Look, I have been a Christian most of my life, and throughout my life have had the debates on Christmas and Santa, Easter and the Bunny……and to be honest, I went to Bible College, so I am aware of the traditions and histories and rituals of said holidays and how they don’t pertain to Jesus…….whatever.

Is it a sin to teach your kids about Santa? I don’t know. Is it a sin to hide an Easter Basket on Easter Sunday with colored eggs in it? Who knows at this point. More importantly, is it right for a Church to hold an EASTER EGG HUNT for the community? I say ABSOLUTELY.

I know every angle of detraction there is for this one, from the paganist reasons to the “the church could have spent that money on the poor” reasons……and frankly, if those are your reasons, it seems to me you are just looking for something to complain about. Seriously, I just said that.

Jesus before He left this planet, gave His followers ONE job. That job, which most American Churches have walked away from, was to provide those who don’t know Him with an opportunity to meet Him. The best part is that those of you who are starting to get angry at the fact that I would use some gimmick plastic egg filled with candy as a “draw” for some unchurched person to come to our Easter service full well believe, or should I say, HOPE that people will magically come to your church when the truth is, they don’t know who you are, what you believe, why you are there and frankly, if your church burned down tomorrow, wouldn’t notice you were gone.

Angry yet? I hope so.

The Bible says to COMPEL them to come. COMPEL THEM TO COME. That doesn’t mean putting catchy phrases on your churches letter board by the street, the best of which I ever saw was, “If you love Jesus, Come on in!!” Well, what if you DON’T love Jesus? What if you are searching for the truth? What if you have questions?

Why do we try to force people to live by our rules and beliefs when they don’t believe what we believe? How can they understand anything when they don’t know anything about what you understand?

Jesus said to compel them to come in, if providing someone’s kids with some free candy jammed in a plastic colored egg hidden in a swampy field gets them to show up on Sunday, hear the Gospel and have an opportunity to accept Jesus, send me all the colored eggs you got!!!!

Our job is to get them in the door using any means necessary short of sin. After that, it’s in God’s hands.

Word.

~jfm3~

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Executive Pastor Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.