My friend Wes recently posted a great article on his thoughts about the commercialization of Easter. I’d highly encourage everyone to go check it out. Today when chatting with him we were both lamenting about a new trend that we’ve been noticing; MASSIVE Easter egg hunts at mega churches.

Lately around the metro I’ve been seeing signs for different churches advertising their mega egg hunts. They tout that they have thousands of eggs hidden, as if the more eggs that you can find, the better it is that you have to go to church. It’s one of those things that continually bugs me about Evangelical Protestantism. I get the idea of wanting to have a community building event, and I’m sure churches have been doing little egg hunts for the kids for years. What bugs me is that it has now become a marketing ploy. The number of eggs has become so substantial that it’s a gimmick to get you to visit their church.

At a certain point many of these church marketing ploys smack me as desperation. Yes, I know that Christianity (and many formal religion) are on the decline in the world, and particularly in America. But, what do we gain by becoming a feel-good event center? Do we need to cajole and prod people to experience the message of Christ with cheap gimmicks? Is that really how we should be showing Christ to the world?

Young people today are smart. They know when they’re being pandered to, and all it’s going to do is backfire and push people farther away from the sacrificial example of Christ that is the true message of Easter. Let’s remember that He is risen indeed!