Halloween is a fantastic time for outreach and many churches make the most of it with Trunk or Treat, a Fall Festival and similar outreach activities.
In addition to that, it can also be a great time to encourage your people to invite their friends to these events. To do that, I did up a flyer or bulletin insert that encourages your congregation to use this time of year and the events of your church as a great time to share their faith. Below are images of the flyer, a podcast that I did for it, and below that the text of the flyer you can use in whatever way you want.
Click the link that follows to download a ZIP file of the flyers: PDF Halloween Sharing
Podcast that talks about the handout and how to use it:
Text for the flyer to use however you'd like:
A reason to be part of our
Halloween Event—It’s a way to share your faith that isn’t scary.
or
A reason to be part of our
Fall Festival Event—It’s a way to share your faith that isn’t scary.
Halloween is all about getting scared—for real or make-believe—with ghosts, spiders, witches, and scary faces all around. But as scary as Halloween is, there is something even scarier for many church people, and that is sharing their faith.
Deep down inside, most believers feel they ought to be doing more to let people know about the joy of salvation in Jesus, but at the same time, many would rather meet a real ghost or walk through a pit of live slimy creatures than share their faith with a neighbor.
Why is this so scary?
Every individual has his or her own reasons, but I find much of the fear comes from
mistaken ideas about “witnessing” that are no more true than the masks worn
at parties.The false boogeyman version of faith sharing for many involves going up to a total stranger and asking “Are you saved?” or some similar question and then painfully going through a short tract or little memorized presentation.
Please don’t misunderstand me here. There is nothing wrong with that approach if you are comfortable doing it, but many of us are of somewhat more timid temperament and would welcome an alternative method.
A non-scary way to share your faith
One alternative to the above described confrontational method is to simply invite people to come to an event where they can meet Jesus.
That’s what the disciples did. With the exception of Peter, we don’t have a record of any of them preaching—maybe it was scary for them also. What they did was bring people to
Jesus: Andrew brought Peter; Phillip brought Nathaniel; Matthew invited his friends to a party to meet Jesus.Simply bringing people to Jesus at a church event—that’s not scary. Pray that once they meet him and his people that they will continue the journey to know him personally and to trust him as forgiver and leader.
Bringing people to Jesus—that’s what our fall celebration is all about. Invite your friends
to join us. We promise—no scary stuff, but an incredible opportunity to bring friends to
an event where they can begin to know Jesus, the savior, who can remove all our fears forever.
Invitations to the faith don't have to be to in-person events only
You can also use the text above to create an encouragement to your people to invite friends to an online event or to link them to a clear presentation of the gospel or other online or podcast event that tells them about Jesus.
Please share your thoughts, comments, questions!