There is a quirk in the Revised Common Lectionary that most people in the pews miss. From Easter Sunday through Pentecost, the first reading on Sunday morning is not from the Old Testament. It is from the Acts of the Apostles. For seven Sundays in a row the lectionary brings the early church into the room, walking through Peter's Pentecost sermon, the formation of the Jerusalem community, the stoning of Stephen, and Paul's address to the Athenian intellectuals at the Areopagus. The 2026 Easter season runs from April 5 through Pentecost on June 7, and a growing number of pastors are deciding to lean into that arc instead of treating it like background reading.
The shift is small but it matters for how a congregation hears the resurrection. For most of the year the Old Testament reading sits next to a Gospel passage and a New Testament epistle, and the preacher has to decide which to anchor on. During Eastertide the rhythm changes. Acts becomes the primary first reading, and the lectionary's underlying logic seems to be that Acts shows what it looks like and sounds like when believers actually give testimony to a risen Jesus. The texts move forward week to week with their own narrative drive. A preacher who works straight through them is teaching a connected story rather than picking a verse out of a list.
That is what some Year A preaching plans for 2026 are doing. The series Working Preacher published this spring walks through Easter 2 through Easter 7 with a focus on what the early community did once it discovered that the resurrection was not only an event but a vocation. The Acts readings for Easter 2 through Easter 4 stay inside Peter's Pentecost sermon and the church it created. Easter 5 turns to Stephen's death. Easter 6 jumps to Paul's homiletical attempt at convincing a curious yet suspicious crowd of Athenian intellectuals that the unknown god they were already worshipping had a name. Easter 7 brings the church back to the upper room, waiting for the Spirit.
For pastors who feel like Easter Sunday gets all the attention and then everything quietly deflates by week two, the Acts cycle offers a way to keep momentum. Lifeway Research data from 2024 showed that the average congregation drops 22 percent in attendance between Easter Sunday and the second Sunday of Easter. The Acts readings give a reason to keep showing up. They tell the story of what the resurrection actually produced, which is not a feeling or a holiday but a movement that scattered out from one room in Jerusalem to a port in Greece and a synagogue in Antioch. Preached as a continuous narrative, the season starts to feel less like an aftermath and more like a runway.
The denominations that follow the lectionary most closely include Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, and many United Church of Christ congregations. That covers a wide swath of American Christianity. Non lectionary churches, including most Baptist and non denominational congregations, do not technically follow the same calendar but increasingly borrow from it. A pastor at a non denominational church who runs a six week series called something like Resurrected People or The First Church is often working from the same underlying texts. The Acts readings during Eastertide are some of the most preached passages in the Christian calendar, even when the preacher does not name them.
There is also a practical pastoral benefit. Acts is one of the most narrative books in the New Testament, which makes it easier to preach in a way that holds the attention of younger congregants and people who did not grow up in church. Stories travel better than abstract theology, and Peter standing up at Pentecost or Paul preaching at the Areopagus are stories with characters, settings, conflict, and stakes. Pew Research data shows that under 35 attendance at liturgical churches has grown for the third year in a row, and one of the reasons cited in qualitative surveys is the sense that the lectionary gives people something solid to hold onto. Acts in Eastertide gives that audience a story arc that lasts almost two months.
The harder challenge is that Acts also forces a preacher into territory that does not always preach easy. Stephen's stoning is in the middle of the cycle. The early church gets persecuted. Ananias and Sapphira drop dead in chapter five. Paul has to talk his way out of a riot. The lectionary handles some of this with its selective verse choices, but pastors who follow the daily readings or who preach the full chapters end up wrestling with discipline, hypocrisy, and martyrdom inside a season that is supposed to be about resurrection joy. That tension is part of what makes the cycle interesting. Resurrection in Acts is never a private comfort. It is a public claim that costs people their jobs, their reputations, and sometimes their lives.
Pentecost on June 7 closes the cycle. The Acts 2 reading that day brings the season full circle, returning to the same text Peter preached on Easter 2 but this time with the Spirit pouring out in the upper room. For pastors who have walked their congregation through Acts for seven straight weeks, that final Sunday is not just a feast day. It is the payoff of a story that has been building all season long. The growing number of pastors planning Eastertide that way are doing something that the lectionary has been quietly suggesting for a long time. They are letting Acts do what Acts was written to do, which is testify.