Some good missional thinking...

Some good missional thinking... from a self-proclaimed fundamentalist! Tim Challies on Halloween:

I am guessing my neighbourhood is all-too-typical in that people typically arrive home from work and immediately drive their cars into the garage. More often than not they do not emerge again until the next morning when they leave for work once more. We are private, reclusive people who delight in our privacy. We rarely see our neighbors and rarely communicate with them. It would be a terrible breach of Canadian social etiquette for me to knock on a person's door and ask them for a small gift or even just to say "hello" to them. In the six years we have been living in this area, we have never once had a neighbor come to the door to ask for anything... Yet on Halloween these barriers all come down. I have the opportunity to greet every person in the neighbourhood. I have the opportunity to introduce myself to the family who moved in just down the row a few weeks ago and to greet some other people I have not seen for weeks or months. At the same time, those people's children will come knocking on my door. We have two possible responses. We can turn the lights out and sit inside, seeking to shelter ourselves from the pagan influence of the little Harry Potters, Batmans and ballerinas, or we can greet them, gush over them, and make them feel welcome. We can prove ourselves to be the family who genuinely cares about our neighbours, or we can be the family who shows that we want to interact with them only on our terms. Most of our neighbors know of our faith and of our supposed concern for them. This is a chance to prove our love for them.

The same contributor to the email list concluded his defense of participating in Halloween with these words: "One night does not a neighbor make (and one night does not a pagan make), but Halloween is the one night of the year where the good neighborliness that flows from being in Christ is communicated and reinforced. We are citizens of another Kingdom where The Light is always on."

...

My encouragement to you today is to think and pray about this issue. I do not see Halloween as a great evangelistic occasion. I do not foresee it as a time when the people coming to your door are likely to be saved. But I do think it is a time that you can prove to your neighbors that you care about them, that you care about their children, and that you are glad to be in this world and this culture, even if you are not of this world or this culture. Halloween may serve as a bridge to the hearts of those who live around you who so desperately need a Savior.

Read the rest here

ht: Justin Taylor

Comments

[SteveS]

I participate in Halloween. It's fun and most people coming to your door are not pagans. There are unique ways to reach out on any holiday, and plenty of opportunities to visit your neighbors other than Halloween. Christmas caroling is fun, and you can sing about Christ!

BTW - I have many Canadian friends and have heard just the opposite about their neighborliness. Tim describes the States.

[John Smulo]

Hopefully not too far off topic.....

I agree with the above comment that most people coming to our doors aren't going to be pagan, but personally they're more than welcome to show up.

I'm a bit over categorizing certain people as more "scary" or "evil" or whatever than others. I've had a number of Pagan friends and have found them to be intelligent, friendly, people. Jesus died on the cross for them, the same as me. And I'm called to sensitively share the gospel with them, the same as anyone else.

[Henry Frueh]

Halloween has probably lost some of its pure devil worship essence and is now a cultural observance. Come to think of it, kinda like Christianity.(did I say that?)