In-the-Dark Egg Hunt & Devotional

Here's a meeting you can still squeeze in this week - or save it for next week as an after-Easter meeting for your youth group (particularly if you've been busy running egg hunts, pancake breakfasts, or a zillion other Easter activities that youth groups often do.)

Either way, this In-the-Dark Egg Hunt (printable PDF) is a blast with teenagers. And besides having fun, there's a great devotional thought at the end. Enjoy!

Supplies:

• Lots of plastic eggs - at least eight per person
• Lots of good candy - enough to stuff all the eggs
• Interesting small items from the dollar store (like small party favors, silly rings, etc)
• One roll of quarters
• About 10 Gold Dollar pieces from the bank
• One glow stick for each person (available at most retail giants and/or home improvement stores)
• One plastic bag for each person

Before the meeting:

     Announce the biggest and best "In-the-Dark Easter Egg Hunt" in your youth group's history! On the day of the event, get some volunteers together to help stuff and hide the eggs. Pack them with candy. Put quarters in some of them, and make the grand prize eggs the ones with the gold dollars. You may want to keep track of where the dollar eggs are hidden. Make sure you keep the eggs out of places that kids aren't supposed to be.

It's Time to Egg-Hunt!

     Turn out the lights in all rooms where eggs are hidden. Gather your group and pass out glow sticks. Tell them that they will have 15 minutes to find as many eggs as possible, and the only light that can be used is from their glow stick. Let them know that there is candy and cash to be found - but tell them not to open eggs until you're all back together! Remind people about which rooms are fair game and which are off-limits. Then - set them loose!

     With just a few minutes remaining, have some volunteers run through your building announcing "Three minutes left…" etc… Then, when time is up, turn on lights and re-gather your group. Have kids count up their eggs and share their totals.  After the chaos has subsided, gather your group's attention.

Discussion:

(The following discussion can be done as a big group of up to 20 people. If you have more, you may want to consider breaking up into smaller groups, and then re-gathering as a large group when the Bible verse is read.)

Questions to discuss: (Take about eight minutes for these questions.)

• What is your favorite thing you found in an egg and why?
• What was the most difficult part of the egg hunt?
• What would you have done differently if you heard that one of the eggs had $1000 in it?
• If you would have found that egg, do you think you would have shared the money?

Give a two minute warning before you stop their discussion time. Gather some feedback, especially for the last two questions.

Say: "Here's another question for you to talk about. If this egg hunt was a way to tell the story of you and God, would you be the egg or the stuff inside?"

After they've had time to discuss this, read 2 Corinthians 4:7.

We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great  treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

Say: "So - we are the thing that carries around the light of God. The Good News of Easter is that Jesus rose from the dead so that people could have forgiveness of sins and an eternal relationship with God. That's big stuff - and more valuable than candy or money. But sometimes it just doesn't seem as exciting as our egg hunt. So here's what I'd like us to brainstorm today…

What can we do to make our faith in Jesus more exciting for others to find?

It could be ideas that are personal, or things we could do as a youth group, or anything else."

Allow time for sharing ideas. Get the group to pick the top two or three things, and then ask for a few volunteers to work on implementing these ideas.

Close in prayer.