In Search of Easter Trail and other Easter outreach ideas by Bex Jignasu, youth and childrens volunteer at Loughton Baptist Church, Milton Keynes

We are planning on running the Scripture Union ‘In search of Easter’ trail during Holy Week at Loughton Baptist Church, to engage with our local community, details of the resource below.

We are always looking for engaging, fun interactive ways to connect with families in our community and we were keen to find a way to do this that falls in line with current pandemic restrictions.  We’re planning to invite people through our local school who are happy to publicise it for us as well as through our church encouraging our church families to invite other families they know in the community.

As well as the Easter trail, we are also going to have a few Easter reflection spaces available around the church grounds for people to have a chance to stop a reflect on the events of Holy Week. As well we are planning to give them the opportunity to make an Easter garden to take home with them. This will all be done outdoors via booking, all with COVID safe procedures with people joining in as household bubbles.  Last time we ran the event just with two adults leading it, myself and our youth worker and we expect to do the same again unless we can coax any more volunteers!

In Search of Easter trail is a resource by Scripture Union that is part of a new collection including previous trails from Scripture Union: ‘In search of Hope’ and ‘In search of Christmas’, all of which are aimed at 5-11 year olds and their families.

The ‘In search of Easter’ resource differs slightly from the previous resources in that there are three scan codes that give you videos for the clues for the word, but the other two clues are found on printed sheets that are will be pinned up around the area.

Five clue sheets in total are displayed around the chosen treasure hunt area.

The three video clues feature :
Easter day – Mary’s story
Peter’s denial and
Nicodemus’ story.

The other two clue sheets have puzzle or picture clues, with a task to do as the participants explore the local area.
These feature the following: ‘The story of Palm Sunday’ with an activity for the children
and ‘At The Cross’, with an activity for the children.

The five letters found from all the clues can be rearranged to create the password for a final video that links together the stories experienced in the clues.

Families will not need to find or scan the clues in any particular order for the treasure hunt to work.

You might want to just use the In search of easter trail as a stand alone activity or combine it like we are with other fun but safe activities. You could do this as outreach like we are to engage further or for the first time with your local community, or you may want to use it as an activity for your church families.

You can find the In Search of Easter Trail resource by Scripture Union here