I’ve been reading about all the Easter Egg hunts happening around the kidmin world lately. I love the creative and innovative approach to the age old egg hunt. From tossing eggs from helicopters or indoor scavenger hunts – the event is alive and well. Whether you’re doing a hunt or thinking about doing a hunt (if you just thinking about doing a hunt right now, it’s probably too late), it’s important to think about why you’re doing an Easter Egg Hunt.

Four years ago, my church started an Easter Egg Hunt. We call it Egg-A-Palooza.

Egg-A-Palooza was born to meet a very specific need. Easter is one of our highest attended weekends and we were challenged with the task to make more room for people during our Sunday services. For several years, we had offered Saturday services that simply weren’t filling up where Sunday morning was standing room only. We decided that the best way to provide more seats on Sunday morning was to give people a compelling reason to show up on Saturday.

I remember the meeting clearly. We were brainstorming ideas and then someone looked at me and said, “we could do an egg hunt.” I think my initial response was, “Do you mean YOU can do an egg hunt or WE can do an egg hunt?” For me, it was important to communicate that simply pulling off Sunday services was HUGE. It was a TON of work. Being tasked to pull off a family event in addition to several huge weekend services was not going to be an easy task. However, if our church saw Egg-A-Palooza as a strategic event where everyone had ownership, then this became a very do-able opportunity.

In a few days, we’ll be holding our 4th Egg-A-Palooza and the service immediately following the event is our biggest service of the weekend (for families).

If you’re doing an Easter Egg hunt, or thinking of doing one, it’s important to ask the question, “why?”

  • Are we doing an egg hunt because it’s fun?
  • Are we doing an egg hunt to serve our community?
  • Are we doing an egg hunt for outreach purposes?
  • Are we doing an egg hunt because… we’ve always done an egg hunt?

You should know why you’re doing it. Leverage that reason. Events have a way of becoming beasts that take on a personality of their own. They get bigger and morph into things beyond their original purpose. When you truly understand why you’re doing it, define the wins for this event.

  • Because of this hunt, we want to see _____ number of people attend that we can invite to Easter.
  • Because of this event, we want to see the following service to be _____ in attendance.
  • Because of this egg hunt, we want to see _____ number of people come to faith.

If you go into your egg hunt with a reason in mind and  specific wins hoped for, you’re far more likely to have a successful event – because you know what success is. This will also keep your Egg Hunt from just becoming that thing you do every year because you’ve done it for so many years.

What about you? Are you doing an egg hunt? What’s the reason and what’s the win?