Many people forget that Halloween is a great time to share your faith. That's because it is one time of year when many people are thinking about death.
Though secular views are distorted, this provides an opportunity to start a discussion about the one person that conquered death--Jesus. To encourage your people to use this time of year to share their faith, I prepared this Halloween-themed bulletin insert.
It was designed to be used on a church bulletin insert, but it can be put into any regular communication with your congregation: email; newsletter, website, whatever you can think of, to motivate your people to use every event of the year as an opportunity to bring their friends to church and introduce them to Jesus.
A reason to be part of our
Halloween 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 on Halloween.
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 a 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. Details for the upcoming event are on the back of this sheet, for a wonderful, fun, non-scary time for everyone.
The proceeding content may be useful if your people may have concerns about why you are sponsoring an Alternative Halloween event. If you put this on a bulletin insert it can ease their fears and get them excited about your event and inviting people. On the back of the insert, I recommend putting a prayer list, so people will be intentional about inviting people to your events. You have my permission to copy, paste and use the previous section in any way you’d like for Halloween outreach motivation.
If you’d like the work done for you, the earlier sample of the finished and ready-to-print Halloween Bulletin insert, plus another version and numerous other Halloween publications for your congregation are in an editable zip file as part of the larger download for all the Editable Halloween files.
Click here to access the file.
Please share your thoughts, comments, questions!