October 2019… the point of no return.
Let’s talk about the Fall Fest for a minute.
This was something Tree Town Baptist had been doing for several years. It had grown each year considerably. In 2018 we had over 1,000 people in attendance. It was easily our most significant community outreach.
Call me crazy, but when a church is the biggest church in a town of less than 5,000, I feel like they should offer something to the community. Something with no strings attached. Just a fun event. A way to give back to the community, an outreach, and something to connect with the community, something that allows the members to minister to people and show them the love of Jesus, build relationships…
I was given a $5,000 budget for the Fall Fest each year. The egg hunt was around $2,000, and VBS was $6,000… money wasn’t an issue. I could usually get a budget approved for anything I felt would be a good ministry opportunity. The church was always very generous in that way.
In 2019 when we discussed my budget for the year, the pastor recommended that we remove the Fall Fest.
I was very confused. I had made it very clear that I felt like this was a church ministry, not a children’s ministry, and that I couldn’t continue handling all the big events alone.
I recommended a team of people to pull it off. His recommendation…(which we already know what his recommendations mean) was that we take it off the calendar altogether.
His reasoning was mind blowing….
He informed me that the Fall Fest wasn’t giving us enough return for the money we were spending.
According to him, we had seen zero new church members join the church from that event. If we were going to spend that much money, we should be seeing church growth.
So many things…
First, how exactly do you know what brought in new church members, and why?
And when did we start doing events primarily for church growth?
And what was church growth? Was it adding church members, or was it seeing church members grow in their faith by sharing with others?
I didn’t argue. My plate was full, my schedule was packed, and if we were going to take it off, I wouldn’t fight.
When he told me we weren’t going to have the Fall Fest, he told me I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. So I didn’t need to plan anything for that Wednesday night before Halloween.
Nothing, zilch, nada
I could handle that.
But in the same breath, it hurt to just give up a ministry event I had worked so hard to build, and it hurt to not offer the community something they looked forward to each year. It made me feel like a failure.
I remember a discussion with the group of adults that went to Centrikid camp with me that year.
They were all perplexed about why we had taken the Fall Fest off the calendar. I couldn’t say that I was confused, too, because that wouldn’t show solidarity. It would pit me against the pastor. I had been given my instructions, and I knew we had to appear unified as a staff on the decision. So, when it was brought up, I gave my best politically correct response. I said everything the pastor told me to. (This was during the same conversation I talked about previously, where I made sure to plug the pastor’s request that younger people start coming to business meetings).
The people with me didn’t seem convinced. They all loved the Fall Fest as much as I did and couldn’t fathom letting it go. I stuck with the pastor’s request and kept the same political answer that we hadn’t seen as much church growth as we hoped from the events. We needed to put our money and efforts into things that would bring about more church growth.
In late September 2019, the pastor came to me and asked me what we would do instead of a Fall Fest.
Excuse me, what?
We had to have something on Wednesday, October 30th, he said.
I argued.
I did.
If we were going to plan something, we were way behind. I couldn’t pull anything off with just a few weeks left to prepare.
This was my recommendation…
We should cancel our AWANA program for that night and encourage all the kids who would typically attend AWANA to attend “Land of Candy” instead. This was a big boardgame-themed drive-through event that another church in town had each year.
I had already talked to their pastor, and they decided to do their event on the 30th that year instead of on Halloween like they usually did. This pastor and I had spoken on a few occasions about how important it was for churches in Tree Town to work together to reach the community.
We may disagree on some theological issues, but that shouldn’t keep us from working together when we could. I loved this idea. I hated the understood “competition” between the churches in town. I wanted to break that stigma.
Everyone in our church with young children attended this event every year. They would get their friends together, hook a trailer to a truck, and “hay ride” the kids through the community and through “Land of Candy” to trick or treat. This was a tradition. Everyone loved it. They would not miss “Land of Candy.”
People would attend “Land of Candy” and the Fall Fest on the same night, but they would not participate in AWANA and miss “Land of Candy”. It just wouldn’t work. So instead of trying to compete with them with a regular Wednesday night program, why not just encourage them to attend “Land of Candy” and support the other church in town.
Nope. No way, no how he said. We absolutely could not cancel something on our campus to encourage people to attend elsewhere. The older crowd would not approve, and they were the biggest tithers.
I told him at that moment that if our motivation for Children’s Ministry was based on the biggest givers and keeping them happy, we had a huge problem.
He wouldn’t back down.
Either we have AWANA that night, or we plan something.
I should’ve said we would just have AWANA and then sit back and watch the parents pounce.
At the next staff meeting, the pastor and the youth pastor couldn’t wait to tell me their fantastic idea.
They wanted to ask a man in our church, who was a professional photographer, to set up on the church campus and take pictures of the kids in their costumes on their way to “Land of Candy” on the 30th. Not Halloween night. Then we could give these pictures to the families at a later date.
Ok, there are so many issues with this idea.
First, if “Land of Candy” isn’t on Halloween night, will the kids even be dressed in their costumes.
Second, how do we let people effectively know what we are doing? Are we seriously going to set up on a dark church campus with a backdrop and a man with a camera and just hope they stop by?
How do we get the pictures back to these people? What system do we put in place for that? Who mails or delivers these pictures? What if 5 different families are on one trailer? Who do we send the pictures to?
I could go on and on, and I did. This was a terrible idea. Not to mention that it looked absolutely stupid after having a huge fall fest with over 1,000 people the year before.
He told me to come up with a better idea.
I had been dealing with thinking I should quit my job now for a couple of months. I was in turmoil. I had been told I didn’t have to plan anything, and now just a few short weeks before, I’m supposed to come up with something amazing.
I told him the only thing I could come up with that close to time was doing a Trunk or Treat on the front parking lot that ended at the photographer. We had to do something that people would see to get them to even stop, and we didn’t exactly have a budget. I told him I would devise a system to take the pictures and get them to their owners. I would make it happen. He said you need to come up with 10-15 people to decorate a trunk as soon as possible.
Then he dropped this genius idea… let’s do a gameboard theme trunk or treat… make a list of options and offer them to the participants…
First, how original is a game board idea when the other church is doing “Land of Candy”? It felt like we were just piggybacking on their idea. Second, if we are going to ask people this last minute to do a trunk, shouldn’t we just let them choose their own option without any stipulations?
Nope, make a sign-up list, decorate the foyer, make some calls, and make it happen.
The Wednesday before I went to the Conference on October 2nd, 2019, 28 days before the event, I wasn’t supposed to plan; I stayed at the church until almost 11:00 p.m. with my kids to decorate the foyer with a game board trunk or treat theme.
All the way to Nashville to the Conference, while my husband drove, I made calls and sent text messages. I worked as hard as possible to get people to decorate trunks. But, in the end, I could only come up with 8.
I explained to the pastor that this event would only work if the weather cooperated. You can’t move the trunk or treat inside like we did with the fall fest. The decorations are built around the trunk of a vehicle. But, he said, no problem, if it rains, we cancel.
I can take you today to the church Facebook post from that month that says… in case of rain, this event will be canceled… (not postponed… canceled.)
Early in the week of the event, the weathermen started talking about a very heavy rain system that would enter the area on the evening of the 30th.
“Land of Candy” changed their plan and quickly moved their event to the 29th. We hadn’t made preparations for this. It was never discussed. There’s no way I could pull everyone together at a moment’s notice and change our plans.
“Land of Candy” was something this church did every year. They had all the supplies on their property… changing it last minute was not a big deal for them… and we said we would CANCEL if it rained, so why were we even having this conversation.
Wednesday, October 30th, 2019.
It was already raining by mid-morning. It was light rain at the time, but the radar showed it was coming.
The pastor called me.
He was losing his mind. We couldn’t cancel. To say we canceled would make him look bad. We couldn’t just cancel and not have anything at the church that night. I asked him if he thought the decision we made a few weeks before to cancel the event if it rained was a good one, and why, if it was good then, wasn’t it sufficient now? I had already told all of the participants that if it rained, the event was canceled.
Could we bring it inside, he asked? What the world? I already told him this couldn’t be brought inside. I told him we couldn’t do that. I asked him why we would even want to? Why would we ask parents to bring their kids out in a storm? If this was kids’ ministry, shouldn’t we make it easy for the kids and the parents…. And we already decided if it rained, we would CANCEL.
I had to drive over to the church that afternoon. I had to sit in his office and watch him wring his hands in worry over canceling.
Finally, at the very last minute, he said we would announce that we would “postpone” the event until the following Wednesday night. This, he said, would make him look better.
This inconsistency, this endless mind-changing game, the constant worry about how things made him look…the weight of all that… it was exhausting in so many ways.
Until Next Time,
Whitney
