Whether you call it a harvest festival, a harvest celebration, or a fall carnival, an alternative to traditional Halloween festivities is what many churches host around or on October 31. Out with the usual Halloween costumes and celebration practices and in with good clean fun in a positive environment. If your church is interested in hosting a fall celebration, read on. You will find plenty of harvest festival ideas that might work well in your situation.
First, consider costumes. Kids will especially want to dress up, and dressing as a Bible character (no demons) can offer that opportunity. A prize could go to the most realistic or funniest costume. Or you could do a crazy hair costume bash or follow a Christian tee-shirt costume theme.
Decorations set the scene for any celebration. Harvest parties need autumn colored leaves, hay bales, cornstalks, bushels of apples, and pumpkins. Scarecrows can be dressed as church staff with prizes for best dressed or for person who guesses the most staff correctly. Apples can be for both decoration and be used for apple bobbing. Pumpkins can also be used for both decoration and Christian symbol-carving activities. Hay bales can stack to make wonderful mazes with prizes at the end, and cornstalks can provide for corn husking contests as well as decoration.
Your church can advertise its ministry through the use of special tracts in goody-bags or free specialty balloons for visitors. Get every department of the church involved in some way with the festival. Each ministry could sponsor a booth and provide fun, prizes, and ministry information.
You will want to think creatively about carnival events and activity booths. Fall festivals call for activity, and activity can come in many forms. You can provide entertainment videos, old-fashioned fiddle music, or special music by local artists. In addition to music entertainment, you are going to want to plan loads of fun for all ages, not just kids. Here are some suggestions that might make your festival planning a bit easier.
Potato Sack Races
Cake or Cupcake Walk
Arts and Crafts Booth
Prize Store – (using earned tickets)
Hayrides
Bean Bag Toss
Dunk Pastor Booth
Guess Candy Number Jar
Bottle Knock Down
Coin Toss
Squirt Gun Candle Flame Shoot Out
Costume Parade
Campfire Smores (outside)
Gummi Worm Eating Contest
Apple Pie Eating Contest
Scavenger Hunt
Bounce House
Face Painting
Magnetic Fish Pond
Basket Ball Hoops
Pet Barn or Pony Rides
Pie in Pastor’s Face
Make Carmel Apples
Pumpkin or Gourd Toss
Balloon Darts
Candy seems to be a constant at harvest festivals. Whether candy is earned as prizes or found in a candy search through shredded paper or straw, you will most likely need pounds of it. To gauge the amount of candy each child might claim, you might want to give children a large cup at the door when they arrive, and they can leave with it full of candy.
Now for the part about trick-or-treating. Children can trick-or-treat in the parking lot. Have church folks park their RV’s, campers, or pitch tents in parking lot. Kids can visit each one and even meet folks they might not have met during a church service. RV’s can be decorated for prizes too.
Food is an important part of throwing a celebration. At a harvest festival you might want to have kettle corn popping, apple cider making in a press, hot cocoa warming, or you might even consider a chili cook-off where the party attendees judge the best tasting chili.
Events around Halloween time need not be worldly focused when there are so many alternative ways to celebrate the time of year. If your church is planning to throw a harvest celebration, consider incorporating some of these church harvest festival ideas. It might be so much fun for both kids and adults that it becomes a yearly event.
