body, than we can do as individual churches. I believe this is a step in that direction.”
For information, contact Olson at 816-215-5826.
