Thousands attend Easter performance at Calvary Church

Mike Katzembach, a burly Aurora man wearing a red tunic, faux-bronze helmet and sandals, could both easily pass for a Roman soldier.

The Naperville resident stood outside the auditorium to Calvary Church in Naperville Sunday toward the tail end of the church's Easter services. Each year, the 6,000-member megachurch nestled among the strip malls and big-box stores along Route 59 puts on a major production in celebration of the holiday. This year was no different.

Katzembach, along with more than 100 people from the church, spent the last two months putting together an intricate set, collecting period costumes and memorizing lines all in an effort to recreate the final moments of the Resurrection.

"People learn in a lot of different ways," Josh Cook, one of the pastors, said of the annual Easter performances which in some years have included live camels on stage. "And with the society we live in, with peoples' increasingly short attention spans, we wanted to reach out in a way that catches them."

Before the performance even began, the church's auditorium was filled to capacity, sending crowds to additional rooms in the sprawling campus that includes several classrooms, children's play rooms and a Starbucks-like coffee shop. Roughly 4,000 people arrived for the show.

Steve Dobres, one of the actors, has been performing in the annual Easter showcases for the last 22 years.

"We're doing this for the people," Dobres said. "It's a way to show everyone just exactly what Christ did for us."