{"id":1035,"date":"2010-11-01T21:50:33","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T03:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1035"},"modified":"2010-11-01T21:50:33","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T03:50:33","slug":"accommodating-culture-on-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1035","title":{"rendered":"Accommodating Culture on Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I admit it.\u00a0 Last night, our church accommodated our neigbhors who were out trick-or-treating on Halloween.\u00a0 From 5 to 8PM on Sunday evening, the church that I have the privilege of pastoring — Bethel Baptist Alamogordo, NM — opened its facilities (actually just our parking lot)\u00a0for our first-ever\u00a0“Trunk or Treat.”\u00a0 Bethel, which fronts one of the busiest streets in our town (most especially on Halloween), decided to reach out to our community after a multi-church “Fall Festival” that we were participating in was cancelled less than two weeks prior to Halloween.<\/p>\n

Wanting to preserve a positive Christian witness in Alamogordo, we decided to come up with our own event that we could do on short notice.\u00a0 With ten days to prepare, Jon, our new Student Pastor, came up with the idea of “Trunk or Treat,” something that he had been involved with in a Seattle-area church.<\/p>\n

The idea behind “Trunk or Treat” is to have church members come to the church with their vehicles, decorate their trunks (or back of their mini-vans),\u00a0and\u00a0give candy to kids in the neighborhood\u00a0who are out trick-or-treating.\u00a0 At the same time that we are\u00a0passing out candy, we were also witnessing to our neigbhors through tracts placed in their bags, through one-on-one witnessing opportunities, and through providing families and children with a safe, secure, and fun environment for trick-or-treating.\u00a0 However,\u00a0just\u00a0offering candy to these families — without offering Christ and His love — would have missed the mark.<\/p>\n

We wanted to be the salt and light to our neigbhors — most of whom are lost without Christ — on a night that is known for its darkness.\u00a0 Why allow the enemy to claim any territory\u00a0on any day of the year?\u00a0 The Apostle Paul tells us to “redeem the time.”\u00a0 In other words, we are to make the best use of our time in such a way that honors God, impacts our\u00a0culture, and advances the Redeemer’s Kingdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beyond our wildest expectations, we saw approximately 2,000 people come onto our church property and participate in “Trunk or Treat.”\u00a0 The reality is that most of these familes, including nearly 800 children, have probably never set foot on Bethel’s campus.\u00a0 Many of them, prior to this event, may not have even known that Bethel existed, much less known where we are located.\u00a0 And, if we want to be frank, most of the families in our town and in yours have never darkened the door of any church except for the occasional wedding or funeral.\u00a0 Why not invite your lost neighbors and friends to church on Halloween and demonstrate Christ’s love for those who\u00a0died on the cross to save?\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, for some, that’s too much of an accommodation to our culture.\u00a0 It did not take long for the cold water brigade (aka some Baptist fundamentalists\/legalists) to pour cold water (with a strong dash\u00a0of contempt and Pharisaical pride to boot) on our church’s\u00a0“Trunk or Treat” outreach event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Described by\u00a0a few folks (who, by the way, don’t live in our community and do not know our church) on Facebook as\u00a0a “hellish” event\u00a0accommodating culture, our church was compared to Joel Osteen and Lakewood Church in Houston.\u00a0 It was suggested that we might want to think about adding a bar to our church to attract more people from the community.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It’s been a long time since I have laughed that hard.\u00a0 If they only knew what I thought of Joel Osteen, but then again, why let reasoned debate get in the way of a drive-by.<\/p>\n

The level of\u00a0intelligent discourse from these fundamentalists continued to head south quickly.\u00a0 Now, I don’t mind folks who have come to the conviction that they do not want to participate in Halloween, even in an outreach event.\u00a0 And please, there is not much difference between a “Fall Festival” and a “Trunk or Treat.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oh, wait, there is at least one difference:\u00a0 “Trunk or Treat” allowed us to interact with actual lost people whereas “Fall Festivals” often-times are nothing more than a bunch of Christians who want to have their cake (or candy in this case) and eat it too, except they don’t want to eat it amongst the heathen that live right beside them and their churches!<\/p>\n

Far too many Christians, especially of the fundamentalist variety, are worried about the church accommodating to culture.\u00a0 Should the church and followers of Christ\u00a0“adjust,\u00a0compromise, modify, or otherwise adapt” (one definition of accommodation)\u00a0our theology, beliefs,\u00a0message or actions to please culture in order to\u00a0win the lost to Christ?\u00a0 Absolutely not!<\/p>\n

Should churches and Christians be helpful and neighborly (another definition of accommodating) toward those who are our actual neighbors, even if those folks don’t act like prim and proper Christians on Halloween?\u00a0 Should the church seek to reach our friends and neighbors with the Gospel of Christ every day of the year, including on\u00a0Halloween, or do we simply retreat behind closed doors and wait until those “pagans” get off “our” streets and out of “our” neighborhoods?<\/p>\n

I suppose the answer to those questions utimately comes down to which definition of “accommodation” you subscribe to.\u00a0 Some fundamentalists will always be more comfortable railing against any “accommodation” by Christians to culture.\u00a0 They probably will never be comfortable sitting at a\u00a0notorious sinner’s\u00a0table and eating a meal with him.\u00a0 I’m just glad Jesus didn’t have that problem.\u00a0 Go figure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I admit it.\u00a0 Last night, our church accommodated our neigbhors who were out trick-or-treating on Halloween.\u00a0 From 5 to 8PM on Sunday evening, the church that I have the privilege of pastoring — Bethel Baptist Alamogordo, NM — opened its facilities (actually just our parking lot)\u00a0for our first-ever\u00a0“Trunk or Treat.”\u00a0 Bethel, which fronts one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,15],"tags":[58,198,215,230,375,421,450,469,552,3392,1003],"class_list":["post-1035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-evangelism","tag-accommodation","tag-candy","tag-children","tag-church","tag-families","tag-fundamentalists","tag-gospel","tag-halloween","tag-jesus-christ","tag-religion","tag-trunk-or-treat"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-gH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}