Handy Halloween Links

I have some wifi and am now desperately posting and scheduling all the things I’ve been thinking about whilst our lines have been down this last week. First off some links to some of the Halloween ideas I’ve blogged previously:

• Some stuff on how we do Halloween in the Vicarage
• A few pumpkin carving ideas
• And even a pumpkin meditation
• Glen Scrivener’s wonderful video

I noticed  this weekend that CLC in Birmingham had a whole heap of Halloween tracts – and a pumpkin prayer, in a display this weekend. So if you’ve not had time to grab any resources, a quick trip to a local Christian bookshop should sort you out in time for any trick or treaters likely to descend. Our church are holding a light party for the first time this year – we’ve just rescheduled our October Messy Church to coincide. My kids are looking forward to it, and I’ve promised the Joker he can do some ‘guising’ at the party by encouraging everyone to tell cheesy Halloween jokes.

Ryan Cartwright aka Crimperman has published a great new cartoon for Halloween this year.  I can’t seem to find a seraphim costume anywhere, though…

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Grab a Great Resource

I know we’re all thinking about Back to Church Sunday and Harvest and everything (gosh, it’s a busy term – and we’ve got a confirmation to factor in too), but before you know it, it will be Halloween. And the brilliant Glen Scrivener (of Anti Santy Ranty fame) has produced a great new video to get your congregation or youth group thinking. A great reminder that the light triumphs over the darkness.

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Halloween Reflections

We had a fun evening on Monday night. Wildchild came over and carved pumpkins with us. Then callers came round in silly costumes and we showed them our works of art, got them to tell us jokes, plied them with sweeties and gave them tracts about how Jesus is the light. It seemed like we were doing door to door evangelism from the comfort of our own home – and noone refused to listen to us or slammed the door in our faces. Although there was a teenage girl who claimed not to speak English in order to avoid the joke telling. And we weren’t so sure that she would be able to read the tract, although we hope someone in her family can.

The last callers (at 9pm) had to negotiate getting to the front door knocker round Gone, who’d deposited himself on the doorstep. He wasn’t drunk (tho’ a little smelly, I’m sorry to say), so although they were young and without an adult, it was fine.

Works of art in the Vicarage window

Yesterday I read a few thoughts from Christians with different approaches to Halloween but I think all of them fell into the Resurgence‘s ‘Redeeming’ category. Dr BexL at the BIGBible Project  had loads of good ideas and Kevin on his blog and Dan on his blog had useful stuff too. We at the Vicarage were glad to have seized this new opportunity to talk to our neighbours and bless their kids. Our only regret this year was that we forgot to hand out invites for Tuesday night’s Messy Church. But we’ll remember next year – this new festival is only set to grow in the UK.

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Christian Pumpkin Gallery

So a few friends seem to have been carving Christian pumpkins for Halloween, so I thought I’d pop them up here in a gallery.

The young people of FourFourty, St Patrick’s Wallington, carved a wonderful selection of pumpkins. Here’s a group picture:

Cassie carved one with a rainbow as well as a cross in it:

Dan, an ordinand at Oak Hill, carved this very impressive pumpkin. His daughter loved it, particularly the way the cross at the back projected onto the wall.

 

Maggie is a head teacher, and she carved this one and was taking it into school assembly this week.

Sarah Phillips of  Hope House Press sent me her pic too.

Phil Ritchie claims that his Christian pumpkins represent Peter and Paul disputing at Antioch.

I only wish the disagreements in the Church of England could be resolved with such broad smiles.

Here’s ours again. Cross, Star of David and dove, to give a bit of a bible overview theme. We had a very useful kit bought in Waitrose (I was shopping with my mother, you understand, our nearest Waitrose is miles away, both physically and financially). The kit had mini saws, which meant that we could do quite fancy patterns.

 

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