This might be somewhat controversial in our church...therefore I want to begin by saying that my opinion is not necessarily the opinion of our church as a whole nor is it necessarily the opinion of anyone else in our church. Tim Challies who has an excellent blog posted an article today entitled Trick or Retreat? which I believe is worthy of a visit. My personal stance is very close to that of Challies. Should we have a Christian "alternative" at church? Should we forget the whole issue and participate fully? Should we turn our lights out and declare an all out war and retreat from the pagan holiday? Should we use it as an opportunity for missions?

It seems that the most common responses by Christian people is to declare an all out war against Halloween. In this war we either decide to combat it with our Reformation Day, Harvest Festival, etc. or we decide that the best way to win this war is for our people run away from it and not be influenced by evil. What is my opinion? I believe that the "run away" approach is usually not a good one. And I believe that Reformation Day might be a good idea but could be counter-productive.

Why do we not use this open-door invitation that our community has given us to be good neighbors, to share the love of Christ with those who visit our house, or to even go a step further and dress up and give out gospel tracts, candy, etc.? Last year our youth group did a Backwards Halloween. Instead of getting candy from people we blessed the community with some candy of their own.

My personal stance is that costumes are not innately evil (it is probably best not to do that which affirms the occult--witches, devils, etc.). Candy is not evil unless you want to preserve your teeth. Certainly going out into our community, getting to know people, and enjoying fellowship is certainly a good thing. So, in a nutshell my personal stance is that Halloween is an open door for missions and we should take it!

What is your opinion? Is this friendship with the world? Or is this being missional?