Mad Over Monsters – Middle Schoolers & Halloween

If there ever was a holiday built to ignite middle schoolers, it is Halloween.

And yes, I understand that there is an element of the Christian community who sees Halloween as evil.

I see the Halloween season, the whole month of October, as a terrific opportunity to create activities that draw students from outside the church community.

Halloween has everything students love.

You get to dress up. There is candy. Then there is that harmless, fun and spooky element that middle schoolers like as well. And of course there are pumpkins, skeletons, bats and the full moon.

I use the stuff of Halloween to get youth ministry mileage. New students flock to Halloween flavored scavenger hunts and Halloween parties. The vans pack out for a trip to a corn maze or a well-done haunted house.

Our opening salvo is a Glow in the Dark game night. Our finale is driving van loads of kids to various neighborhoods to trick or treat on Halloween Eve.

We dress like Zombies and invade a local pizza joint for a Zombie Dinner. (Work with the owner and you can perhaps create a Zombie Pizza of sorts. The kind with little finger sausages added to look like, er, um, fingers.)

Having done youth ministry longer than most middle school leaders have walked the earth, I can say without hesitation that for attracting new students to youth events, the Halloween season works. I have decades of evidence to show a sharp spike in interest and attendance right around October 1st.

But you’ve got be creative, wild and edgy. Sitting around church dressed as the disciples putting Bible verses in each other’s trick or treat bag probably isn’t going to cut it.

And oddly enough, the journey to Christ for a lot of my former middle school students was started through the holiday so many in the Christian community love to dismiss; Halloween.

Rick Bundschuh is a veteran Youth Worker, Alligator Neuterer, professional trouble makers besides being a much published author (Soul Surfer, Surviving Middle School, Deep Like Me, Reaching Unchurched Kids – are among his latest) and Teaching Pastor of Kauai Christian Fellowship in Hawaii.