Well, after 30 kids, with the Princess being the most popular costume, and Spiderman and the Skeleton coming in second, I’d consider last night pretty successful. Ok, despite the fact that I have no more resee’s, it was successful.
As I reflected on the evening, a couple of thoughts came to mind.
- There are many Halloween alternatives providing safe venues for kids to trick-or-treat. Why does the church re-invent this wheel? All that ends up coming by are church kids and a few extras while the church expends several hundreds of dollars to see no retention in return.
- With the kids that come to the church, is it really an outreach? How many of those kids/Parents that show up are unchurched? Most likely they are from another church and they live in the area, or they attend somewhere else but know someone. This just promotes proselytizing, not outreach.
- The people/kids that need to see the church in action aren’t at church, so for it to be an outreach, shouldn’t the church go to the people.
So in order to criticize by creating:
- Have churches team-up together and rent out a convention center or large community hall to do something so large that it gains attention.
- Have your cell groups do a neighborhood party. After-all, we need to be influencing our neighbors. Maybe a neighborhood party sponsored by a cell-group. You could then have your church buy candy and on the wrappers put your website.
- Do something for the “less-fortunate” kids, who might be at a home, or whose parents have to work at night and cannot take them out.
Just some thoughts to challenge the process. Hope this provokes some thought.