Easter weekend used to draw a low attendance at International Christian Fellowship (ICF) Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland. Then a friend encouraged Pastor Leo Bigger, “Try an experiment. Run a kids’ musical for 20 minutes of the Easter service.”
Bigger took his friend’s advice. To his surprise, the church drew more people that Easter than ever before. Not only did people in the congregation come, but they invited relatives and friends. More importantly, a weekend that had been rote or boring for many came alive with excitement and meaning.
ICF Zurich tried it again the next year, and Easter attendance doubled.
“We realized that a musical is a visual way of telling a story,” Bigger says, “and you can reach many different kinds of people with that kind of event.”
Fast-forward to today, when I attended the 2024 Holy Week services. The kids’ musical has been replaced by one aimed at adults, and the one service has become six, spread across Good Friday, Saturday and Easter Sunday. More than 19,000 people experienced the musical “Joyride,” with over 10,000 people on site—many of them young adults—and at least 9,000 online. Many responded to Bigger’s invitation to become a follower of Jesus Christ, and even more picked up a “starter” Bible that the church prints and gives to anyone who asks.
The church, which currently draws about 6,500 weekly across six locations in the greater Zurich area, also runs a musical at Christmas. Although Easter is bigger, each event involves a large percentage of the congregation as scriptwriters, actors, costumers, set builders, tech people, ushers, and people who walk the nearby street offering free tickets.
Each musical is different. This year’s Easter presentation involved readings from Job, and then a modern retelling of Job.
Bigger has outlined a handful of standards for these significant events. They include that it must be a musical told using a story from the Bible that includes a call to follow Jesus, and that the whole service needs to be less than 90 minutes.
Then he steps away and lets staff and volunteers carry the entire responsibility.
“I saw this year’s musical Thursday night for the dress rehearsal for the very first time,” he noted—not bragging, but as a passing comment to explain that he needed to learn where to stand for his short gospel presentation at the conclusion.
“This is what I want,” Bigger underscores. “After I map out the standards, I’m not in charge anymore. This is how my wife, Susanna, and I lead the church in every area.”
That wasn’t always his approach to leadership. “We’ve learned to lead more through collaboration,” he explains, “and that’s why we have so many young people. They want to be part of the decision-making and leadership. And they like to give feedback.”
Experiments in Ministry
Easter is not the only area where the church experiments. “The mission field in Europe is huge. Our goal is always to reach new people, and we’ve tried a lot of new things to do that,” Bigger says. “One of my models is Charles Spurgeon, whose church reached thousands of people in London in the 1800s, and he was always looking for new ways to reach them. In fact, he challenged pastors of his day to try at least one new idea each year.”
As the ICF Zurich’s Sunday-evening service grew to about 1,300 mostly Gen Z attendees, Bigger thought, Why not hand over this service to Gen Z leadership?
He’s still involved, phasing out step-by-step, gradually transitioning to a role focused on offering encouragement and fatherly guidance. He’s challenged other pastors who lead multiple services to do likewise with one of their services.
“If a leader’s goal is to multiply ministry,” he observes, “then raising up other leaders is a big game changer.”
A series of experiments led to an event known as Get Free Weekend. “We want to help our people make disciples,” Bigger explains. “So, if you lead a friend to Christ, we help you take that friend through the first steps of following Christ. One of those steps is to bring your friend to a Get Free Weekend.”
It’s a time of asking questions, writing down your sins, confessing them, and then burning your list, being baptized, and learning about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Another experiment resulted in microchurches. It started with a couple from Germany who contacted Bigger during the pandemic saying that 10 people were meeting every Sunday in their living room, watching the message, and then praying and eating together.
“Three weeks later during my message, I asked if other listeners were like that,” Bigger says. “Maybe you’re living somewhere with no church, but you think there are five to 10 people you can bring together on a Sunday. If you’re willing to start a microchurch like that, just shoot me an email.”
Amazingly, about 100 people emailed him and about 40 started a microchurch. Today ICF Zurich has 35 microchurches across seven countries involving about 500 people. Some have become self-supporting church plants, led by people who work in the marketplace but have a heart to do ministry.
“We train them regularly through Zoom calls, we have an online pastor for them, and these leaders come to our annual training conference,” Bigger says.
Grounded in the Bible
Whatever the experiment, Bigger makes sure it’s connected to the strong Bible teaching that he describes as the church’s foundation. And that solid approach to teaching is “not afraid of hot topics,” he adds. “People are coming to church with questions and you cannot skip them—we must explain the why. And if we don’t teach them the why behind the what, they’ll look at YouTube and get their answers from [somewhere else].”
And after making that statement, he headed out to his third presentation of the musical for the day, where his cameo appearance at the conclusion did just that—gave the why behind the tough questions that Job raised, and then showed how a relationship with God through Jesus is the pathway to eternal life.
Pastor Bigger’s commitment to staying rooted in sound biblical teaching shines through, driving the ICF movement of 77 ICF churches across 13 countries—and growing.
ICF ZURICH
Zurich, Switzerland
Senior Pastors: Leo and Susanna Bigger
Website: ICF.church/zuerich
Founded: 1990
Denomination: Nondenominational
Attendance: 6,500 across six locations in the greater Zurich area