Story
The Easter Cross Witness From Normandy to Your Front Yard
October 15, 1984 was a bluebird autumn day. My new wife and I were on an extended trip to Europe. I had invited my parents to join us and asked them what places they would like to visit. My father’s only request, having been in the Navy, was that we visit the Normandy American cemetery where 9,387 US soldiers are buried. The temperature was sixty degrees with the air was clean and crisp, a bluebird day. All the colors seemed brighter, especially the thousands of gleaming white crosses. I stood in front of a landscape I had seen many times before in pictures. But viewing the sight first hand with my own set of eyes rendered all the photographs that had attempted to capture this setting a poor representation to the reality of experiencing this vista on site. White crosses for as far as the eye could see stretched out before me. Each demarking the gravesite of a soldier who had fallen while fighting, confronting, and ultimately defeating evil personified, Adolph Hitler and the third Reich. This picture was seared into my memory forever, and a future witness utilizing small white crosses was born.
2014 Easter Cross Witness
For the next twenty years during the Easter season, I had a vision of thousands of white crosses out in yards in front of homes. These crosses however would not demark the grave of a fallen hero, but identify a household that desired to witness to the most significant event in history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In 2005, the Easter Cross Witness was born. Better Together distributed just under six thousand crosses to seven churches in University Park Texas who decided to join the first Easter Cross Witness. Participating churches included two flavors of Presbyterian, a Church of Christ, an Independent Bible Church, a Southern Baptist Church, an Episcopal Church and a Charismatic church. We stood together in unity, celebrating and testifying to our Risen Lord, it impacted our community.
That was nine years ago! Since then this witness has grown to hundreds of towns in almost forty states with over thirty different denominations participating.