Easter Effect
Largest single-Sunday spike; often adds extra services.
The Easter Effect refers to the attendance phenomenon where Easter Sunday produces the single largest attendance spike of the church calendar year. Many churches see 150-200% of their normal attendance, and some add extra service times specifically for this Sunday.
Kingdom Metrics handles the Easter Effect analytically by flagging it as a growth driver and calculating a specific GDR for the Easter period. Because Easter attendance is so far above the baseline, it is excluded from the behavioral capacity calculation (which uses top-8 Sundays) to prevent it from artificially inflating the ceiling.
Why it matters for your church: Easter is your church's biggest front door of the year. The Easter Effect metric lets you track year-over-year Easter attendance, measure how many Easter guests return in the following weeks, and evaluate whether your Easter strategy (invite campaigns, service quality, follow-up) is improving over time.