The Big Easter Egg Hunt
Posted by weekirk on April 8, 2007
Imagine an activity that is guaranteed to bring 12-15 families with small children to your church for a relatively easy-to-do event. Imagine that the event itself spurs interests in other church activities and even prompts questions about the time for the next day’s worship. Sounds perfect. right? It does unless you are the preacher and you worry about what having an Easter egg hunt between Good Friday and Easter says theologically about what you are doing.
When I got here I was told that they always have THE EASTER EGG HUNT, with hundreds of small children. Of course the crowd was smaller than that, a lot smaller. Everything is smaller than we remember in a small church. We seldom saw the families who came at other events either. The folks who ran it did a wonderful job, but they were not going to be able to do it this year. In my heart of hearts, I was delighted. We are too small to expend lots of effort into areas that do not bring interested visitors. That, and my theological problem was resolved.
Then one of the moms, with three children of egg gathering age, said that she would like to run the hunt this year. So much for the theological issue. The hunt was back. She did a great job with help from others. It was a smashing success. Every child went home with enough candy to stay awake until Easter morning. We had lots of baked goodies from Celebration Food, and coffee for the parents on a surprisingly cold spring morning.
So the children had fun and may continue to associate Easter with eggs. What then, theologically, can we say in our defense?
The borough has an egg hunt which has about 3 eggs per child. We had about 40 per child. Score 1 for God. God is generous.
The borough’s event is a battle of speed and tenacity. At our place, all children, no matter how young or slow, got more candy than they have teeth. Another 1 for God. God shows no partiality.
If Easter is about rising from death’s door, nothing says rebirth like happy youngsters.
Besides, God can still work it out by giving me a really good Easter sermon.
