One of the things our elders have done over the last eight years is open our building to the community. I think you’d be amazed at the cross section of folks that hold events here. Girls scouts, the YMCA, various support groups, Berwick schools and community athletic leagues among many others. We’ve done this to try to and build a bridge between our church and the community. Sometimes just getting people into the building removes some of the hesitance they have about us being a “church.” This has been very effective. I know of several folks who have come to services at ebc because they’ve come to some other event here and became curious about us. As is the case with anything, sometimes building use requests are controversial and present difficult judgments. One of those was when the YMCA wanted to use our gym to hold their basket bingo fund raiser. Basically, in basket bingo, everyone makes a donation to the Y as an entrance fee. Then they play bingo to win prizes of baskets. After discussing this with our elders we allowed the event in our gym. I’ve blogged about that decision in the past. This week one of the local midget football teams made a request to have a Halloween party in our building. My first reaction was to just say yes on the grounds that our building is open to the community and we’d love to have them here. After some reflection however I asked Colleen to hold off on getting back to them so I could think and pray a bit more. Halloween is not something we celebrate and I wondered if allowing a Halloween party might somehow be an endorsement of the things Halloween is about.  I tried to think through how Jesus would handle the request and I thought about what message we’d be sending either by allowing or not allowing the party. Then I thought back to my own childhood in Ashland. I remembered Halloween. We dressed up in funny costumes and visited our neighbors who gave us candy. That was it. I didn’t learn what the real Halloween was about until well into my adult years and our childhood celebration of what we called Halloween was very different from that. I then thought about my own sons. I remembered Brenda dressing them up in costumes that she made and their delight in getting candy from neighbors and relatives. I remembered pastoring in Selinsgrove where we had big “fall fun nights’ on Halloween so kids could get all dressed up and come and have fun and get candy. It occurred to me that there are really two Halloweens. One is a fun time of kids dressing up in costumes and having parties and getting candy. The other is an evil celebration of pagan worship. They have nothing to do with each other. I thought through what it would feel like to the families of this midget football program, who in their mind are having a fun, safe event for their kids, to hear that we think that Halloween in evil and we will therefore not allow them to use our building. I can imagine them wondering what kind of kooky person thinks having a protected party for kids that keeps them off the streets is an evil thing. So in the end I made the judgment that we would welcome this group to come and enjoy a safe, candy filled evening of playing games. While they’re here I hope their parents look around and get curious about what we’re all about. Through it all I was reminded that missions is messy and I’m glad that we’re a family that is willing to deal with the messiness of effective outreach so we can build a bridge to those who need to be rescued by Jesus.

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