EggThyNeighbor lets church celebrate Easter with evangelism
Members of Wildwood United Methodist Church in Magnolia have joined forces with the Easter Bunny.
And, much like Santa’s elves, they have been working behind the scenes for some time to spread holiday cheer.
For the second year in a row, the congregation is hosting “EggThyNeighbor.” Instead of asking the community to come to church for Easter festivities, the church is taking the egg hunt to them.
Volunteers collected eggs, stuffed them with candy and assembled them in bags. On Palm Sunday, church members were invited to pick up the packages, during Wildwood’s Chili and Cookie Cook-off, and then distribute them.
What happens next is a bit of choose your own adventure.
Lead pastor Rhett Ansley explained that the bag of eggs can be left on a doorknob as a gift.
“Or people can take those eggs and place them in the yard of a neighbor,” he said. “A child can walk out and be surprised and experience the joy of searching for the eggs.”
In that case, the recipient will have the bag with a tag reading, “You’ve been egged.”
There will be 12 stuffed eggs hidden in their yards. There is also one empty egg, meant to symbolize Jesus’ empty tomb.
“Enjoy the hunt, but don’t be discouraged when you find the empty egg,” the note on the bag explains. “For He is risen.”
Easter in a pandemic
In the past, Wildwood United Methodist hosted a more traditional Easter eggstravaganza in the parking lot. Usually, about 1,200 individuals attended.
“Then we found ourselves in the middle of the pandemic,” Ansley said.
A large gathering was no longer possible. Still, the pastor wanted the congregation to share in Easter celebrations.
“We knew that we were going to have to be creative,” Ansley said. “And there was still a need for people in the midst of the pandemic to experience the hope and joy of the resurrection.”
“There was probably even more of a need,” Executive Pastor Deanna Young added.
She said the congregation could not come back to church or even see each other. They missed prayer and connection.
Fortunately, Ansley said, the church had a secret weapon — Jessica McMullen, director of children and families.
“She took off and made sure that families had resources to celebrate Easter, even though we weren’t together,” Ansley said.
When COVID-19 first struck, McMullen delivered fun bags, filled with activities, on March 28, 2020, to all children and preteens in the church’s database.
She already knew where children lived and had mapped the houses. It was all in place to do another drop-off for Easter.
“What do we have at church that we can bring to people’s homes so they can experience Easter?”
The church had already collected eggs for the hunt that it could no longer host.
“I started pricing how much I could get egg cartons for,” McMullen said. “And they were pretty reasonable.”
She completed the order and transformed her living room into an assembly line. With the help of her husband, Derrick McMullen, she went to work.
“We filled two cartons at a time with eggs, stuffed them, closed them and stacked them up,” she recalled.
Before long, their living room was full of egg cartons, ready for delivery. The McMullens
recruited Wildwood Christian Academy administrative assistant Stephanie Hammonds and her husband, Mike Hammonds, to help.
In all, there were 300 children on the list. Several families lived far from the church, including Mongtomery and Cypress.
“We took our lists and spent the whole day delivering,” McMullen said.
The extra effort paid off.
“It was so rewarding to see photos of the kids receiving something,” McMullen said.
A new tradition
By Easter 2021, a few families had returned to in-person worship.
“But we still weren’t really in the building,” McMullen said.
She considered ways to build upon and improve last year’s offering.
McMullen contacted Chickfil-A, and the company donated stacks of boxes. She filled boxes with eggs, as well as art supplies. Tucked inside each container were postcards printed with Easter activities.
“It was like a whole Easter celebration in a box,” Ansley said.
Church members united to assemble all the activities and eggs into each package.
Wildwood then hosted a pickup event, complete with the Easter Bunny and Chick-fil-A cow mascot. Church members were invited to drop off the boxes for children they knew —
and even neighbors they had not yet met.
Ansley posted about the boxes onto his Facebook page. “It became a huge outreach,” Ansley said. “And it was a huge work of evangelism. This was a new way to connect with neighbors.”
Pastor Young brought Easter boxes to her grandchildren. She even dropped off a package to a neighbor who just moved in.
Their gate was closed, but she left a box at the entrance and a yard sign reading “EggThyNeighbor.”
“When I drove by later, the box was gone and the sign stayed up through Easter,” Young said.
Sherry Miller, who works in administration at Wildwood, brought boxes to children in her Cypress neighborhood. “They had so much fun,” she said. And parents sent her thank-you notes.
The pandemic inspired the church to rethink the egg hunt, Miller said.
“It’s been such a success, we’re continuing with it,” she said. “It’s about love. It’s about Easter. And it’s about fun.”
Love thy neighbor
This year, EggThyNeighbor returns, bigger and better.
“We wanted to keep things fresh,” Ansley said.
The church made the eggstuffing event a dinner during one of its “Wildwood Wednesdays,” when members of all ages gather for special projects.
“I had such joy to see 3-yearolds with 83-year-olds, all preparing bags and seeing who could do it the fastest,” Young said.
Wildwood turned the egg distribution into a Chili and Cookie Cook-off this year.
Also, the church decided to bump it up to Palm Sunday to allow more time to share the Easter bags. Each contains an invitation to return to worship on Easter Sunday.
McMullen recently told children at church about the eggs, suggesting they share with neighbors regardless of age.
“If you have an elderly person on your street, you could give her the eggs and she would still feel the love,” she added.
“It’s not just for the little kids,” McMullen said. “It’s for everyone. It could make their day.”
She said that EggThyNeighbor is an example of how churches must be creative to remain relevant, especially after the pandemic.
“We need to think outside the box to get people back in church — and we also can bring church to them,” McMullen said. “I don’t think we can just be in our own walls anymore. Besides, the more we can do to blend the church and outreach, the better it is for everyone.”
EggThyNeighbor is ultimately about loving thy neighbor, Ansley said.
“We want people to experience joy — and to know that someone cares about them,” he said. “And there’s a whole lot of love that went into packing these bags.”
Many families are facing difficult times, Ansley said.
“Things are tough for a lot of people right now,” he said. “It’s tough to budget for your home right now, and tough to turn on your TV and see images of war and destruction.”
He thinks of Scripture, describing Mary Magdalene finding Jesus’ open tomb and her initial feelings of fear.
“The story of the Resurrection begins while it was still dark,” Ansley said. “While times are dark, we are still called to move our feet to go and share the good news.”