19 Oct Fall Festival (Part 1)!

NOTE: This is a past blog post from 2017.
You’ve heard about it…and the rumors are true: the Fall Festival is back! (Actually, it was called by another name in the past, but we have seriously overhauled it for this year.)

The Fall Festival is one way we are trying to be a light in the city of Austin, and particularly in our neighborhood. If you read my email last week, you know I highlighted a tension local churches face: the tension of the local/extra-local. Another tension we face is, for lack of a better way of putting it: doing stuff on our property vs. doing stuff out in the community.

Over the last decade in the church world, much was written about how churches should stop doing things in their building and only do things out in their communities. Now, flash forward a bit, and studies and research shows that it’s not whether a church is doing stuff on their property, or out in the community, but how it goes about each.

If a church showed amazing hospitality on its property, and made space for the community there, guess what? It was a blessing to the city. If, on the other hand, it went out into the public square but was condemning, unhelpful and thought it knew it all, guess what? It made things worse.

I say all that to make this point: when we do things on our property like this, we really do think through why and how each event contributes to the kind of church we want to be known as.

How do we want to be known? As a light, as a foretaste of the coming kingdom, of the kind of place where love reigns and fear vanishes and where the shalom of God is on display. A place where, when we gather, we bring people into a kind of environment that they maybe didn’t think was even possible. In short, we want to be known (among other things) for being a blessing to the city.

Is that too much to ask of an event in our parking lot for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon?

Not if you partner with your local church to make it great and to invite your friends and neighbors!

This year’s Fall Festival is much larger in scope and quality than things we have done in the past. We will be having, among other things:

A petting zoo
A face-painting tent
Tiny Tot Land
A gourmet grilled cheese food truck (this is the only thing that will cost you, if you so choose)
Old favorites like a couple of bounce houses, the human jousting and human foosball
New sports competition areas
Costume contests with categories for little kids, big kids, adults, and families (I have already heard people are going over the top on this in the best way!)
a Fall Photo booth
…and much, much more (including a donut-eating contest tent, which you will have to see for yourself to believe so many Krispy Kremes could fit in one spot) (oh, and candy. Lots.).

The point is, there is something for people of all ages!

I would hope that even right now, you would consider who you could invite—your neighbors? That family you have been meaning to talk to? Your friend from work?

Why not bring someone to a fun and diverse environment? It’s unlikely you have been to something like this in a long time, and even more unlikely that person you invite will have been to something like this recently. I believe they will thank you for inviting them (especially if they win our grand prize for the costume contest, which I can’t even tell you about).

So that’s it—come be a part of being a light in the city. Don’t you want Austin to be known for being a place where community events happen? I know I do.

Thanks goes out to all you working behind the scenes on this! I’ll give you more details about how the day will go down next week, in the sequel to this email: Fall Festival (Part 2)!

See you Sunday,

Morgan