#egghunts

Easter is coming! I can't believe it's almost here! Especially after that 8 week long January and 6 week long February and now all the sudden March was only three weeks....and BAM! Spring break and Easter are around the corner. Life is weird. 2019 is officially on a roll and then, before you know it, it'll be Fall (pumpkin spice lattes! Eeeek!) and then, the main event, Christmas! Or is that the main event?

Ya'all, I am a Christmas lover! Through and through! For me, that is the culmination of the whole year! Christmas means Christ's birth, that a savior has come to the world due to the great love of our creative Father to reconcile us to Himself (Luke 2)! And due to this, year after year, we end our calendar celebrating with friends and family, cozy decor, gifts that show our love for one another and so much more! What better way to close out a year than to put all our perspectives and priorities straight. I truly love Christmas.

But is it really the main event? Christ's birth is certainly a big deal. But, really, it points to what's coming down the road! The main event is when He lays down His life to reconcile us all to Him and the Father! This is where life begins! Real life! This is where hope is born and fear dies! This is where death, the whole idea and reality of it, loses it's sting (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)! Imagine an angry bee coming in for the sting zooming right toward you with the nastiest smirk on his face, then he comes in close makes contact with your skin and as you grimace and brace yourself, it's just a little "boop". Every muscle in your body relaxes realizing no real threat has occurred and you burst into giggles with the relief and hilarity of it all! The bee bumbles off humiliated and defeated. THAT is what it's like when death comes for those whose life is in Christ. DEATH HAS NO STING.

The reason this is all on my mind is even though I already knew and realized all of this, I recently had a mini wake up call. Isn't it funny how easily the daily ins and outs of life can distract us from our firmly held beliefs? I work at a decent sized church that last year put on a pretty good Easter Egg hunt. This year, I was surprised to learn that for at least this year, we're nixing it.

The immediate response to such news would be "but we had such a good turn out? Isn't the point that we get these people into the church?" Well, of course. However, the reason not to do it was a real perspective shift and priority adjustment...at least for me.

Why We Won't Have an Easter Egg Hunt this Year

So many wonderful organizations in our community put on hunts too. Therefore, are we really meeting a need? That being said, all the time, money, and resources that go into putting on an egg hunt is a big deal! What we began to wonder is "are our kids seeing that we make a big deal out of our hunt and then when Easter hits, we're just mentioning Jesus? The way one of our team member's put it is profound, "We don't want kids to love the egg and like Jesus".

Egg hunts are usually done with the purpose of bringing new kids in. Our church has no trouble seeing new young faces every week in the Kid's Department. That being said, with the statistics that most family's only come to church once or twice a month, we aren't even necessarily seeing the new faces that come, consistently. We get tons of new kiddos every week but the overall attendance numbers stay about the same. What does that tell us? That we need to monopolize on the kiddos that do come when they're there and tell them how amazing Jesus is!

Therefore, although Easter Egg Hunts are always a good time. For this year, we're gonna try something new. We're gonna make Easter Services the big blow out they ought to be! We are gonna go so big that families leave church that weekend with no doubt in their mind that Christ rising from the dead is Easter, and it's a BIG deal (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). Easter at our church will be a Par-Tay!