Peeps. These sugar coated marshmallow baby birds (now outsold by their rabbit cousins) are sort of like the candy corn of Easter — not many people will confess to liking them, but they still sell well enough that they stay on the shelves. In fact, estimates say that every year the parent company of the Peeps brand makes $127 million dollars on their sugary confection off something like 5.5 million units being sold with 1.5 million of those sold coming from Easter sales. So while it may be hard to find someone who will say they love Peeps, about 1.5 million people are sneaking off into the bathroom at Easter dinner to scarf down a bright colored, sugar coated marshmallow, and possibly snort the sugar leftovers in the bottom of the box.
Which makes me think of our Christianity over Easter. Estimates say that on Easter Sunday, 29% of U.S. residents can be found in church. That’s roughly 101 million people. But on all other Sundays, the average attendance is 25-30 million people are found in church. That reality will be evident this Sunday as we pack the house with people who may be attending worship for the first time this year. They also may eat a Peep for the first and only time this year later on that day.
This is where it might we worth while for us to consider what the Peeps corporation has done. Starting the in the 1960’s, the Peeps corporation figured out that they were missing out on their customers in at least the Fall and Winter. Because of that, they started to make Halloween peeps (pumpkins) and Christmas peeps (trees). Their whole thought was that if we can get you to eat a Peep at Easter, then maybe we can get you to eat a Pumpkin Peep in October. Their goal is to get you to have one more Peep.
That should be our goal this Easter. We’re going to have those annual and semi-annual guests. The likelihood of them coming every Sunday starting this Easter is low (but the Holy Spirit can do some great things), but the likelihood of them coming back another Sunday sometime in the year – that’s something we could adopt as our goal. What could we do to get someone to join us for just one more Sunday? What could we do to get them close to Jesus one more time?
With that in mind, this Sunday, it’s going to be filled with people you’ve never seen and people you haven’t seen in a long while. Greet them like you would greet Jesus – let’s see how many people we can get to eat one more Peep….errr…come back for one more Sunday.