This year the devil’s holiday (I say that tongue-in-cheek) falls on church night. So what are we to do? If we continue with church “as-is” we know that we’ll only have a few of our children and most of our helpers with children will either be sad that their kid has to miss out on trick or treating or we’ll be massively short-staffed. But it doesn’t really feel right to cancel church for Halloween. So what do we do?
Here is what we are going to do at FBC Marionville. But first a bit of context. We have a pretty eventful Wednesday night here at FBC Marionville. To put it in perspective we have about 120-130 on Sunday mornings and anywhere from 175-200 on Wednesday nights, with most of them being children. (We do a few things differently these days, but this is what the program looked like when we launched: Our Wednesdays).
What we’ve decided to do is create an event called First Stop. We want FBC Marionville to be the first stop our community makes. We’ve made and purchased tote bags with our logo on them to give folks as they enter our building. And at the exit we will be giving a free coffee mug to every family, though maybe a toothbrush would have been a better idea.
We are creating a cardboard box maze in our basement and then moving our guests throughout almost every room in our church building. We’ll have a costume contest, a carnival room, a crafts room, a video game room, a creative cat room, a Star Wars room, a room promoting our bus ministry, and much more. Each room will have candy and some sort of activity. Our guests will eventually move into our gym where they’ll be given walking tacos and then sent on their way with a free coffee mug.
We want to make our church the First Stop for families. Our goal is to bless our community, to help them know they are loved, and honestly we just want to have a good time and enjoy the fun of dressing up like favorite characters. Ultimately we hope this leads to gospel conversations. I know lots of churches and Christians shy away from Halloween. Personally, I think it’s a great opportunity for building bridges into our community for the sake of Christ.
So what is your church doing for Halloween?
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Photo source: here
