Halloween is just a few days away. As some of us are scurrying to stores to buy candy to pass out to kids so they can be happy, there’s another group of people making their final preparations to transform their home into a haunted house to make sure they scare them to death.
When I was growing up, some people went a little over the top with their Halloween decorations. They would be in their front yard for weeks putting every last creepy detail in place. It took them hours to get everything right. They wanted to make sure the people who came to their house had a frightening experience from beginning to end.
For these people, it wasn’t enough to have a pumpkin on their porch. They had to put it on a lit tiki torch with fake blood coming out of its ears and pumpkin guts coming out of its mouth.
Yummy.
It wasn’t enough to put a cute scarecrow in their front yard for four-year olds to see. They had to put a replica of a human being that had been impaled and had a voice box screaming out cries of agony. Sometimes it was even a human actor doing it for hours on end. Usually a family member.
I bet he enjoyed that assignment.
I know of one guy who even built a creepy two-story devil’s head that he used to cover the entire front of his house. The devil’s open mouth was the entrance to the front door.
That’s inviting.
It strikes me that people put in all that work just so that they could scare all of the neighborhood kids. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. I’m not making a moral statement. About Halloween or scaring neighborhood children.
What I’m actually wondering is how somebody can put that much emphasis on creating a frightening experience and churches can often put so little emphasis on creating our worship experiences? They put more effort into creating an environment that scares people away from their house than we do in creating one that welcomes people into ours. They’re trying to build a place where fear resides. But in our churches, we’re trying to build a place for God to reside and a place for people to experience His presence.
If there’s anybody that should be working for weeks to make sure every detail is right, it’s us. If there’s anybody that should be making sure that the people coming to our house have an incredible experience from beginning to end, it’s us.
I think we could learn a lot from these people. Not about building two-story devils. That would be a little out of place. But about the value of going the extra mile.
Sunday is a few days away. Some people are putting in their last few hours and days of work to make sure everything is right to scare people this weekend.
Let’s put in our last few hours and days of work to make sure everything is right to introduce people to Jesus this weekend.
