Helicopter egg drop attracts over 1,000 to Spokane church’s Easter services
News Story by Morgen White | FāVS News
Since 2016, 2,000 plastic eggs have been falling from helicopters at two Sun City Church locations on Easter Sunday.
The plastic eggs, despite being empty, could still pack a punch for little heads. To ensure safety, volunteers enforce a lined-off area. The helicopter hovers around 30 to 50 feet in the air over the drop zone and then they dump the eggs. Kids crowd behind the line waiting to rush in and grab as many as they can. Then an air horn goes off, and they run toward the orange pile.
Danny Schulz is one of two the lead pastor’s for Sunny City Church, alongside his wife Jamie. When the event first started he said maybe 100 people showed up.
“Now between two campuses it has got to be over a thousand. We don’t officially count, but it’s a fun crowd of people,” Schulz said.
Allie Antles is the operations director for Sun City Church, and she’s been involved in organizing the event for five years now.
“The best part is seeing the joy on kids’ faces. You’d think they were at some world-class theme park, but it’s just a school field filled with people in costumes and fun activities. And then when they see the helicopter come over the treeline, they light up,” Antles said.
While most of the materials are reused every year, including the 4,000 eggs in total, that hasn’t stopped the event from evolving.
“Every year, it gets more chaotic, in a good way. We keep adding new elements; a few years ago, we added a booth for youth and young adults so they would have a place to connect as well,” Antles said.
Schulz said new elements are also added to the church service. The overall themes, however, are largely the same. The 90-minute service includes an introduction to the Schulz’, worship and an extra special moment for the sermon all about Easter.
“Then, we invite the congregation to take their next step. Maybe it’s to accept Jesus into their life, be water baptized or come to our Next Steps class to learn more about Sun City,” Schulz said. “We always want to ensure everyone feels invited and welcome to join the family.”
Sun City Church is a nondenominational Christian church that has two locations: Spokane Valley and Post Falls, Idaho. Each Easter both locations host this event but to find out where the event will happen you must go to the Easter service. This year, there will be three services: 8:30 a.m., 10:15 a.m., and 12 p.m. The helicopter egg drop will start at 3 p.m. Event information and tickets are still available.
“They get wristbands that have the address and a free sling bag that says Sun City kids that they can put their eggs in,” said Mel Scott, Sun City Church’s creative director.
She makes it clear that Sun City Church is not the first to do this, but the event’s advertising is unique. The main goal of the event is to get more community members through the doors.
“They’re actually multiple churches across the nation that do helicopter egg drops. And I see their advertisements, and they give the location, and I’m like, ‘You guys, this is terrible, like you’re doing nothing.’” Scott said.
The nothing Scott referred to is that the advertising doesn’t bring new faces into their church doors. While the event by itself doesn’t connect to specific theology, Scott references Luke 15:4-7, the parable of the lost sheep, as the why behind their Easter services. In other words, their mission follows Jesus’ parable to find the “lost sheep” — those who are alienated or disconnected from a relationship with God.
The problem Scott tries to overcome is to connect who she calls “the lost” to the meaning behind Easter, not just the fun.
“Everyone loves to be wowed. Anyone wants to see something crazy. So what we do is say, ‘Hey, we’re going to invite you to this event,’ which no one would feel uncomfortable with,” Scott said. “We’re not going to be pushing you to raise your hand to accept your life with Jesus. We’re not going to be asking you to take communion. It’s just an event to have fun.”
However, Scott said she thinks it’s still important to share the message of Easter with those who may not understand Jesus’ role in it and the relationship he offers through it. So, to help visitors overcome that uncomfort about coming into church, Sun City takes the approach to encourage visitors in by offering the Egg Drop location after the service is over.
Scott is impassioned about inviting folks to their church because before coming to Sun City she once felt lost.
In 2020, Mel Scott and her husband, Kyle, went church shopping, which she admits was the worst time to go.
“You know, when you hear about a bunch of people who, once 2020 came, left the church, and you’re like, ‘Oh man, their faith wasn’t strong.’ That was us, and we didn’t have a great foundation. We were very robotic Christians,” Scott said.
“2020 was the first time we started just even questioning,” Scott said.
After a lot of discussions in the Scott family, they decided to bring their questions to church. The family went to a bunch of churches that Scott said were all great, but ultimately those didn’t fit what they were looking for. Then they found Sun City Church.
“It’s very high energy, really optimistic and hope filled. It’s very expressive worship. Kyle and I were not exposed to people lifting their hands and singing with their whole heart, and even crying on a Sunday. It just felt like everyone was leaning into the Holy Spirit. It was just so foreign that we thought we needed to just stick around and see what the heck everyone’s excited about. Because we’re used to just being robots, and it doesn’t feel like people are being robots here,” Scott said.
Scott remembers the first Easter she attended with her daughter in 2021. She knew she was about to enter a high energy event but wasn’t quite sure she was prepared for it.
“My daughter has social anxiety. As a 2 1/2-year-old, she didn’t want to talk to anybody, she wanted to keep her distance and so it was hard to even go to church. She was very put off by meeting new people or talking to people,” Scott said.
Despite this, she took her daughter to the event but stood with her about 10 yards away from the crowd of kids watching the helicopter approach.
“The helicopter hovers far enough that no one’s afraid, but close enough to be like, holy cow, there’s a helicopter, like, right there,” Scott said.
They dump the thousand of eggs down and then something that Scott wasn’t expecting happens.
“And so now my daughter, who has social anxiety, hates talking to everyone. She’s bolting away from me to the line, not even looking back, being like, I gotta get these eggs. And I have this video of her. I’m losing her in the crowd, and she’s just grabbing the eggs and she’s so excited,” Scott said.
When it’s time for the kids to turn in their eggs everyone gets the same prize. The prizes are donated for the event annually.
When she learned about the event at the time she was conditioned to believe that church was only supposed to be serious and deep. But Sun City taught her that one can be deep, serious and fun, while they give back to the city.
This event in particular has offered church members and the larger community to come together for fun, while also celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Antles has seen that connection first hand.
“Every year, we hear stories of families coming out and having so much fun that they decide they want to be a part of a church that loves to have fun,” Antles said. “We believe that Jesus met people where they were at. So you don’t need to commit to anything. Just come and experience what community can be like.”
