Vitalizing Cohort with a Successful Experiment
/Devine FUMC hosted a community-wide Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday the day before Easter. We had about 400 in the community show up including about 200 children who hunted for about 7,500 candy-filled eggs. We gave away about 50 sets of Resurrection Eggs to families to help them share the meaning of Easter. We had a plastic egg recycling station that doubled as a photo backdrop. We had a “sharing table” where kids with too many could share with kids with too few eggs. We asked some youth to be “helpers” and gave each a lanyard with a nametag and a bag of candy. We gave away prizes at each of the five egg hunts, and an additional prize at a sixth egg hunt for children who arrived late.
The postal carrier for the area told one of our members, “In all my years delivering the mail in Devine, I have never seen anything like this--many people and children gathered at one place.”
Many in the community responded to our invitations, attending Easter Sunday where we worshiped 208 in three services, a 39% increase over the previous year. Some community families came by our office the following week to drop off plastic eggs, wanting to support us in making the Egg Hunt an annual community event. It will be! We praise God for the incredible blessing we all shared. It will be! We praise God for the incredible blessing we all shared.
Your fellow servant in Christ,
Pastor Harold Dailey