On Dec. 6, Hillsboro (Kansas) MB Church will host its third escape room at the city’s annual Down Home Christmas event put on by the Chamber of Commerce.
In 2023, Miriam Kliewer, HMBC office manager and communications director, wondered what it would take for the church to host an escape room during the event. She wanted to use Studio 23, a dance studio owned by lead pastor Jeremy Matlock and wife Krista, head cheer and dance coach at Tabor College.
Seeing the growing popularity of escape rooms, HMBC saw this as an opportunity to have a presence at Down Home Christmas. This day-long, family-friendly event features holiday-themed activities, including breakfast with the Grinch, pictures with Santa, storytime with Mrs. Claus, a live animal exhibit and early gift shopping from a variety of local vendors.
“As a church we want to contribute to the city’s celebration of Christmas,” Jeremy Matlock says. “Creating an escape room gives families one more activity to do together that day. And while doing it, we are able to invite people to our church’s Christmas events if they don’t already have a place to worship.”
Despite having little prior experience designing escape rooms, Kliewer thought it was worth a try.
“I had only done one for a family get-together,” she says. “I had tailor-made one, and I told enough people about that, and they thought that would be a neat idea.”
Christmas-themed puzzles unlock fun
Each year, the church’s escape room has a Christmas-related theme.
In the first room in 2023, baby Jesus had been stolen, so each team had to work together to discover where baby Jesus was and bring Christ back into Christmas.
Last year’s room took place in Ebenezer Scrooge’s study, where teams had to discover the true meaning of Christmas (giving) and then escape to share that with others.
“This year is going to be called Escape to Egypt,” says Kliewer. “It’s based on the story of Mary, Joseph and Jesus having to flee from Herod.”
Each team will have to work together to find Jesus’ passport.
Kliewer writes the storyline herself and combines that with ideas from Pinterest as well as a variety of locks, boxes and puzzles she has collected, using help from her husband, Wayne, to complete the rooms.
Kliewer loves that the escape room gives something for families to do together.
“Families really enjoy it,” she says. “The children have a lot of fun helping solve the puzzles. And we’ve had some adult groups, and they really enjoyed it. I love providing opportunities for families or groups of friends to work on something together, communicate with each other and have a shared memory that is hopefully fun and rewarding.”
The escape room is scheduled to begin every half hour, with the activity lasting 20 minutes, giving Kliewer 10 minutes to reset the room before the next group begins.
It has been so popular its first two years that groups fill up the available signups before the day begins.
Kliewer and the congregation’s goal for the escape room is for it to be an avenue to reach unchurched people in the community.
“We try to keep it Christ-focused as much as possible,” says Kliewer. “We try to bring it back to the real reason for Christmas around the nativity or the season of giving.”
Cody Meyer is associate pastor of youth and discipleship at Ebenfeld MB Church, Hillsboro, Kansas. He is a 2024 graduate of Tabor College with a major in Adaptive Ministry Leadership and a minor in Communications. Cody credits his time at Tabor and his experience serving at Ebenfeld while in college and at Camp War Eagle, a children’s summer camp, as milestones in his call to ministry.
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