Halloween Ideas for Youth

Karin12414 said:

Hey guys!

So my Church will be hosting a "Trunk-or-Treat" this year and we wanted to give the Youth their own little "Project/Activity" to be in charge of that night. Do you guys have any easy and affordable options I could maybe suggest?

We are trying to move towards giving the Youth more responsibilities around the Church to keep them engaged and interested in the overall idea of Church (if that makes sense)

Let the suggestions flow

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Before you proceed any further, study the history of Halloween for yourself and why would the church celebrate an occult holiday? I understand it is a youth alternative but why participate in this holiday in the first place?

Karin12414 said:

Hey guys!

So my Church will be hosting a "Trunk-or-Treat" this year and we wanted to give the Youth their own little "Project/Activity" to be in charge of that night. Do you guys have any easy and affordable options I could maybe suggest?

We are trying to move towards giving the Youth more responsibilities around the Church to keep them engaged and interested in the overall idea of Church (if that makes sense)

Let the suggestions flow

Click to expand...

I tried doing an internet search on "ideas for church trunk or treat" and loads of things came up. Also, see if there is anything the youth themselves suggest doing since they'll be more engaged if it was their idea in the first place.

Karin12414 said:

Hey guys!

So my Church will be hosting a "Trunk-or-Treat" this year and we wanted to give the Youth their own little "Project/Activity" to be in charge of that night. Do you guys have any easy and affordable options I could maybe suggest?

We are trying to move towards giving the Youth more responsibilities around the Church to keep them engaged and interested in the overall idea of Church (if that makes sense)

Let the suggestions flow

Click to expand...

Are you a Pastor/Teacher there? When I used to be part of my Youth Group, we would prepare snacks or food and then give it to the people at church.

Don't forget to have a fun activity after that so that they can enjoy some time together.

Karin12414 said:

My Pastor has made it very clear why we are doing this. We are not Celebrating Halloween. We are taking a night where loads of children and teens will be out on the street, and we are giving them a safe environment to come and get candy and hear the word. I do understand your concern and appreciate it a lot of Christians can misunderstand things, but we are very clear on our goal for this night



We will be allowing them to give ideas as well, but the Pastor asked us for some in case they don't come up with much lol when I Google that it just gave me ideas for car decorations :/ but I will try to change up my keywords and see if that helps any

Thank you!



I am the Youth Worship Leader The Church will provide food and drinks, the Pastor mentioned mainly just wanting to keep them busy so they are not just standing around crowding things (like last year lol).

Do you have any activities to suggest?

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Are they cooking or ordering the food? If cooking, they could help with it and learn something new, or if ordering they can help serving the food, drinks, and even cleaning any mess that will probably happen.

That's what I remember we used to do.

The youth at the United Methodist church I used to go to WROTE THEIR OWN CREED.

It was very good, and was used in liturgy along with Apostle' s Creed, Nicene, Canadian, and other creeds in the hymnal.

Maybe the kids could compose a Halloween Creed.

where youth can help:

area where kids decorate tiny pumpkins
(not jack-o-lanterns)
feathers, glue, paint, stickers, etc

hay bale maze for young kids

Karin12414 said:

Hey guys!

So my Church will be hosting a "Trunk-or-Treat" this year and we wanted to give the Youth their own little "Project/Activity" to be in charge of that night. Do you guys have any easy and affordable options I could maybe suggest?

We are trying to move towards giving the Youth more responsibilities around the Church to keep them engaged and interested in the overall idea of Church (if that makes sense)

Let the suggestions flow

Click to expand...

Door prizes are one idea for activities. Sort of like a raffle. "The scariest costume wins!" You know, stuff like that.

Another one is "fishing" for candy, where the contestant drops a toy fishing line behind a partition and somebody attaches candy to it. Both of those things would probably be easy for the youth ministry to do and relatively cheap to pull off.

If you want to stick with more of a trunk r treat thing, you could put the youth ministry kids in charge of festooning the trunk of the car with Halloween decorations. Dry ice is practically mandatory for these types of things.

You can buy a Halloween sound effects "album" on iTunes and somebody skilled with using Audacity (or Garage Band or whatever these dang kids today use) can overlay the sound effect tracks from the album with the spooky music tracks on the album. I'm in the middle of doing this very thing right now so that my Halloween soundtrack mix will be ready when the kids knock on our door this year. So it's spooky organ music with chainsaws and other sound effects playing on top of the music. This might be more of a nerdy idea for any AV students in the youth ministry though. But still, this could sound pretty good played back on a loop in the car as trick or treaters stop by for candy.

Another activity for your youth ministry might be face-painting. That one is always a crowd-pleaser. If any of the youth have artsy skills, this could be a good thing for them to do.

Another idea might be setting up a hotdog (or whatever) stand. Parents are often famished during these activities. Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that a hotdog stand in one of these parties is like finding an ice cold bottle of Evian when you're lost in the Sahara desert. And your youth ministry kids maybe can cook or serve the hotdogs to the starving parents.

With stuff like this, the sky is the limit, really.

Karin12414 said:

Hey guys!

So my Church will be hosting a "Trunk-or-Treat" this year and we wanted to give the Youth their own little "Project/Activity" to be in charge of that night. Do you guys have any easy and affordable options I could maybe suggest?

We are trying to move towards giving the Youth more responsibilities around the Church to keep them engaged and interested in the overall idea of Church (if that makes sense)

Let the suggestions flow

Click to expand...

Well you asked...
How about changing the name to "Trunks for Jesus"? Each trunk has one of Christ's parables. Children need to know more about Jesus Christ of Nazareth, that to me is most important. Have them decorate the trunk as a display of one of His parables. How great would that be?
Blessings

Karin12414 said:

My Pastor has made it very clear why we are doing this. We are not Celebrating Halloween. We are taking a night where loads of children and teens will be out on the street, and we are giving them a safe environment to come and get candy and hear the word. I do understand your concern and appreciate it a lot of Christians can misunderstand things, but we are very clear on our goal for this night

Click to expand...

Thanks for your courteous response. You and your church are of course free do as you wish but speaking from my experience as a former children's pastor who was responsible for putting up probably the biggest outreach event each year on Halloween, I can say that our goals were likely similar to yours. Though you think you are not celebrating Halloween, your church's participation on that day/night, is in itself a observance of that occult holiday. At least do your own research as the internet is filled with articles both pro and con. If I had done my due diligence back then, I would have not overseen such an event.

What about a Halloween Fair?

A list of suggestions for stalls/activities:

Face Painting area
Pumpkin soup table
Book stall
Sponge bobbing stall
Sweet stall
Spooky story contest
Fancy dress competition
Dancing display
Creepy mask stall
Filmzone

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