"Halloween. A Night of Fright or a Night of Witnessing? by Shane C. Montgomery

I truly love this time of year.  The leaves are falling in a bright, colorful snowfall, the air is brisk and clean and you can almost taste the oncoming winter on your lips.  Another great thing about this time of year is that my wife and I celebrate our wedding anniversary, (Sept.27,1986) not to mention my birthday falls on Oct. 9 and my wife has hers on Oct. 13, and our youngest son, Ryan was born on Oct. 22.  To top it all off, Halloween ends what is always a great and wonderful time of year for our family.
Halloween is of course somewhat of a puzzle for most believers, they do not know what to do, should they celebrate, decorate the house and lawn, let the little ones go out trick or treating, or by doing that are they embracing a pagan and evil holiday?   You will find Christians on both sides of the fence here, and some standing right on top of the fence somehow!  But I think this to be a massive waste of time, for the record, it is not evil.  If you choose to let your kids go out dressed like Transformers or Pirates, then I applaud you for letting your kids be kids, just as your parents allowed you way back when.  But if you go out on Halloween and watch gore porn movies, start fires, drink blood and so forth, then maybe you just might have a problem and should avoid Halloween.  Of course anyone who desires those types of activities are not Christian to begin with, but you get my point.  All in all, we often make a way bigger deal about Halloween than we need to, just let the kids have some fun, watching Scooby Doo and getting candy while in a costume is fine, don't get all fundamental and go berserk on other believers who do.  

  I look forward to Halloween, every year, Lord Allowing, we take our youngest son out trick or treating, we all go, me, my wife Jeannie and our oldest son Brandon.  While mom concentrates on keeping track of little Ryan and his candy grab, me and Brandon are handing out Gospel tracts.  We normally will pass out around 400-500 tracts, and witness to a good number of people.  We try to always use themed tracts aimed at Halloween and we avoid the really ill advised tracts such as "Chick Tracts" which are nothing but bad taste and poor judgement.  Avoid handing out Chick Tracts at all cost, they do more harm than good and they truly turn people away from the Gospel and Jesus Christ and that is not what we are trying to do in the Great Commission.   There are so many good tracts out there today and many are of the highest quality, such as my favorite tract company, "Custom Tract Source."   Their tracts are simply amazing, and very affordable, I recommend them to everybody.

   As I write this, it is Friday night, I have prepared my Intervarsity Messenger Bag, all stocked up with tracts, around 1,000 this time and beginning tomorrow afternoon we will be visiting a city we have never witnessed in.  They are having a special early bird trick or treat, people are to bring their kids to the downtown shopping district and the local businesses will pass out candy, and we will be there to pass out tracts to all the parents and business owners, we avoid giving tracts to small children, normally anyone under 12 that is, unless the tract is something fun like the above photo of the Frankenstein over sized million dollar bill tract, kids love these.  Taking along a stack of Gospel of John booklets from Pocket Testament League and of course, a Bible to quote from.   Really praying that God will plant a seed tomorrow.

   I always look forward to witnessing, it is getting harder and harder to do, with my failing health and the fact that so many people are turning against accepting tracts all together, some get very nasty unfortunately, but overall it is always a great experience, and just serving the Lord is enough for me!   This Monday this same city will be holding their normally scheduled trick or treat night and Lord Willing we will be there passing out tracts and witnessing as well, this time to parents along the sidewalks and adults who pass out candy from their front porch.   Every year we always run into a least one person passing out bad tracts, never on the sidewalks mind you, but from their house, it is almost always the in poor taste Chic Tracts, last year my 7 year old received one that had a story of a little girl who went trick or treating and as a punishment for sinning so bad, God gave her cancer and she soon died and the mother was upset.  To me this is just pathetic!  Why give something that nasty and tasteless to small children on a night they love and look forward too?

   It has been awhile since I have done any serious witnessing, though I witness everyday, but not on a large scale as of late, so I am looking forward to getting back in the saddle again, but no matter what happens, people will hear the Gospel, people will hear about the forgiveness of sins that can only come from Jesus Christ, and no matter what, God will be glorified, even if I stink it up, God will be glorified!

Be Holy!
Shane