A Pastor's Guide to Trick or Treating and Halloween
It’s #spookyseason again and so are the discussions on how Churches should approach the season. So this year we have put together a guide for Churches on how to approach #trickortreat this weekend…
Whether you are planning #trunkortreat, #fallfestival, or any other trick or treat alternative, these guidelines matter:
The kids should always be leaving with more candy than they would have received from traditional trick or treating. Don’t skimp out, don’t ration. Spend the money and buy enough candy that the kids are getting handfuls at each station, not just one.
Leave the tracts out of the goodies. This is not the place for that. Give the people what they want and that’s candy. Also leave out the candy corn because no one actually likes that stuff. It’s as tasteless as the tracts are.
The only comments needed for the costumes are about how amazing they look. No judgmental comments. No comments about inappropriateness, no guilt trips. Just how awesome everything looks. The one exception here is if you are asking for overly scary costumes to take their masks off for the purpose of making young kids more comfortable. But that’s a different conversation…
Also if you are going to attempt a deeper conversation about someone’s costume make sure you have your fandom right. Yes, stormtroopers and clone troopers are different and it matters.
You don’t need to invite the guest to church on Sunday. They are already in your building. You have signs everywhere advertising the start time. They know where to find you on Sunday if they are interested.
The HELLCENTRIC GOSPEL is still a FALSE GOSPEL even on Halloween. Attempting to scare people into heaven is still not evangelism even when the person you’re attempting to scare has a demon mask on. Leave it out with tracks and candy corn.
Remember that these events are about OUTREACH not INREACH. We are providing our community a service of love, safety, trust, and lots of candy. The entire night is about meeting their needs rather than an agenda of marketing or evangelistic outbursts. If kids left sugared up and happy, but no one came to service on Sunday, then it was still a successful event.
If you can’t follow these simple guidelines than it’s probably best that you stay home and give out full size candy bars to your neighbors. And yes we mean full size. And no tracts. And no nasty candy corn!
This post was written by Andrew Fouts. The founder and main content creator for Ministry Misfits. He also serves as one of the directors and writers for KFM Broadcasting Network.
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