This Easter will be unlike anything Mars Hill Church has done before. For the first time in well over a decade, our Seattle campuses will come together for one big Sunday service. The last time our church has met for one service as one big family was our first year in existence, 1996. Since then, Mars Hill Church has dispersed into many local neighborhoods, growing from 140 people to 10,000 people, from one to ten locations. Almost all of our campuses are, moreover, already at maximum capacity at their regular services in their usual buildings, which means on Easter—when attendance typically is about 50% above average—we would probably have to turn people away on the best Sunday of the year. And we're not about to do that. So we rented a stadium. What better reason is there to bring the community together than to celebrate Jesus’ empty tomb? At 9:30 a.m. on April 24, we’ll meet at Qwest Field to celebrate Jesus’ sacrificial death and victorious resurrection.We are praying for, by God’s grace, 20,000 attendees and 500 baptisms. ASL will be provided for this service, too. At the same time, our Easter party isn’t just a large Christian get-together. It’s also an opportunity to invite friends and neighbors who don’t know Jesus, or people who may have walked away from him. We also want to make this an opportunity to love our cities so we are partnering with the Seattle's Union Gospel Mission, Hope Place, and Albuquerque Rescue Mission to collect essentials for those in need. For nearly 80 years, the Union Gospel Mission and Hope Place have served the homeless men, women, and children of Seattle. We want to help the Seattle charities reach annual goals for 2011 is 10,000 pairs of tube socks, and Hope Place would love to have 10,000 pairs of diapers. We’re asking all of the members and regular attenders of Mars Hill Church to bring a package of socks and/or diapers to support the effort of these ministries to serve Seattle’s homeless population. We'll be collecting them at campuses leading up to Easter and at Qwest Field, too. Come celebrate Jesus’ resurrection and the new life he gives us, sing with some great artists, celebrate with those being baptized, and help serve some of the most vulnerable in Seattle, all as one big church in one big service on Easter morning. Pastor Dave and elders will be leading the Albuquerque campus, our one campus out of Washington state, in their own Easter service, for obvious reasons. Sign up to be baptized on our Easter page, and R.S.V.P here.