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How we celebrated "Holyween" instead of "Halloween."

Acts-celerate Owner Posts: 6957 **10/23/19 9:11 am**

When Linda and I moved to Long Island, New York near New York City, our goal was to help rescue a church that had split leaving only eight people. Six months previously, we had bought a new home in Cleveland where I had been working with Forward In Faith.

As much as any other time in my life, I strongly felt God's leading to try and rescue that church. We sold the house and used the small profit to support ourselves until the church grew enough to help us some.

The religious demographic of Long Island was 80 percent Catholic, ten percent Jewish and all the rest of us; Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals etc., were in the other ten percent.

Halloween has grown in popularity everywhere now but on Long Island, it was a very BIG DEAL. The majority of our church people were beginning to break with the Catholic Church, so they did hot want to celebrate Halloween. It was their idea to instead celebrate "Holyween."

They organized a fantastic Bible celebration built around the word "Holy." People were encouraged to dress up as something in the Bible and be ready to share briefly about their choice. One young woman came dressed as a leper (Used paper-mache to stick leper spots on her face and hands).

When it was her turn to speak, everybody moved away from her in symbolic shunning. She shared about Jesus healing the leper and how symbolic it was that Scripture says Jesus"reached out and touched the leper."

There was a lot of singing and worship. Their testimonies were far more powerful that night than any sermon. Lots of good food and laughter too. I came to the Holyween party carrying a container of sand symbolizing when Israel crossed the Red Sea on "dry ground." I know, it was corny but gave an opportunity to share about unusual miracles in the Bible.

Only had one problem arise that night. A beautiful but plump teen girl came to the party dressed as the Bible. She had painted cardboard black and some red where the pages were to open. "Holy Bible" was written in large white letters on one side.

Well, one of our mischievous pre-teen boys came up to her and said, "Wow, you are the biggest Bible I ever saw." She kinda took that personally so I had to smooth that little situation out, but our people's idea of turning Halloween into "Holyween" turned out fantastic.

Doyle
writedoyle@gmail.com
404-933-1373
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The largest room in the world is the room for improvement.

Re: How we celebrated "Holyween" instead of "Halloween."

[Insert Acts Pun Here] Posts: 13654 **10/23/19 1:06 pm**

01000001 01100011 01110100 01110011 Posts: 24285 **10/23/19 10:33 pm**

Man, I liked that idea. I enjoyed the read and reasoning. Like DD, the title and entry made complete sense once put together. Thanks Doyle for a great read this time of the year.

I was blessed to do a Children's church at Camp Meeting on Long Island and a youth camp. I loved those folk. S.A Lankford was Overseer at the time. Thanks for kicking in some memories. Cool

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Some facts but mostly just my opinion!
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Friendly Face Posts: 434 **10/24/19 5:22 am**

Doyle, God does reward people like you for sacrificing your own finances to do ministry. Thanks for an encouraging morning read.