Random Eggs of Kindness

This weekend, one of our worship interactives at Westwinds is designed to breathe life into the community of Jackson and surrounding communities.

Hundreds of Easter eggs will be in the auditorium. Each egg is filled with a charge for the week. Each act is inexpensive and many are free.

Resurrection means life. Quantity and quality. These not-so-random acts teach us what it means to be a worshiper, a giver, a friend to our communities, a benefactor.

Each egg will also contain a Westwinds "Come Dirty" card to leave when appropriate or pack inside a gift, etc. "Come Dirty" is our motto for the year--our campaign to invite our living community to join our church community.

We will be collecting follow-up stories on video to share with the church and I will post some of them here. Here are some of the things people will find when they crack an egg:

Buy a few kids books from the local bookstore. Give the books to a school library.

Recycle your soda cans. Hand the money you make to someone in line behind you.

Order food from a counter inside and pay for a person’s food in the drive-through.

Buy lunch for a random person in a restaurant.

Bring coffee to an office in town just for fun.

Buy coffee for the person in line behind you.

Send a gift certificate to your neighbor.

Make cookies for your neighbor.

Send an anonymous thank you card and gift card to a person. Say it’s from “someone from Westwinds Church.”

Leave 10 dollars with a cashier. Tell them to use it to pay for anyone’s groceries that went over their budget.

Help load someone’s groceries in their car and return their cart for them.

Buy some $5 gift cards from MacDonald’s. Hand them out to people who need them throughout the week.

Drop off some cash at Goodwill or your local thrift store. Tell them to use it to pay for clothing for people until the money runs out.

Buy a meal for a young couple or family sitting next to you at a restaurant.

Buy shoes or clothes for a family in need.

Bake cookies for a neighbor or teacher, just because.
Help an elderly person with yard work or grocery shopping.

Visit a nursing home and bring cupcakes.

Sit and visit with a few of the residents at a nursing home.

Volunteer your time at a local homeless shelter or a crisis nursery.

Donate a day of your time to the organization of your choice.

Donate some grief books to the library or a local support group.

Leave an extra large tip for your food server!

Leave a bouquet of flowers on someone’s front door step.

Bake goodies and take them to the police station, fire station, or hospital.

Pay a local teen to mow an elderly neighbor’s yard.

Buy a baby’s blanket and take it to the hospital nursery. Premature babies can always use tiny booties and caps.

Buy a balloon bouquet and ask the nurses the children’s hospital to deliver them to a child.

Make a memorial donation to honor your loved one and a friend’s loved one.

Take a box of doughnuts to an elementary school for a classroom.

Adopt a street or just pick up litter in the neighborhood.

Leave your change in the soda machine for the next person. It's a nice surprise.

Write to management at places where you get especially good service and commend them (specify names!)

Volunteer to read a book to children at your nearest library.

Pay for a small child's candy at a convenient store.

Buy a toy for a child in the store and ask the clerk to deliver it after you’ve gone.

Bring coffee to workers on a construction site.

Buy a case of sodas for your UPS driver.

Put a gift in your mailbox for your mail carrier.

Wash the windows in an elderly person’s home.

Invite a family from your neighborhood over to dinner.

Buy a bottle of wine or a gift basket for a neighbor.

Buy a gift for your favorite bank teller.

Deliver chocolates to your bank tellers.

Buy a gift for your favorite barista, waiter, clerk, etc. and deliver it to them.

Anonymously send flowers to a single mom and tell her someone from Westwinds is praying for her.

Send an anonymous gift certificate to a single mom.

Anonymously send a gift to a single mother and tell her someone from Westwinds is praying for her.

Deliver coffee and donuts to a car dealership. Tell them you are praying for them in these rough economic times.

Deliver a dozen donuts to the office at an elementary school. Thank them for loving kids.

Deliver donuts to a classroom.

Buy a gift certificate for a community leader. Send it to them anonymously with a thank you note.

Leave gifts on someone’s doorstep. Or, pick a few needy families and leave them gifts. Small gifts go a long way!

Place an anonymous ad in the newspaper, thanking someone by name. Example: To Jen who always serves me coffee with a smile at Starbucks, thank you!

Call Consumers Energy. Tell them you want to anonymously pay part of someone’s bill that needs it as a member of Westwinds.

Send a movie gift card to a neighbor or co-worker.

Buy a good book and send it to a friend or neighbor with an anonymous thank you.

Go in to a repair shop. Tell them you want to anonymously pay for someone’s repair up to whatever amount you can afford.

Sound Vestibules

For the Good Friday/Easter weekend we employed the use of what I like to call “sound vestibules” throughout the auditorium and lobby space.

These vestibules were designed to create different prayer and contemplation moments by stimulating our sense of hearing. Very simple to make, the 10 vestibules were crafted with twine, burlap, large plastic storage bins, and small CD players with a repeat function.

We drilled holes in the bottom of the storage bins and tied the CD players to the inside of the bin so that when the bin hung upside down one could operate the player easily. You MUST make sure your CD players will hold a CD tight and play upside down.

We then suspended the sound vestibules in various places so that a person of about 6’ 3” could stand beneath the vestibule without hitting their head. We wrapped the vestibules in burlap and tied them at the top so that they looked like large sacks hanging from the ceiling.

Each sound vestibule held and individual CD that played either music, familiar sounds, static, or a selected reading. We changed the selections between Good Friday and Easter. Here were the selections:

Good Friday:
1. Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of U2 (thanks for the tip Nathan)
2. Gregorian Chant: Salve Regina by the Benedictine Monks of the Abbey of Saint-Maurice and Saint-Maur, Clervaux
3. The Screwtape Letters on Audiobook
4. Static
5. The Concert of the Earth (Le concert de la terre) –Nature Sounds
6. ( ) Sigur Ros
7. Reading of Luke 22 and 23
8. Reading of Luke 22 and 23 (two spots)
9. Selected Hymns
10. Folk Music of Palestine

Easter:
1. Selected Classics
2. More Gregorian Chant
3. Reading of Luke 24
4. Reading of Luke 24
5. Reading of Luke 24 (three spots)
6. Selected Celebratory Familiar Worship Tunes
7. The Concert of the Earth (Le concert de le terre)—Nature Sounds
8. Selected loops
9. Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of U2
10. Westwinds Live

On Good Friday, we encouraged roaming throughout the room during communion to take time at each vestibule. This was fun to watch as people closed their eyes and prayed beneath different vestibules. Some sang. Some cried.

On Easter, we didn’t draw specific attention to them but rather let everyone discover them on their own.

We left them on throughout the whole Fusion with the exception of the message. The sound stayed rather contained beneath the vestibules until the room got very quiet so our ushers stopped them during the message.

Highly recommend this one. Easy. Fun. Different.