IDEAS THAT WORK - Christianity Today

The Halloween Alternative

Ovilla Road Church of the Nazarene in Glen Heights, Texas, is busy planning its second annual Pumpkin Patch Carnival. A year ago a young mother suggested she’d like an alternative to the usual Halloween trick-or-treat activities, so Pastor John Whitsett came up with the idea of the carnival.

The community will read about this year’s carnival in the local newspaper. A portable marquee will sit at the church parking lot entrance, and flyers will be distributed through community day-care centers and after-school activity centers during the week before Halloween.

On Halloween night, carnival time is 6:30 to 8:30 in the yard adjacent to the church. Bales of hay topped with pumpkins mark the perimeter of the carnival area, and a church member costumed as a big dog greets children as they arrive.

Other church members supervise a variety of children’s games: bowling (with two-liter soda containers as pins), tic-tac-toe (children toss bean bags onto a grid trying to get three in a row), apple-on-a-string, basketball shoot (using a child’s goal), pin-the-nose-on-the-pumpkin, fishing (the younger children loved this one because with a little help they always caught something), and a cake walk.

Children may compete at each game as often as they like, but each child can win a major prize only once. Successive wins earn small sacks of candy and a vinyl refrigerator magnet displaying the church name, logo, and telephone number.

Since darkness falls by 6:30, the carnival area is lit with a halogen lamp and several homemade light poles. Lighting splashes out through church windows and welcomes those outside to look in.

A refreshment table strategically located just inside the chapel holds homemade goodies, coffee, and hot cider so parents can chat with church hosts while watching their children in the carnival area. Literature about the church is available. People who come inside can see the facility and catch a glimpse of the church’s future from the master plan posted on the wall.

The first carnival cost less than $150, including the prizes for each game. Donations of lumber, pumpkins, the marquee, and bales of hay reduced expenses.

Pastor Whitsett estimates that more than a hundred parents and children he’d never seen previously were present at some time during the two hours. It was particularly rewarding when a neighbor called the next day to thank the church for having the event and saying how much her family enjoyed it.

“I trust that a refrigerator magnet with our name and phone number is attached to many refrigerator doors right now. When they need a church, we hope they’ll turn to us,” says Pastor Whitsett.

A Walking Pageant

For many years St. Paul’s United Methodist Church of Sidney, Ohio, had arranged a living creche on the church’s lawn. Then Darlene Christiansen, the minister’s wife, suggested the ministry be expanded to include a festive Christmas walk through the church. The church women’s organization decided to replace its annual bazaar with this more meaningful event.

On the first Tuesday and Thursday evenings in December and the following Sunday afternoon, the church invites the community for a unique celebration.

As visitors arrive, they are registered and directed to the sanctuary where a continuous program of carol singing, instrumental music, slide shows, and readings is underway.

Gradually, in groups of 10 to 15, guided tours move to other rooms where visitors are participants in the pageant of Christmas.

Each year preparations are made according to a chosen theme. One year each room represented a different ethnic celebration of Christmas.

Another year the theme was the journey to Bethlehem, and each room was prepared to represent a stage of the journey: map making, the inn, meeting the shepherds and getting a taste of cheese and dates, meeting the three wise men and receiving samples of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and hearing how they were used in biblical times. King Herod even granted interviews to the travelers. A visit to the stable ended that tour.

Another year the rooms were prepared with bells, harps, drums, and musicians from the church’s choirs to illustrate Christmas carols. The primary children of the church wrote and performed a puppet play. Visitors learned to sign the carol “Silent Night.”

Every person can make a gift to take home: a decorated cookie or cake, a wreath, a tiny manger made from tongue depressors (complete with a clothes-pin baby wrapped in burlap), or some other handmade memento.

One year each person was given a small banner upon arrival, and during the tour they received cloth Christmas symbols to attach. Visitors have made wreaths to be delivered to local nursing homes. Another year each person helped to create the tin-punch luminarias that have adorned the church’s lawn during every Advent season since.

Who comes to St. Paul’s Christmas walk? Many people from the surrounding area: Boy Scout troops, 4-H clubs, grange groups, groups organized by the Salvation Army and the inner-city mission, nursing home residents, people from other churches, and people who have never been to church before. The celebration has become a Christmas tradition in Sidney.

Their celebration involves most of the congregation in either preparation or performance. All ages, even shut-ins, have ownership of some phase of the walk: making give-away articles, addressing invitations, cutting, baking, designing scenery and costumes.

What’s in it for the church? The creative talents of the congregation are given full expression. It is a meaningful inter-generational experience, both in the preparation and in performance. (One of the wise men was 87 years old.) Many children attending with a group go back home to bring parents for a second visit.

Those involved find themselves learning about and sharing the Christmas story in fresh ways.

Many people have thanked the church. One mother wrote to say, “It seemed the messages were made just for me, and I wondered how much my children really understood. This year they’ve shown through actions and conversation that they each (even our 4-year-old) understood much of what you taught. Your walk was one of the best educational experiences I’ve found.”

Being Visitor Friendly

The angels must have smiled when they saw Joan Budai, baby on hip, tremblingly reach for the bell at her neighbor’s front door.

On Sunday the sermon had pierced her conscience. She was determined to begin a ministry of hospitality to her neighbors by giving them a plate of homemade cookies. This first visit took about three minutes and left her in such a state of euphoria that she went home for more cookies and visited every house in her block.

That timorous start blossomed into a hospitality ministry to visitors in her church, College Date Baptist in Anchorage, Alaska. They call it pROject 1213, referring to Romans 12:13-“Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”

The pROject 1213 reaches first-time visitors and promotes deeper fellowship among church members.

Five families are recruited each six months to invite visitors home to Sunday lunch. Each family is assigned to one Sunday of the month. The fifth family serves on fifth Sundays and acts as substitute for other hosts when sick children or broken water pipes intervene.

The duties of the host family are simple:

1. Prepare lunch for four extra people.

2. Approach visitors and invite them home for lunch.

3. If no visitors accept the invitation, invite someone in the congregation who has never been in your home.

The back pews are reserved for host families so they can get to visitors before they leave the church. About 50 percent of the time visitors are too startled to accept the invitation or have other plans.

Still, there’s a pleasant, lingering impact to having been invited to dinner on their very first visit.

Another benefit is the increasing warmth among church members who formerly knew each other only superficially.

The College Date Church does two things to encourage families to take a turn at hospitality. First, host families occasionally share their experiences during Sunday evening worship. One hostess admitted she turned on the oven and left the roast on the counter. Another confessed she served exactly the same menu every time, and her small children came to recognize it was their turn when they saw her preparations.

Second, a hospitality workshop is offered periodically. On a Saturday morning, experienced hostesses demonstrate preparation for three different kinds of meals: a sandwich buffet, a family-style meal, and a formal dinner. While the food cooks, participants divide into three groups to prepare tables for each of the three meals. It is a time for exchanging ideas and asking questions without embarrassment. Handouts include recipes and ideas for napkin rings, place settings, and centerpieces.

When the food is ready, each group takes its turn sampling the three meals. In one room soup and sandwiches are served. In another room is a family dinner planned around a hamburger casserole. The third menu is a ham dinner. Then all groups meet together in the fellowship hall to sample an array of desserts.

Last on the agenda is a Bible study from Romans 12:13, and the visitor hospitality program is explained. Immediate decisions are not called for, but everyone is encouraged to consider being a part of the pROject 1213 ministry.

Joan offers these suggestions from her experience:

-A simple meal served in the home rates above an expensive meal served in a restaurant.

-Hospitality must be a family effort, and any woman who tries to play hostess without the cooperation of her husband and children is doomed to misery.

-Hospitality is a ministry to which God must do the calling.

Not everyone will be called to that ministry, but Joan Budai and the hospitable families at College Date Church have found one way to make their church warmer and more friendly.

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