Two Thousand Attend an Innovative Church’s Pre-Easter Egg Hunt
Every Easter season, Scott Kearney and the members of The Well Church take an innovative approach to reaching their neighbors with the life-transforming Gospel.
On the Saturday morning before Easter, when many pastors were polishing their sermons for the busy day ahead, Kearney and others held the church’s fifth annual egg hunt. More than 2,000 people, including nearly eight hundred children, attended the event. Children lined up in large groups along a fence and, after a whistle blew, they raced around a large soccer field to find as many plastic eggs as they could within a short time period. Church volunteers had stuffed 16,000 plastic Easter eggs with candy. The children could also have their faces painted and could get a photo with the Easter Bunny.
Young girl proudly shows off her face painting at The Well Church’s annual Easter Egg Hunt
“A lot of people we are trying to reach feel like they have to be completely put together before they come to church. No perfect people are allowed. Nobody’s perfect.” That’s how Kearney somewhat jokingly describes the ministry philosophy of his innovative, contemporary, family-focused congregation in Nashua, New Hampshire.
A Granite state resident since he was a child, Kearney and his wife, Charity, launched the church in the Fall of 2016 “with the imperfect and the skeptic in mind.” The Well Church takes its name from the passage in John 4 when Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman. The church “exists to help our friends and neighbors know and follow Jesus.” The Bible passage sparked “the one prayer we had for a church in Nashua: ‘God, help us to find that one person who does not know you and introduce him to the love of Jesus.’”
Even before moving to southern New Hampshire, he realized “that the vast majority in our region are skeptical about church, so we’re committed to being a church where everyone belongs.” Ministry to Kearney, 37, is about transformation through growing healthy relationships and by living an “authentic” life of Christ-centered service.
Kearney, who was born in New Jersey and raised in Concord, New Hampshire’s capital city, studied for a Bible degree and graduated in 2008 from Gordon College, Wenham, MA, which he described as “a life-transforming experience [when] God started to plant seeds in [him] about being a part of His plan for New Hampshire.” To develop a clear understanding of God’s call to pastoral ministry, he consulted author and Concord resident Gordon MacDonald, who had been the senior pastor of the influential Grace Chapel in Lexington, MA, and later was chancellor of Denver Seminary in Colorado. Kearney received a “breath of fresh air” theologically speaking while studying for a Master of Divinity at Denver, from which he graduated in 2012.
After returning to New England, he was “inspired by all the selfless people” he met in Boston, church planters “who put it all on the line in one of the most unreached places in America.” Kearney “leveraged the momentum” he found in the church planters associated with Send Network-Boston. The North American Mission Board’s Send Network reportedly has started “more than 9,400 churches across North America” since 2010, including churches in Boston. After attending a Send Network church planting conference in Florida, Kearney determined that his call to that sort of a life in New Hampshire was “unmistakably clear.” After about a year as a church planting resident at Netcast Church, on Boston’s North Shore, in Danvers, MA, the Kearneys moved to Nashua.
The Well Church meets Sundays at Girls Inc. of New Hampshire, a community center for girls ages 5 to 18. A visitor to the worship service, in person or online, or to a small group gathering, will encounter a casual atmosphere. “God’s not looking for you to straighten up before you meet him. He wants to meet you right where you are,” Kearney proclaimed.
Everyone who registered for the April 8th egg hunt in the soccer park received a printed invitation to Easter Sunday and either an email or a text message. They did not expect a large crowd of first-time visitors from those who attended the egg hunt, which Kearney called “a seed scattering moment.” Some people have visited the church for worship two years after attending an egg hunt. Last winter, between 150 and 170 people were attending worship in a typical week; but 229 were present Easter Sunday. It’s not clear how many people count themselves as “members” of The Well Church because, the pastor noted, “We are still developing the idea of membership,” but two-thirds of those who attend worship regularly are counted among the committed participants. The church doubled attendance in the last eighteen months, Kearney reported.
The Well Church, he said, does not hold the egg hunt or other events to garner an “immediate response”. The first year they held the community outreach, Kearney says “we had no idea what we were doing, and we just threw the egg hunt together.” Nevertheless, a thousand people showed up for the inaugural event but, Kearney commented, “We were way out of our league.”
A mission team from the Birmingham Metro Baptist Association in Alabama, journeyed to New Hampshire before Easter to canvas nearby neighborhoods and hang Easter Sunday/egg hunt placards on doorknobs if no one was at home. The egg hunt was scheduled for April 1st, but heavy rain required postponement for a week.
Most of the $4,000 it cost the church to purchase the plastic eggs and candy, and pay related expenses, was given by the Nashua church participants. The Baptist Churches of New England provided $1,000 in March for the outreach. Since July 2021, the BCNE has given the church $5,325 to help underwrite a portion of their community service efforts. Kearney said he and his congregation are “crazy grateful” for the BCNE’s “very unselfish” friendship and partnership.
In October, The Well Church holds a “Trunk or Treat” Halloween alternative in a populated neighborhood and several times a summer they partner with the Nashua Parks and Recreation Department by giving away snow cones and setting up a table for face painting. They also staff some of the city’s bounce houses, distribute church information, and even conduct a raffle.
Kearney calls church planting “one of the greatest privileges of my life, and one of the hardest things in my life. God’s done a lot of transforming work in me and in other people. I have no intention of ever moving from Nashua. This is what I want to do the rest of my life.”
A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor.