We regret that we will not be sponsoring the Fall Festival this year. After much consideration and prayer, our church leadership team decided that it was not within the scope of what we could and should take on at this time. We are sorry for those of you who were anticipating this activity, and we hope and pray you will find other alternatives with your family and friends.
For a full message of explaination read below:
Dear Church Family:
Greetings in Jesus’ name! I hope this letter finds you doing well and prospering in “the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Recently, at the Staff, Elders, Ministry Directors and spouses planning retreat, the decision was reached to not do the “Fall Festival” on Halloween night that has been our practice for a number of years. There were many reasons for this, including the following:
1) The activity represents a very large investment of time and energy on the part of our church staff and many volunteers. It dominates all of the “extra” time that our staff has for a good portion of the Fall. Those staff hours represent a large financial investment along with a lot of other money that is spent on the festival. Our leaders feel that this time, energy, and money could be better invested elsewhere.
2) A second reason was one of the main focuses of the Festival was a desire to reach people in the community who don’t yet know the Lord with an alternative to Halloween. However, we have been carefully observing the event in recent years and it hasn’t worked out this way. Our estimate is that about 70% of the people are from other churches, and the rest from Coastside. We have seen very few un-churched people at the event. So we have been questioning whether it is central to our mission as a church, as well as whether we should be sponsoring a large activity for other churches when they could do it for themselves.
3) This year, to do the Fall Festival would have been nearly impossible anyway, in that Halloween is on a Saturday night, and getting everything torn down and cleaned up in time for Sunday with the large number of people who would be involved in both activities would be very difficult and stressful for many. Next year has even greater challenges with Halloween being on Sunday.
4) There is a consensus on our leadership team that Halloween is not a holiday that we want to support. The combination of the history and meaning of the day, its current practices, the worship of the evil one, the participation in occult activities, and the growing gruesomeness of the costumes and themes of the holiday make it one in which we are reluctant to participate. Though individual families may in fact decide to participate in various ways, our church leadership is not at peace about doing so as a church. Obviously, there is room for differing perspectives about issues like this, but after a good deal of prayer and wrestling, this is where we landed.
5) There is a general belief that if we are going to have a large activity in the Fall that we would prefer to not dovetail it with Halloween but offer it at a different time, with a different focus -- but still with lots of family-friendly, fun activities. A number of creative ideas have surfaced which sound like a lot of fun for everyone. Stay tuned, and we welcome your suggestions.
We encourage each family to prayerfully decide what to do at Halloween. If you need an alternative to being home for some reason we encourage you to work that out with other friends in the church. If you would like to speak with us about this, we will be glad to do our best to help. For those of you who are disappointed, we are sorry to have to share this news with you. We will continue to seek the Lord as to the best course to bring honor to Him individually and as a Body at this time of the year.
As a team, we struggled hard with this, prayerfully seeking God, for it is not a cut and dried issue, but one filled with many perspectives, concerns and needs. In the end, there was no peace with proceeding with the Fall Festival.
If you have further questions, please feel free to address them with anyone on the church staff, elders or ministry directors.
On behalf of the Coastside Leadership Team,
Dave Leppard
Lead Pastor
Fall Festival
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