Halloween Alternative Ideas
I’m interested in what you do (or don’t do) for Halloween. So let’s flip the script here today and you tell me something. 
What are you doing this year for your kids & community for Halloween?
Leave your responses in the comments.
We do Trunk-or-Treat. Lots of churches use this nowadays, but basically it's like turning your parking lot into a mini-neighborhood for the young 'uns. you line cars up, and members sit at their trunks and kids go trunk to trunk to get candy. we have a registration table with a "guess how many candy corns in the jar" game to get names and addresses for mailers later. we also hand out gospel tracts and i and a few other members mill about talking with kids and parents.
if you do this, here's a idea that we came up with last year. one of our members is on the local volunteer fire department. he brought a light truck (fire engine with extendable pole on top with flood lights). not only did it light our entire parking lot, but kids got to get candy from a real fireman off the back of a functional fire truck! they loved it! i'd recommend a donation to the fire department if they're gracious enough to agree.
For many years my church has done a HUGE Fall Festival, decked out with tons of little carnival games and little Oriental Trading-type prizes. Kids would come dressed up, and we would have a chili/hot dog supper, kareoke, live band, huge inflateables to jump in, a hay ride, cake walk, etc. It was a huge draw for us!
This year we're trying something different. We're bringing in a professional kids' musician (Brent Weber) and doing a kids' concert instead of a festival. We're also going to have a Balloon Man come and last year he was the biggest hit at our Fall Festival! So we're hoping this will be a good event as well.
The one thing we don't do is have an event on Halloween night. Our concert this year will be on Friday, Oct. 30. We encourage people in our church to intentionally use this time that is the only night of the year when all your neighbors come up to your door for relationship-building.
Here in our church in England we are having an Amazing Light party, with games, food ,puppets and all for 5-11 year olds. This year Father's been so good, every child that comes is going to recieve a Bible NCV a book called trick or treat and a comic to go with it! Just because I was in the right place at the right time talking about our amazing kids work! We have been given them for free! Bless the Lord!