Here's a Good Way to Celebrate Halloween

Below is an article written by Dr. George Robison, Professor of Missions and Evangelism at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.  I really appreciate Dr. Robison’s perspective on how we as Christian’s can use Halloween to reach out to our unchurched friends and neighbors.   If the families in your neighborhood go door to door on Halloween, I hope you will consider the ideas put forward by Dr. Robison.

If there aren’t a lot of opportunities in your own neighborhood, let me encourage you to participate in the Halloween outreach that we do on Morgan Street at the Beulah Bapt. Association office.  Hundred’s of people stopped by last year receiving goodies and the Good News.  One of our Life Groups is taking the lead in this outreach but everyone can participate.  You can get information about the event on Westwood’s Facebook page or website. 

In addition to these we will also host our community at Westwood’s Fall Family Festival on Sunday night, November 2.  No other event sees more people on our campus and offers more opportunities to practice hospitality and share the love of Christ.  The heart you see in Dr. Robison’s article is the same heart we need at the Fall Festival. 

October 31st. For most Americans this date means one thing: **Halloween.**

Costumes, candy and trick-or-treaters spending to the tune of $2.5 billion make this holiday second only to Christmas in marketing revenue. But good Christians don’t celebrate Halloween.  Or do they?  Some Protestants may prefer to call it Reformation Day, for after all, that is the date that Martin Luther nailed his Theses to the door at Castle Church in Wittenberg back in 1517.  That does pre-date the first usage of the phrase “All Hallows Eve” (commonly known now as Halloween) which didn’t emerge until some 40 years later in 1556.

Ironically, most good Christians that I know won’t be celebrating either Reformation Day or Halloween. Instead, they will be showing support for their local church by attending a “safe and sanitary” alternative called a Fall Festival.  This alternative allows good Christians to invite their neighbors and friends to come to the church and get candy, play games and have some good, clean Christian fun.  No pagan witches and goblins allowed.  But they can dress up as David or Moses or some other biblical character.  All the fun without the pagan revelry, right?

I would like to propose another alternative – that good Christians should indeed celebrate Halloween.  I think that they should stay home from their church’s alternative Fall Festival and celebrate with their pagan neighbors. Most of them wouldn’t have come to your Fall Festival anyway. And those who did would’ve stopped by briefly on their way to “real” trick-or-treating. I’m sure that some of you reading this blog might be more than a little unhappy with my proposal at this point, but stick with me for a moment.: The reason I propose that good Christians celebrate Halloween and stay home from the “Christian alternatives” is that Halloween is the only night of the year in our culture where lost people actually go door-to-door to saved people’s homes . . . and you’re down at the church hanging out with all your other good Christian friends having clean fellowship with the non-pagans.

Living with missional intentionality means that you approach life as a missionary in your context. I lived with my family in South Asia and we had to be creative and intentional in engaging our Muslim neighbors. We now live in the USA and we still need to be creative and intentional. That’s why for the past 2 years we have chosen to stay at home and celebrate the fact that Halloween gives us a unique opportunity to engage our neighbors. In fact, last year we had over 300 children and 200 adults come to our doorstep on that one night. And we were ready for them!

We had a tent set up in the driveway and gave away free coffee and water to the adults who were walking with their children.  Our small group members manned the tent and engaged them in conversation and gave each one of them a gospel booklet.

The children ran up to our door while the parents were waiting and got their candy, along with gospel booklets (even if they were dressed as witches or goblins!). In all we gave away more than 500 pieces of literature that night, each with our name, e-mail address, and a website where they could get more info.

I sure wish more good Christians would celebrate Halloween this year by staying home and meeting their pagan neighbors – an option which I believe surely beats the “good Christian” alternative.   (First published on betweenthetimes.com)