9 Ideas To Engage Your Community at Halloween
This Halloween enjoy giving and receiving, watch kids have fun dressing up in cute costumes, and use it as a time to reach out to your neighbours and show the love of Jesus. There are a variety of ways your church can host events for your community.
First Steps
Start today to plan and promote your Halloween event.
Three important actions – Invite, invite, invite.
Invite your community to your event through social media – post to FB, IG.
Print business-card-sized invitations for your congregation to distribute. Include date, time, place, and church website. Have them ready for Sunday, October 10.
Create shareable social media posts.
Post an invite on your community FB bulletin board.
Start posting on October 1. Post every third day in the first two weeks of October.
Plan a family event (parenting seminar, financial seminar, family fun day, etc.) in the first three weeks of November and hand out invitations.
Ideas
1. Trunk or Treat
Trunk or treat is a bunch of people from your congregation and community banding together in your church parking lot, decking out their trunks with Halloween decorations and letting children meander from car to car, collecting treats at each stop.
When choosing a time, consider if the parking lot is lit after dark. If not, hold the event during daylight hours or plan to set up floodlights.
Ask parents who plan to decorate their cars to register in advance. This will give you an idea of how much space you need to reserve for vehicles and allow you to provide instructions or guidelines to them in advance.
Ask vehicle participants to decorate their cars according to a theme and suggest that they wear a costume that goes with it. They might go with a Halloween theme and fill their trunk with pumpkins. Other popular choices include decorating with children’s TV or movie characters or setting a scene, like the old west or a campsite.
Allow an hour for cars to set up before the festivities begin. Have someone on-site direct cars to parking spaces or assign each registered car a number and draw numbers in chalk on the parking lot ahead of time. If possible, leave an empty parking spot between vehicles to help space out the trick-or-treating crowd.
More Trunk or Treat Ideas
2. Drive-Thru Extravaganza
A pandemic-proof idea. Invite families to drive-thru your church’s parking lot at a set time. They can come dressed in a costume or come as they are. Have all your volunteers costumed. Give out a bag of treats and an inflated balloon to each child. Include an invite to a family event in November.
3. Drive-in Movie Night
Rent an inflatable big screen and an FM broadcasting system. Provide treat bags for every child and popcorn for every carload.
Movie ideas:
“Veggie Tales”
“Monsters, Inc.”
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”
4. Support or Start a Community Event
Be a community builder and volunteer at a community event. Barrhead hosts a Pumpkin Walk that attracts 1000’s of people. Volunteers from Bethel Church help run the event.
Cochrane Pumpkin Lantern Festival
Taber Annual Halloween Party – they are looking for volunteers.
(Does your community not have an event? If so, why not start your own community Pumpkin Walk; a nighttime walk along a path of jack o’lanterns carved by local children.)
5. Glow Night
Families in your church host stations in high-traffic-trick-or-treating areas. These stations include treats like candy, goody bags, hot chocolate, hotdogs or BBQ, and of course glow sticks! Whatever treats you decide to use, be sure to give them out with a smile! Train volunteers to engage kids by asking kids if they’re having a good night, what they’re dressed up as, if they’re getting lots of treats, etc. Engage parents as well – if people ask why you’re doing this, simply say you are a part of a church that loves your town and want to share that love.
6. Halloween Night Camp
Like a day camp, only at night; 90-120 minutes long. Host a costume party for children ages 4-8 with games and Halloween activities. Give kids multiple chances to win prizes throughout the event. Everyone gets a treat bag. Use a few Day Camp music videos for kids to sing and dance. Tell an illustrated story about God’s love.
7. Halloween Superhero Night
Have children travel into an alternate parallel world where villains are running amuck, and they are the heroes of this story. Make face masks, decorate cookies, and play superhero-themed games that will give them a chance to win prizes. Come dressed in their fave superhero costume.
Objective: Allow children to be the heroes they aspire to be to build a sense of selflessness and bravery.
8. Pumpkin Activity Night – pre-Halloween
Pumpkin decorating. Save yourself the mess of pumpkin carving and have a pumpkin decorating station instead. Stickers, paint, paint pens, glue, yarn, and glitter give kids a wide array of options to get creative. They can pick their pumpkin and their craft supplies, have fun decorating, then take their pumpkin home.
Pumpkin bowling. Find a few particularly round pumpkins, hollow them out, and cut three holes for fingers (just like a traditional bowling ball). You’ll also need ten tall gourds that can stand upright. Find a stretch of flat ground outside (or a hallway indoors if you don’t mind the mess), arrange the gourds like bowling pins, and let your festival-goers try to get a strike.
“Guess the weight.” Find a very large pumpkin and have people guess how much it weighs. They can write down their name and their guess on a slip of paper. At the end of the night, the person with the closest guess wins a prize. You can double the fun by having a jar full of candy corn, too — just have people guess how many pieces are in the jar.
9. Stay At Home Families
For families needing to stay at home suggest these values:
Enjoy getting to know your neighbours better at your door.
Introduce yourself but don’t ask a child’s name.
Compliment costumes.
Give out good treats.
Have hot chocolate, coffee or hot apple cider for parents on a cold night.
Parents will remember your kindness.
Bob Jones is the founder of REVwords.com, an author, blogger, and coach with 39 years of pastoral experience. Bob is also an Advance Coach with the ABNWT Resource Centre. You can connect with Bob here.