For Christians, the Big Event : Easter: Churches prepare to mark holiday, many with services aimed at drawing newcomers.

Orange County Christians have had a busy week.

While Catholics and Episcopalians conducted an array of somber rituals, including all-night vigils in their churches, some Lutherans and United Methodists blanketed their communities with mailers aimed at baby boomers.

Hundreds of worshipers spent Friday afternoon carrying a huge wooden cross 2 1/2 miles through the streets of Garden Grove.

And Tom Clark, a member of Calvary Chapel of Capo Beach, spent much of the week painting tranquil scenes of hills, meadows and mountains on a large wooden backdrop.

“It’s my way of giving something back to God through my expression,” said Clark, 32, a professional artist in charge of preparing the scenery for his church’s upcoming outdoor sunrise service at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, expected to draw a crowd of 10,000. “You could look at it as an offering.”

All the hustle and bustle, of course, was in preparation for Sunday’s observance of Easter, the holiest day on the Christian calendar.

“It’s the cornerstone of Christian faith,” said Father Arthur Holquin, rector at the Roman Catholic Holy Family Cathedral in Orange. “At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Christ taking on human flesh, but it’s Easter that celebrates his triumph over death.”

Said Father Warren Pittman, rector at St. Anselm’s Episcopal Church in Garden Grove and one of the organizers of Friday’s cross-bearing procession re-enacting Jesus’ walk to his Crucifixion at Calgary: “For Christians this is the definitive statement by God of his love for us. The fuss and bother is that it sinks into us that we really are loved that much. This is the center point; (Easter) is the reason for everything else, the big event.”

Indeed, members of the clergy said, Easter is the one day when people are most likely to attend church, even if they never go the rest of the year.

“Most people experience some sort of resurrection in their lives,” explained Father Conrad Nordquist of St. John the Divine Episcopal Church in Costa Mesa. “It’s a new birth of one kind or another, whether it’s a new child, new job or graduation from school. Easter is what permits us to tie this into the whole meaning of life and, as we mature, see some eventual purpose in it.”

For some, of course, Easter is primarily a non-religious event. Orange County florists, for instance, report doing brisk business in lilies, carnations and daisies purchased by husbands for wives, friends for friends and children for parents.

“Next to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, Easter is the busiest time for us,” said Nicole Stein, a clerk at a Conroy’s flower shop in Irvine who reported a 30% increase in sales.

And thousands of children will be participating in largely secular Easter egg hunts today at dozens of locations throughout the county.

For religionists, however, the holiday is often seen as a way to recruit new adherents. To that end, many churches this year are planning Easter sunrise services--in some cases interdenominational--aimed at drawing newcomers.

Nordquist’s church will hold a 6:15 a.m. outdoor service at Costa Mesa’s newly completed Triangle Square in conjunction with Costa Mesa’s Church of the Nazarene, St. Joachim Catholic Church and First United Methodist Church. One of their major goals, organizers said, is to attract people who do not yet belong to any of the four participating congregations.

And Christ Church by the Sea, a United Methodist institution in Newport Beach, is planning its third annual sunrise service on the beach near 14th Street and Balboa Boulevard, to which participants are encouraged to bring blankets and beach chairs.

“Three years ago, we decided that this would be a wonderful outreach to the community,” said church manager Nancy Remley. Members of the congregation have publicized the event by distributing 8,000 flyers door to door. “It’s absolutely wonderful to watch them come on bicycles, on foot or by car, mostly people we’ve never seen before,” she said. “It’s very biblical; you turn around and all these people are coming together like they must have gathered 2,000 years ago.”

A handful of Orange County churches, in fact, have taken this mass-marketing approach to new heights by mailing out thousands of leaflets aimed at specific demographic groups they hope to attract.

Hope Community Church, a new Lutheran institution holding its inaugural service on Easter morning at El Rancho Junior High School in Anaheim, sent out 60,000 mailers advertising the event to people age 25 to 49 living within a seven-mile radius of Yorba Linda, where it hopes to lease a building within the next year.

“We are specifically reaching out to unchurched baby boomers within the greater Yorba Linda area,” the Rev. David Glesne explained.

The Rev. Craig Miller, pastor of Santiago Hills Community Church, a United Methodist church in Orange, agreed that baby boomers make good potential churchgoers. In fact, Miller said, he recently published a book called “Baby Boomer Spirituality.” And to promote its Easter service, his church--which opened two years ago and has only 70 members--sent 10,000 flyers out to baby boomers in Orange, Tustin, Irvine and unincorporated areas near Santa Ana.

“As boomers have children,” Miller said, “they want to take their kids to church, and Easter is the No. 1 time that people will try out a church.”