Fall Festival and Halloween | Effective Church Communications

How Christians are like Pumpkins—a fun object lesson for adults and kids to grow as Christians together

7 October, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Pumpkin Carving and faith building project — Use this pumpkin carving lesson as a time to teach children about Jesus.

This is just the cutest, fun thing for Halloween!

But first the serious reasons behind it:

In the Old Testament, Jewish parents were commanded to teach their children about God's law during all of life.

Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates. Deut. 6:7-9 MSG

In the New Testament, we are all commanded to do a similar thing—

Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way. Col. 3;7, MSG

Though we are commanded to make God's Word and doing His will part of every area of life, that isn't an easy command to fulfill.

Holidays can help, even ones we wouldn't normally think would help us to grow in our Christian lives.

How pumpkins can help us understand the Christian life, what Jesus has done for us, and how we can live for Him.

We don't often think of Halloween as a time to learn about the Christian faith, but with a little imagination and creativity, it can be! Here is a pumpkin carving project that will help kids learn about Jesus. Below is a short video that goes through the project and below the video is a link to a ZIP file that contains a ready-to-print Pumpkin Project sheet, editable MS Publisher files, jpg images, and an MS Word file of the text if you want to create your own version.

Click on the following link to download a ZIP file that contains a ready-to-print Pumpkin Project, editable MS Publisher files, jpg images, and an MS Word file of the text if you want to create your own version: Pumpkin Project & Poem

The Teal Pumpkin Project is a great service to kids and families with allergies

6 October, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

The Teal Pumpkin Project is a great service to kids and families with allergies.

One in 13 kids have a food allergy and for many of them and their parents, what is a fun candy fest for most kids becomes a nightmare of fears about sometimes life-threatening allergic reactions.

In response to this situation and because her son had severe allergies, one mom decided to do something about it. Here's her story from USA TODAY:

Back in 2012, a Tennessee mom named Becky Basalone had an idea: What if Halloween could be made a little less tricky for kids with food allergies?

Her idea became what is now the Teal Pumpkin Project, a nationwide effort to encourage families — whether their own kids have food restrictions or not — to offer up some non-food treats on Oct. 31. Participation is simple: You just put a teal-colored pumpkin or sign outside your door and offer trick-or-treaters glow sticks, spider rings, Halloween stickers or other non-food goodies, along with or instead of the traditional candies.

Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE), a non-profit advocacy group, first promoted the idea nationwide in 2014, with the help of a viral Facebook post, says Nancy Gregory, senior director of communications. In 2015, about 1 million people visited the group’s website to get information, and about 10,000 of them — probably a fraction of participants — put their homes on an interactive map showing teal pumpkin sites, she says.

This year, the group is thinking bigger, Gregory says: “Our goal is to have a home on every block in America with a teal pumpkin. We hope that it becomes a new Halloween tradition.”

from: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2016/10/23/teal-pumpkin-halloween-food-allergy/92285680/

For more of Becky's story: https://allergicliving.com/2014/10/23/the-origin-of-the-teal-pumpkin-project-interview-with-becky-basalone-facet/

How to participate

[Read more...]

You asked for more on how to use Canva and I’ve got some exciting news for you! Announcing CANVA templates and videos on how to use them

3 October, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

You asked for more on how to use Canva and I've got some exciting news for you—CANVA templates and videos on how to use them!

I don't know about you but I really dislike how-to videos about a program I really want to learn, but that has little to no relationship to any real-world product.

I'm talking about the kind that simply demonstrates "features" and you are left wondering how those actions could ever apply to your projects.

What I decided to do was to DEMONSTRATE the various ways you can use Canva by actually showing you HOW to do things with real Templates, and real projects you do. Not only does this make the learning more practical, but I discovered it is incredibly easy to link you directly to Canva where you can modify the templates I create for you.

Here is the first video I created for how to sign up for Canva and then modify Fall Templates.

CLICK on the Titles below that go to previews of the two initial projects I did for this: Fall Invitation Postcards and Fall Business Card-size Invitations.

Free Fall postcards

Free Fall Business Invitation Cards

Church Halloween Celebrations: why simply having fun and not sinning is not the point of why we do what we do

1 October, 2022 By Yvon Prehn 4 Comments

Halloween is about more than fun, it's an opportunity to share the gospel — If the reason for your Halloween outreach is only about kids having fun and getting lots of candy, you've missed a great opportunity to share the gospel.

Is having fun what defines a Christian? Is FUN what makes a church even worthwhile? Is fun why we do what we do (whatever it is) in the Christian life?

When you look at many church communications, you'd assume the answer was "yes." A recent scanning of material on the web as I was researching alternative Halloween events overwhelmingly advertised events or promoted activities where the FUN promised is promoted as the primary reason people should attend. Though the focus of this article is on the combination of Halloween communications and the emphasis of FUN (intentional shouting with the all capital letters), the same concerns and cautions apply to our communication of many church outreach events.

How fun becomes the primary motivation for Halloween alternative events

Much of the thinking process behind many of these "Christian" alternatives to Halloween on the web seems to go something like this:

Halloween is evil.
To take part in a traditional secular celebration of Halloween is evil and sinful.
Christians shouldn't do evil and sin.
Instead Christians should have good, clean fun.
Therefore our church will do a fun event for Halloween.
People will see we are Christians by our fun.

I don't have a problem with the list up to #3—much of traditional Halloween celebrations are evil. Maybe not as evil as some timid folks fear, but probably not activities that would fall into the class of edifying Christian activities. Dressing up as demons and witches and glorifying magic is not what Christians ought to be doing. Sending your kids out alone to beg for candy in most areas today isn't safe. But the alternative to fighting evil or working to fulfill the Great Commission is not to simply have safe fun. [Read more...]

A non-scary way to share your faith at Fall Festivals and Halloween

30 September, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Use Halloween to share your faith — Halloween and Fall Festivals are a great time to share your faith that isn't scary! Use these flyers to encourage your church to make the most of it.

Halloween is a fantastic time for outreach and many churches make the most of it with Trunk or Treat, a Fall Festival and similar outreach activities.

In addition to that, it can also be a great time to encourage your people to invite their friends to these events. To do that, I did up a flyer or bulletin insert that encourages your congregation to use this time of year and the events of your church as a great time to share their faith. Below are images of the flyer, a podcast that I did for it, and below that the text of the flyer you can use in whatever way you want.