I carried on with prayer and Bible study, but the children’s ministry took the night off. Some of the leaders stayed home and did some evangelistic stuff in neighborhoods. We had our “Fall Festival” last weekend. I was out of town and haven’t heard how things went.
Sounds like a lot of churches had Halloween parties (though the word never appears – its all Fall Festival or Harvest Night or whatever cover we use).
Those draw big numbers but are they evangelistically effective?
Let’s talk about it
By the way, folks, if you have a party at your church on October 31, and kids dress up and you hand out candy, you can call it a Fall Festival or a Harvest Festival or whatever other name you like, but no one is fooled.
It’s a Halloween Party!
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
At my last church, we actually did a “Halloween Party”…
At my present church, our town has a sight and safety night where different businesses and organizations line main street and hand out candy and such from 5-7pm… and we’re on main street as is, so our Women on Missions team handed that out, we canceled AWANA, took a poll among those who normally come to prayer meeting, and most of them we’re either helping with WoM, taking grandkids trick ‘r treating, or didn’t want to drive at night with a bunch of kids on the street, so we canceled prayer meeting as well…
I sat at home in my driveway with my neighbor in the duplex (whose boyfriend dressed as Bender from futurama) and we handed out candy together for a couple of hours.
We cancelled all other activities and had a “Trunk or Treat” event in our parking lot. Members decorated their cars and gave candy to trick-or-treaters out of their opened trunks. I decorated our van with a “Jonah and the Great Fish” theme, complete with Jonah’s legs hanging out the back of the van. No dark, ghoulish decorations were present. This was our second year doing it, and it serves as a connection event to people in our community. Not much real evangelism took place last night, but we handed out information on our church ministries (especially those to children and families) and showed a spirit of kindness and love to those in our community. We see it more as “pre-evangelism,” if you will.
Also, we live in a small rural community of 3,000 people and supporting a sense of “community” is huge, and goes a long way in earning trust and the right to be heard.
We had a “Fall Family Festival” last Sunday and then nothing on Wednesday.
Good part: we discourage “scary” or “spooky” costumes. Bad part: one of the highlights of my week .. and, I’ve been told, of some of the other folks, is my Wednesday night Bible study .. and we didn’t have it this week.
We have rides and inflatables in the parking lot and Fellowship Hall. We have a Welcome Center set up where families can get their kids a bag of candy to start with and talk to our people. In various rooms throughout the church are games for the younger kids to win more candy or small prizes, face painting, a Cakewalk, free popcorn, etc. We call it the socially acceptable “Fall Festival”. It’s not exceptionally evangelistic, but it serves to help the church develop a positive relationship with the surrounding community for future relational (individual) evangelism. So members come out to interact with the people who come to enjoy themselves in a safe Halloween environment and introduce themselves.
Most other churches in the area do a “Trunk or Treat” where members do Halloween in the back of the car for the local communities. Same basic effect.
On the lighter side, some church could have a “Reformation Day costume party” where ghouls are Tetzel and the superheroes are Luther. And they could pass out candy to… uh… (what can that be? Oh yes…) …which is free! …to remind us about the indulgences that we don’t have to buy.
Of course the weight that we gain on the candy would take a purgatory’s worth of time to lose…
Dave,
We did nothing special. When I got into my grandchildren’s candy my blood sugar shot thru the roof, I got dizzy, and felt awful. It’s amazing
what only fifteen peices of candy can do.
A pastor friend of mine reluctantly agreed to his people’s request to schedule their fall festival on Halloween. He draws the line at doing it on Sunday, but allowed it to take the Wednesday service. I joked with him about capitulating to culture and he responded that it’s sort of sad that we Baptists will observe a Catholic holiday (Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, All Saint’s Eve) yet very few know about the Protestant celebration that day.
I hedged my bets. We had services as normal and I spoke on the Reformation, but I sent my kids to my friend’s church for their festival.
As for evangelistically effective, probably not in terms of numbers, but the results, as always, are in God’s hands. 🙂
We had a massive Fall Festival last night. Hundreds of people from the surrounding neighborhoods came. On Sunday, we went out and passed out 1200 invitations to the surrounding homes. We are a predominatley white church (though this is changing) in a majority black city and part of town. So, we have events where we can all come together and where we can provide a good experience for people. We share the gospel, had a prayer table set up, and show Christian hospitality. Parents do not have to go with their kids to knock on strangers doors. They are loved and accepted in a Christian church. We don’t do anything scary and the kids dress up for fun. Yes, it is Halloween, but we are called to redeem the time and I think that we do that well.
When we talk to our neighbors later in the year and invite them to church, they often remember the Fall Festival and come back each year. When they are looking for a church, they often visit ours. At the very least, it allows us to have a presence in the community as a good neighbor, which has value. We don’t pin our evangelistic hopes on it, but at the same time, we think it have overall merit. Not everything can be counted by decisions for Christ in the moment. Sometimes, we are breaking up hard ground and planting seeds. The harvest often comes later.
We had our 3rd Annual “Trunk-or-Treat” event where church members handed out candy from the back of cars/vans. We also had bounce houses for the kids and free popcorn and soda (or “pop” for some of you). We also gave away thousands of Gospel tracts and shared the love of Christ with over 4,000 of our neighbors. Overall, it was a great to be salt and light on one of the “darkest” nights of the year. Thanks and God bless,
Howell
“and soda (or ‘pop’ for some of you)”
The proper generic term is ‘coke’. Ie, a common conversation in this neck of the woods:
“Would you like a coke?”
“Sure! What do you have?”
“Well, Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper,…”
Iowa is a “pop” state.
We had our Annual Trunk-or-Treat and had a tremendous turnout in our urban community. We had games, a Bounce House and an Obstacle Course (blowups), and of course, trunk-fulls of candy. We had our event on our sign for two weeks prior and had gone door-to-door on the Sunday Afternoon before Halloween. We gave out information about the church and engaged the parents while the kids played games and bounced around on the inflatables. We had well over 250 children show up (our church averages 80 on Sundays) so we are praying it will draw some folks to come on Sunday’s in the future. Regardless, we planted many seeds for the kingdom.
We went and nailed Luther’s 95 Theses on the door of the local RCC.
Camping, live music, Hebraic dancing, late night fire pits annually during Feast of Sukkot. No child cares about Christmas or Halloween anymore once they celebrate Sukkot! All year long they talk about Sukkot! Hanukkah takes second place even if parents choose to do gift giving or chocolate gelt.
Hebraic Dance might be a stumbling block to many Southern Baptists as it is easily confused with the excesses of the charismatic movement or conflicting with necessary sexy dancing prohibitions, but I love this stuff.
We had a “Hell House.”
People from our church and the local community could wander through this old, abandoned house that is next to our property and be scared out of their wits by the collection of ghoulish and terrifying people in costumes.
But since is was a Southern Baptist “Hell House”, here are the terrifying characters that entrants had to make their way past as they went through the house:
Nameless, faceless, Baptist State Denominational Bureacrats who demanded money to put in a box marked “missions”, but actually took 70% of it and put it in their pockets and then put the remainder in the missions box. Any entrant who inquired as to why this was being done was threatened with not being “cooperative.”
Mean bloggers who demanded to know each entrant’s position on the Five Points of Calvinism. If the entrants agreed with only 1 point, a label was slapped on them that said “Calvinist”, they were forced to carry a stone tablet version of The Abstract of Principles and they faced insults of being in a conspiracy until they escaped the house.
Mark Driscoll, who would tell you all of the sexual fantasies you had thought about that week and claimed that God had given him that gift.
Christa Brown, who would hector you about not maintaining your own personal database of sexual predators.
Rachel Held Evans, whose skull had been opened and her brain removed, and yet she sat in your presence and continued to write her third book, saying that she did not need a brain to write her books.
Ed Stetzer, who gathered statistical information from each entrant and was compiling some supsicious and meaningless statistics.
Al Mohler, who had actual numerous tentacles coming out of his body that extended into every agency of Southern Baptist life.
Ergun Caner, who had reverted to his Muslim terrorist upbringing, and was clutching a rocket propelled grenade and speaking in gibberish, but claiming it was Arabic.
Entrants had to enter a dark room where they heard the sound of a deep throated voice reading a series of “Open Letters” regarding denominational controversies. The letters were all poorly written and contained such bad grammar that it made the skin crawl.
A collection of the meanest people in the SBC blogosphere, some of whom have been banned from blogging. The entrants were forced to engage with these people, and no matter how kind the entrants tried to be, the mean commenters would say ugly things to them, question their salvation, question their pastor’s salvation, question their sincerity. The nicer the entrants tried to be, the meaner the commenters became.
Moderates. All of their spines had been removed. They went on and on about politics, but refused to discuss theology because of the priesthood of the believer.
Competing groups of ardent supporters of this person or that person in SBC life. One group demanded that all male entrants dress in a Brooks Brothers suit like Al Mohler, another group demanded that all male entrants shave their heads like C.J. Mahaney. Another group demanded that all preaching be done while seated on a stool. Another group demanded that the only songs to be sung were Stamps Baxter.
Entrants were actually forced to read the first chapter of the Shack. It was excruciating.
There was a room full of mounted hunting trophies with blood still dripping from their necks. Paige Patterson stood guarding the trophies with a shotgun.
A collection of women from the central office of the WMU.
A loud Southern Baptist evangelist who quetionned every entrant’s salvation and made them all get baptized again just to make sure.
A grave yard of former Southern Baptist Colleges.
And to end things, a large group of members of an SBC church who shouted at each attending pastor and made them feel badly for all the problems in their churches and because they were not doing enough.
I tell you, it was a frightening night!
But then, as each entrant walked to their car after the scary experience, they would be confronted in the parking lot by a 16 year old girl, who said, “I am not saved. I need to know how to be saved.” And then, each entrant led the 16 year old girl in prayer, and she was gloriously saved.
Brilliant! I would add one thing: a mirror somewhere in there where only the full extent of the entrant’s own sin was reflected back to them. That would be the most frightening to me.
Jim:
Thanks, Jim. That would truly be frightening.
I encourage our church to engage their neighborhoods, instead of bringing one neighborhood to us. As for me personally, I set up the projector and screen in our driveway, and put It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and Bugs Bunny’s Halloween favorites on repeat. I also made a large pot of chili, and as families came to our home the kids got candy and watched a little bit of animation, while we engaged adults with free chili and conversation. 3rd year in a row we have done it, and it gets better every year!