Does Your Church Provide a Halloween Alternative?
Whether it’s a harvest festival, or a fall carnival, or a Haunted House-esque Judgement House, or something else entirely, many churches are making alternative Halloween activities available to their communities.
What about you? Does your church provide a Halloween alternative?
We are a recent Church plant in Maricopa, Az. Our community has 37,000 people. Lat year our Trick or Treat event had 8,500 people come. We partner with Walmart, and the City of Maricopa along with various local businesses.
We are expecting around 10,000 + this year from our community.
God has really given us an incredible opportunity here on Saturday.
If you’d like any additional information you can find our event highlighted on Mediasalt.com or you can e-mail me. Thanks. Pray for us!!!! For Jesus!
http://www.mediasalt.com/2009/10/23/friday-four-a-successful-fall-festival/
This is the link from Media Salt ….
haha … One more thing. Here’s the link to our Youtube video of last years event.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Mil3FOML4
My church provides “Hallelujah Night” instead of Halloween. We serve food, provide games such as Bible Bingo, Bible Scavenger Hunt, and candy bags with tags that read “Life with Jesus is Sweet”. We ask for each youth to bring two nonperishable food items for the local pantry. Our Hallelujah Night is this Saturday, October 31st. Please pray for its success as we work to win souls for Jesus.
i think that is wonderful what
your church is doing. it blesses my
heart to read this.
Why must (we) provide alternatives? I don’t believe there is any sound Biblical basis for Halloween… so why would there be any such basis for an ‘alternative?’ Why not, simply, “No?”
Dave, no matter what your personal feelings are concerning Halloween, it’s still going to be celebrated by the majority of people in your surrounding community. A lot of churches see this as an opportunity for an outreach event or some other activity that they feel is more in line with their perspective on Halloween.
idont think halloween is a good thing to celebrate.
at our church we have a fall festival.kids play games,get treats and
learn about the lord instead of celebrating halloween.
I’m not shure if there needed. I know halloween isn’t to be celebrated because it’s a day for devils, witches, and such. But just the same arn’t we celebrating the same thing but, tring to infuse christ into it. Just so that christian childern don’t feel left out?
Let’s get back to the basics. Who established Halloween and why? Along with all other holidays. We are quick to take on the bondage of the ways of this world, while bringing along our children. Jesus did not spend time celebrating Halloween, neither did any other disciple of Christ. In order to allow God to transform our minds, we must let go of the things that are precious to us. For one: our ego! Many Christians celebrate holidays because they are thinking, “What will my family say?” We are supposed to be a peculiar people!
JRW, no doubt of who established Halloween, but look at the examples of Jesus. Where did He go? Not retreating back into the church. We are supposed to be that salt of the earth. We, as Christians are supposed to stand in the midst… be a light in dark places. How can we do that if as Christians we are isolating? Have we such fear and shame, that we cannot stand in the midst of such a “holiday” (for lack of a better term), and withdraw our light?
I for one, do not shirk my duties. I allow God to be God in the midst of something so dark. I let God direct. If you read my post beneath yours, I have watched some incredible things happen when I have chosen to step outside the “norm”. I have stories upon stories of how God changes things. It is not passing out tracks, it is not saying God loves you (and I’m not against that), but I get to do something that draws the kids to God. They want to go open their Bibles and learn and come back next year. How cool is that???
I’m not condoning people who do things within the church walls, but I’m definitely saying that we need to quit hiding inside. Don’t be afraid to play by God’s rules in another playground. If God directs it and authors it, who can be against you? I just would not want my kids to feel isolated. Let them be a part of, but separate.
All churches in my experience do something, however, I decided about five years ago to take another avenue. I got REALLY tired of reading all these stories about how the Ten Commandments are not permitted in schools, removing prayer from the schools, etc. Ever since prayer was taken out of the schools, it has gone done hill, but I’ll digress from that soap opera box.
So… God gave me an idea. Each year I purchase a LOT of candy (you wouldn’t even believe my pictures). The bite size good candy bars (Snickers, Musketeers, etc) along with a variety of extra large candy bars. The first year I purchased 30 extra large candy bars – always the good stuff.
When kids come to the house, I pass out a handful of the bite size to every child. I leave the large candy bars sitting on the side out in the open. Kids ask what those are for. I tell them that if they can recite say… 2 out of the 10 commandments, they get a large candy bar in addition to what they have already received. Depending on the child, that number they recite back varies. I’ll even go as far to ask if they know the Lord’s prayer.
I am going on my fifth year. Each year something new occurs. Every year a theme arises that leads me either to pray with kids (even if not publicly), educate them on a commandment or get a kid to learn something new for the first time. The first year I barely gave away 20 candy bars (we see well over 200 kids yearly). Every year it increases. The fourth year I ended up giving away almost 115 candy bars. My new reward is if they can recite all 10… they get five of the large bars (and I BUY the varieties!!) Now I am known as the Ten Commandments Lady.
God calls us to be the salt of the earth. I’m not condoning what any church does, but if we want to take our culture back as Christians, we need to start allowing God to be God, and get out there. I’ve had neighbors try to do other tactics to get kids engaged, but its God’s anointing on the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s prayer. It MUST be about God!!
When you put God first, amazing things happen, but that is what my Halloween consists of outside the church.