For the past several years, as a way of reaching our community for Christ during Halloween, Northgate Baptist Church in Orangeburg has held a “Gatorbash” – a nickname for a children’s Harvest Festival event and a takeoff of our church, the “Northgathians.”
This year, instead of asking the community to come to us, we wanted to go to them. After brainstorming, we decided our approach would be to decorate a few trailers, put in some hay, put up a few signs identifying our church and go to a few neighborhoods to “treat” them.
We loaded the church van and a few cars and went to the predetermined neighborhoods, where we got in the trailers (one of our members named the trailers “N.B.C. Treat Wagons,” and went from door to door.
Our goal was to treat each house with one or two bags as appropriate. Adults were given a bag containing a gospel tract or John 3:16 scripture book marker, information inviting them to our church, and a few pieces of candy. Children were given the same type of bag, except in their bags we put a small arm bracelet with various gospel messages.
Many of our senior members were involved by making up the bags, marking each bag with either an A for adult or C for child. Other senior members were asked to pray for the event to be successful, safety for us, and that we would reach as many houses as possible during the two-hour time limit. In the two-hour period, we handed out more than 200 bags.
We were very well received by the people. One gentleman was sitting on his front steps with his Halloween mask on to add excitement to the night, I suppose, when we approached him and told him who we were and that we had a treat for him. He was so surprised, he pulled off his mask, asked us to wait a minute, called his wife out to tell her about what we were doing. That reaction was repeated by several others. We also got good responses from the parents and children who came to these neighborhoods by car.
Our members were excited to be able to share Christ and reach the community with a different approach. Several new ideas were mentioned for other ways to reach our community for Christ as a result of this event. It turned out to be a great event and a blessing to all.
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