Thankful for October 31st “Church Strategies”
Let me immediately say, I am personally very thankful for October 31. Why? Because that was the day of my birth! I was one of those unexpected blessings. I came along 11 and 9 years after my two brothers. I am so grateful that my mom chose to keep that pregnancy! Without her, I wouldn’t be writing this blog.
But October 31st can be controversial in churches because it is commonly referred to as “Halloween.” It is commonly associated with the dark side of demons, witches, ghosts, and devilish creatures. But is the day evil in and of itself? I would argue from Scripture that it is not.
Romans 14:5 emphatically states… “One man judges one day above another; another judges every day alike. Let each one be fully persuaded in his own mind.”
So is it wrong to have church events that coincide with Halloween? I realize that there are strong opinions on both sides, but I would encourage Christian charity and grace on issues such as this. There are beliefs that:
1. We will die for
2. We will defend
3. We will discuss
There may be a few that will vehemently defend their beliefs regarding Halloween, but for most people this is one of those “discuss” issues. And at the end of the day, “Let each one be fully persuaded in his own mind.” If a church decides to do an outreach event on Halloween, it isn’t that they are worshiping the devil or changing their core beliefs. It is simply a strategy that seeks to leverage something in our culture for Jesus.
Through the 30 years that I pastored the same local church, we did various outreach events either on Halloween day or around that time period. I did have people oppose this and we discussed it. They did not leave the church over it, but simply chose not to volunteer or participate in the event (which was perfectly fine).
But I would encourage pastors to think about a few things when deciding whether or not to do any event and add it to the church calendar.
All church events need to go through your strategy filter to see if it helps you fulfill your vision for disciple-making. You never want to do an event just to add something to the calendar and keep people busy. A good strategy filter asks the following questions both before and after the event:
1. Is it relevant? (will your church and community find the event relevant for today? The 80/20% principle is helpful…will 80% of people find it relevant)
2. Is it transformational? (will it help your church and community to take the next step on the disciple-making path? Or is it just fun or entertaining?)
3. Will it help the church succeed in making disciples? (this has to be the “win” in any church)
Obviously, people have to become Jesus followers and make a decision for Jesus before they can become disciples of Jesus. So there is a place for outreach events for sure. They provide an entrance ramp onto the disciple making path. But does the outreach event really give non-followers an opportunity to follow Jesus?
For example, through the years we did the common church event called, “Trunk or Treat.” There were years we had 50 to 80 trunk stops for kids. It was excellent in that it allowed us to get many young families on church property. Did we really do a good job of connecting the event to the good news of Jesus? We definitely could have done better. One year we had families go into the church auditorium for a child-friendly presentation of the gospel, and then they would enter the place where all the trunks and candy were. That year I was much more pleased with the event.
One issue was that so many churches ended up doing these kinds of events, and people would simply make the rounds, and the event lost its innovativeness and impact. In my opinion it reached the end of its shelf-life. Every church has to run their events through their strategy filter, track the results, and make their own decision.
Are families coming back to your church after the event? This is something we tracked for all our events and I would encourage you to do the same. Just because church leadership and church members have a good warm feeling after an event is not a reason to keep doing it. You need to evaluate what you really accomplished and hopefully have data to back that up. So many times after a church event, the staff or leadership will sit in a room and say, “How do you think the event went?” And people will chime in with, “I thought it went really good.” Or some will say, “I thought it was very smooth.” Some may say, “We had a great turn-out.” None of these are good reasons to keep doing an event. You have to drill down deeper than that! Is the event really working? You can’t answer this based on people’s feelings.
For example, if you do an event and the majority of people who attend are from other churches in town and there are few unchurched people there, you need to be able to look at the data and ask yourself honestly, “Is this really helping us accomplish our goal and vision of making disciples?”
So there are two big take-aways from this blog:
1. Never decide to put an event on the calendar until your leadership team has run it through your strategy filter.
2. Always have goals for these events and track your results (right after the event and during the entire next year).