Halloween and Christians: An Opportunity, with Jimmy & Kelly Needham

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Halloween and Christians: An Opportunity with Jimmy and Kelly Needham

Guest:Jimmy and Kelly Needham

From the series:Halloween and Christians: An Opportunity with Jimmy and Kelly Needham (Day 1 of 1)

Air date:October 4, 2024

Kelly: In our culture, it’s one of the few days of the year when there really is a cultural moment of the neighborhood is out. And that for us feels like as believers such a strategic time to be engaged. Let your neighbors know you.

Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Ann: This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave: So there’s some holidays that you get really excited about and there’s some that you’re scared of

Ann: And there’s some that you’re wondering “Should we participate in this celebration?”

Dave: And that one would be called Halloween.

Ann: Yes.

Dave: We tended to celebrate using this holiday to reach your neighbors because they are all coming to your door. But there were people that were mad at us for even talking about it.

Ann: Everybody has to—

Dave: And I know there’s listeners right now, they’re going to send us emails, but we got the Needhams here and they’re the sinners, so they’re going to talk—

Jimmy: That’s right.

Kelly: That’s right.

Dave: They’re going to talk about this.

Jimmy: Just tell them to send the emails to us.

Dave: We will forward them to you guys. But Jimmy and Kelly Needham are here. We’ve been talking a lot of different things with you, but one of the things we discovered about you recently was this Halloween journey that you ended up on.

Ann: It is kind of a journey.

Jimmy: It is.

Dave:Tell our listeners what happened.

Jimmy: That sentence is really funny to me every time I hear it, that that would be a thing that is said about us.

Ann: Well, let’s just say you guys have been married 18 years.

Jimmy: That’s right.

Ann: You have five kids ranging from one to 13. And so take us into your lives of Halloween.

Kelly: Well, I think the most surprising thing about us is that you’re a pastor. We’re a Christian family, and every time—

Ann: You have a Christian podcast.

Jimmy: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Kelly: So as it gets close to October, we start talking about Halloween. We budget for Halloween; we plan around Halloween. And that is very strange to most people, but let’s explain what we mean by that.

Jimmy: So we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if God just didn’t bring all these certain circumstances together at the same time. We moved to Dallas about 12 years ago, and the house we moved into was on a street, is on a street called Sleepy Hollow.

Dave:That’s the name of the street?

Jimmy: Yes. We live on Sleepy Hollow Drive.

Dave:Wow. Sounds scary.

Kelly:And it kind of is. There’s no streetlights. There’s these big overhanging trees.

Dave: Really?

Jimmy: It’s beautiful until you think of the headless horseman.

Kelly:It’s beautiful. And it was like, what? A month or two after we move in, I’m taking my daughter for a walk. We had one kid at the time, and I meet this neighbor and one of the first things she says to me is “You know about your house, right?”

Ann: Oh my.

Jimmy: That’s never what you want to hear.

Kelly:And I went, “Excuse me.” And she said, “Your house is the haunted house of Sleepy Hollow. People come to this neighborhood to trick or treat.

Dave: You had no idea?

Jimmy: No idea.

Kelly: Because the previous owners turned the entire front yard. The whole is a huge, haunted house experience. People line up around the block and I was like, “Wow.” And it’s September at that point.

Jimmy: Yeah. What are we in for? That’s all we’re thinking.

Kelly: So I’m like, I tell Jimmy, “Okay, so what do we do with that?” So that started the conversation. We went for a walk; I think later that week and had a conversation. We have a house with a reputation.

Ann: And it’s not like this great reputation like, Jesus.

Jimmy: It’s like terrifying children.

Dave:How long it had been used as a haunted house.

Kelly:Several years. Enough for people still to come to our house and remember.

Ann: They didn’t go inside the house, did they?

Jimmy: No, I think it was an out-front thing.

Ann: Outside, yeah.

Kelly:Our house has a lot of stairs, about 50 stairs leading up to the front. So the whole front is a big hill.

Jimmy: Yeah, we sit on a hill. So it makes for a nice journey. So she’s going the late in October to go buy candy, right?

Kelly:Yeah. So we’re on that walk and we decided we were not going to be the haunted house for sure. But we did feel a little bit of a sense of stewardship. God gave us a house with a reputation in the neighborhood. That’s actually a great asset.

Jimmy: It can be.

Kelly: If you are an evangelist in your neighborhood, if you really think that way, it’s like, okay, a ton of people are about to come. What can we do? And I remember we made a decision that very first year, let’s be the generous house. Everybody’s going to come anyway. We’re not going to be the haunted house anymore. They’re going to obviously realize that when they come this year.

Jimmy: And we didn’t want to be the close your blinds house. It’s like, “Oh, the Christians move in and now it’s no fun anymore.”

Kelly: That was the other option.

Ann: You guys are pretty fun people.

Jimmy: Thank you. That’s all I needed to hear. That’s actually why—

Ann: I even like that question: “How can we steward Halloween?” and we all have to make that decision what we’re going to do with it.

Kelly:We do. We felt open to that stewarding. We felt open to opening our house and giving away candy, but in a way that we felt like, why don’t we make our own statement? Maybe not the haunted house statement, but the generous statement because that can tie to the gospel really beautifully. So we decided let’s buy full size candy bars for everybody. So I go to the store.

Dave:What do you mean full size?

Jimmy: King size.

Kelly:King size.

Ann: No, we know this. You don’t know this now, but I do buy king size now when we’re in town.

Jimmy: Let’s go.

Dave: Of course she does.

Ann: But our kids would—

Jimmy: That’s right. That’s why your budget in October.

Ann:But our kids would always go to the neighborhood that had king size candy.

Dave:When you say king size, like that size?

Jimmy: Like as big as you can buy a candy bar.

Kelly:So really the double Snickers or the movie candy box.

Jimmy: Big boys.

Kelly: Three ounces or whatever.

Jimmy: We said, “Well, let’s do that.”

Kelly: Let’s do that. So I go to the store and I’m going to buy, and I thought the neighbor told me there’s a lot of kids in here. So I’m basing it off of my previous neighborhood experience. I buy 50 candy bars, and I put them on—

Dave:That’s what I would’ve done, 50.

Kelly:I buy 50 and I’m in line and I’m talking to the woman ringing me up. She said, oh, is this all for Halloween? I said, yeah, I live in Sleepy Hollow. And she goes, “You live in Sleepy Hollow?” There are 300 kids through there every year.” And I went, “Excuse me.”

Ann: What?!

Dave:She knew about your house?

Jimmy: She knew about the streets.

Kelly: She knew about our house. It was like that well known in our community. So while she’s checking me out, I’ve said, hold on. I run back. I do not have the budget for 300 full-size candy bars, but I just grabbed about 10 bags of minis just in case. And you know what? Every ounce of that candy was gone by seven 30 that night, on Halloween night.

Dave: What?

Ann: Come on.

Kelly: And I just remember going, “Well, okay then, this is a thing. And actually our neighbors told us that first year people didn’t even know that there was anyone living in the house because they were so used to the haunted house vibe in front. No one even came to our door for the first hour. And then when they started coming, the candy was gone like that.

Ann: Okay, what did they say? Did parents come with their kids? Were the kids disappointed? What was the vibe?

Kelly: Well, I don’t even know that first year. I mean, it was just such a blur.

Jimmy: Yeah, I mean it happened so fast. I mean, think about it. By 7:30, all the candy was gone.

Kelly: We had to turn people away, “I’m sorry. We don’t have anything else.” So we really became more strategic after that. We’re like, all right, we’re going to budget for this.

Dave:And I’m guessing you’re not letting a kid take five. You’re giving one per kid.

Kelly:No, we’re giving one.

Jimmy: We’re giving one big ole candy bar. Yes, that’s right.

Dave:Any idea how many came in an hour?

Kelly: Yeah. For the next, at least three years, we doubled what we bought and ran out every single year.

Jimmy: Of king size candy bars.

Kelly: We added that next year, a sign in our front yard that had Roman 6 23 on it, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is salvation in Christ Jesus.” So just to try and associate this

Dave:Your generosity with the gospel.

Kelly:Generosity,

Jimmy: And we had a sign that we put right down front of the bottom of our steps.

Ann: I’m just going to say that’s a bold sign.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Ann: It’s not like, “God loves you.” The wages of sin is death.

Kelly:That’s how it fits with Halloween.

Ann: It does.

Kelly:That’s why we did it. That’s on the way up you would see that.

Jimmy: The first sign they meet though is actually a little softer than that one.

Kelly: That’s true.

Jimmy: It’s right at the foot of our stairs and it says, “If you make the climb, there’s king size bars because there’s no king as generous as ours.”

Ann: Ooooh.

Jimmy: That’s the first sign they see when they walk up.

Ann: Is the sign scary? Or is it—

Jimmy: No, it’s orange. It’s got candy bars on it.

Ann: So it’s cute.

Jimmy: It’s cute.

Ann: Okay.

Jimmy: We try to avoid all scary things.

Ann: Yeah, we did too.

Jimmy: So at this point, now we’ve got a bunch of helpers that help us. We’ll mention that in a second, but we make sure that nobody’s dressing—

Kelly: We don’t want to celebrate death. We don’t want to celebrate the demonic in anything we’re wearing or have on the lawn.

Jimmy: But suffice to say, so that first year is like 300 gone; next year, 400,

Kelly: 600,

Jimmy: 600, 700, a thousand. Last year we did about 15 or 1600 candy bars. But it had about, all said and done with parents, well over 2000 people at our house.

Ann: Goodness.

Dave: Now are the other houses on the street getting the same thing, or is your—

Kelly:Oh no. It’s always been a neighborhood well known for that.

Jimmy: It’s the neighborhood but it has been growing.

Kelly:But our house definitely now is the one that people come for, which again, they did before for the haunted house. But I love that we’ll meet people mid-year like, “Oh, you’re the house on the hill. My kid every year is like, ‘I want to go to the house with the stairs mom because of the king size bars.’”

Ann: So you’re still doing the king size?

Kelly: We still do it.

Jimmy: We do it every year.

Ann: You must budget for that.

Kelly: That’s what, yeah.

Jimmy: I had to take out a second mortgage, but we are getting there.

Ann: Do you have any other signs besides the two?

Jimmy: So the verse that Kelly mentioned earlier,

Kelly:Same verse every year.

Jimmy: We split it in half so that it’s actually three signs. There’s the king size bar sign, and then when they walk up, it says, “For the wages of sin is death.” That’s all it says. And then when they come back down it says, “But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.”

Kelly:Which we hope, but kids who come every year, that’s the only Bible they see, the repetition of it, that it might stick with them. We added probably three or four years in as we got help from our small group, a prayer table. And that has been one of the most effective, fruitful things we’ve done is a place for people to write down anonymously or leave their name on a piece of paper, a little prayer card, and we tell them we’re praying for these tonight. We turn our guest room into a prayer room, and we make sure to pray for every single thing written that night as it’s going.

Jimmy: And we get hundreds.

Ann: Come on!

Jimmy: Hundreds.

Ann: So this is a table at the end of the driveway?

Kelly: At the bottom of the stairs.

Jimmy: We serve hot chocolate next to it. And we have prayer cards right there. And all night we have people filling it out, and then we have our team running it up to the prayer room and literally hundreds every year of prayers.

Kelly:We’ve been doing it so long.

Ann: That makes me want to cry.

Dave: That’s awesome.

Ann: Talk about turning Halloween on its head for the gospel.

Jimmy: Last year, Kelly got to lead a 15-year-old girl to the Lord at our front door.

Kelly: Yep, that’s right.

Jimmy: Three years before that, I got to lead a kid named Ethan to the Lord at our steps.

Ann: Okay, I need to hear these stories. What happened?

Kelly:Well, the last year girl, she was with her friend. She had come and left, and she came back. We have volunteers now who help because it’s a big operation now. And one of our volunteers who was there,

Ann:This is your small group,

Kelly:It’s our small group, and now other people in our church community. And he had noticed, he’s a young man, he’s in his twenties. He had noticed, she came back, and he just leaned into that and said, “Hey, why are you back?” And she said, “Well, as soon as we left, I’ve been feeling so anxious all day. And I felt so much peace here. And as soon as I left, I felt so fearful again. So I wanted to come back.” He said, “Well, there’s a reason for that.”

And so he leaned into that, started talking about how we can know God, the Holy Spirit is in believers. He gets to share the gospel with her. We see this conversation happening. Someone let me know about it. I came and jumped in. We get a chance to explain to her that God has opened the way again for people to be made right with Him, to remove all the obstacles of sin and bring them into peace with Him again. And that peace can be hers.

And she’s like, “I want it .” Great! Let’s pray together. And we’re praying together. She gets to confess her sin to God, trust in Jesus, like, please come. “What can we do?” She’s like, “My mom’s calling me.” She’s 15 years old. “I have to go.” I’m like, “Well, you honor your mom and go.” But I gave her one of my books with my number in it. I said, “Hey, just reach out if you need anything,” and here’s where we go to church. And they did. They came to church on Sunday.

Jimmy: They came to church that Sunday.

Dave:Wow.

Ann: What in the world?

Kelly: Just from being willing to open our home to the people who are already in our community and be available and looking for opportunities. And you know what? It really is a great holiday for that because people are thinking about the spiritual, not in the way we would like them to, but death, the demonic spirituality is already on a lot of people’s minds. And so it’s a real great conversation starter to lean into that and talk about the things of the faith, talk about the supernatural and lead into that for the sake of the gospel.

Ann: Okay. Jimmy, what’s your story?

Kelly: It’s a little more interesting.

Jimmy: Mine’s weirder.

Kelly:It is weirder.

Jimmy: This kid, he was also 15, he posted up at the foot of the steps and he had a monkey mask on and he never—

Ann: And you guys aren’t dressed up?

Kelly:No.

Jimmy: No. We wear name tags that say our name.

Ann: You wear name tags?

Kelly: So they’ll know who’s associated with our house. Yeah, just so we’re familiar.

Jimmy: And he just stood there, and he was there long enough my Spidey senses, and some of our team, were like, at a minimum, keep an eye on him. I don’t know if he’s up to something or if, but never took his mask off. I never saw his face while we were talking. I eventually, some of our guys were engaging with him, trying to talk with him about the Lord and those types of things. And then I came over and started talking with him. And it was interesting. I was sort of having a traditional gospel conversation with him about how we violated God’s law and we’re in need of a Savior and Jesus did this.

I was talking to him about sin and those types of things, and he really wasn’t resonating with it. But then I actually shifted. We’ve talked about this in another interview with you guys about how it’s interesting that the Bible, we’ll talk about even the good things we do when we do them for ourselves instead of the glory of God, those are actually offenses to God as well.

And I remember saying that to him and going like, “How does that strike you?” And he put his hands up by his temples and did the little explosion sign like that. And that gave me the open door to talk to him about Christ. He took his mask off. That was just so poetic, isn’t it? And then we had a real meaningful conversation about Jesus. He gave me his phone number and we talked after that on the phone about different things. And it’s been beautiful to watch what God has done in the saving of people and—

Ann: Wait, did he ever say why he was standing there for so long?

Jimmy: No, he didn’t. I didn’t ever find that out, but I’m glad he did.

Ann: Me too.

Kelly:Who knows? Maybe it was just this is a safe community of people, and a lot of people have never been around the community of believers, a bunch of people working together to serve someone else. And I think it’s attractive to the world. So we don’t know why he was there, but we find that every year, even people who aren’t Christians come back every year and want to be around and always submit prayer requests.

And we’ve seen salvations on our lawn, but also through the years because people ask us to pray for that. And so there will be people now, every year we’ve been doing it long enough that they come guaranteed. Every Halloween night someone’s going to come and tell us, “Hey, two years ago, three years ago last year, you prayed for this. God answered, my son got saved.” “This person came to Christ.”

One of them was a prayer for a mother writing a prayer for her son who was addicted to drugs. And we pray for prayer requests for several years in a row. She came back up and said, “I just want to say thank you for praying for that. Because not only is he clean and off drugs; he’s trusted in Jesus. And you guys were—” I don’t know if we were the first people she asked to pray for that, but it was a significant enough moment to her that she reached out and asked for prayer.

It’s just beautiful to see what God has done even through the year. And we get to pray with a lot of people in the moment. We tell our volunteers, if someone’s open to it, just lean in and say, “Can we pray right now?” And so you’ll come to our house and see the crazy of crazy Halloween costumes that are scary and a line of people up the steps and then dotted around sometimes are just people praying for one another on the front lawn. It’s just one of our favorite days of the year now.

Ann: You know what? I would love to see the spiritual dimension—

Jimmy: That’s right

Ann: —for that, wouldn’t you?

Jimmy: That’s right. Yes.

Ann: Like, of what’s happening.

Dave:No, I mean I’m over here tearing up about Halloween.

Jimmy: Yeah, I know.

Dave:I’ve never teared up about Halloween.

Jimmy: And look, we didn’t go hunting for this. We weren’t like—this was a set of circumstances the Lord gave us, and I think Kelly’s right to use that word, stewardship. It was just like, “Okay, this is what He’s given us. What are we going to do with it to bring glory?”

Ann:But see, even that, I think so many of us would’ve said, “Well, that’s evil. We’re shutting everything down because that was of Satan.” But you’re thinking, “How can we steward that? Which feels like that but you’re doing it in a way, you guys, I think Jesus is wanting us to do that all the time.

Kelly: That’s right.

Jimmy: The thing is, and this is how I’ve tried to counsel folks who’ve come with objections to this, and I can sympathize with it. Halloween does celebrate evil things.

Ann: And everyone has a past. I know some people that have been in the occult.

Jimmy: Yes, I can sympathize with all of that.

Ann:Me too.

Jimmy: But one thing I always want to reinforce to people is Halloween is not a night owned by the devil. You know that Jesus’ death and resurrection means He owns every day, including Halloween.

Kelly: That’s right.

Jimmy: So there’s no new threat that the 31st of October brings that wasn’t there before. And there’s no new regime change that night. It’s always the Lord Jesus sitting on his throne. He owns it all. He’s in charge of it all. We don’t have to be scared. He is the Lord of heaven and earth, and he’s the Lord of over this day as well. And I think that helps to hear, to embolden us to go, “Oh yeah, so I don’t have to go cower and all these people doing these— It’s like, no, we can move toward the darkness with the light.

Kelly: with confidence.

Jimmy: That’s right.

Kelly: That how much more powerful God is.

Ann: Because we have the King.

Jimmy: That’s right.

Kelly: Well, that’s what Jesus did, right? He went into the very domain of the devil to set us free. I think one of my favorite verses on Halloween when I think about it is Hebrews 2, verse 14, where it says Jesus “himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” That death was the devil’s domain, but Jesus went there to set us free and now really has conquered everything. And we now have that confidence that a day that celebrates death. Yes, Halloween is often celebrating horribly wicked things, but we can go into that space with the good news of the gospel with confidence that Jesus has conquered it all and we don’t have to fear it anymore as a believer.

Jimmy: That’s right.

Ann: It’s funny, I was walking, this was at a Halloween season and through our neighborhoods, it’s crazy how people are going all out with the decorations.

Jimmy: It keeps going.

Kelly: Yes, they are.

Dave: Oh, it’s gross. It’s scary.

Ann: And I was praying about it like, Lord, this is like, it’s so gross. As I was praying through that, I thought the reason we tolerate it and it’s funny to us is because we have all this scary, demonic, creepy stuff, but the background is God’s creation. It’s the lush green, the fall colors, the beauty and so we can tolerate it, but if we had none of God’s creation and only, we would not tolerate it. But now because of the King and His creation, everything, it feels almost silly in comparison to His glory. I think this is going to be a great conversation.

I wanted to ask you, tell us about your kids with this night.

Jimmy: Yeah, that’s been one of our favorite parts.

Kelly: It’s so fun. They’ve grown up with it now.

Jimmy: They have.

Kelly: The first year we did it, our oldest was one year old, one years old, and now they’re contributors with us. They help, it’s so fun.

Jimmy: They’re competing over which role they’re going to play. Oh, I want to restock the candy. Oh, I want to run the prayer cards up. And it’s so fun to see. It’s like the family business. We’re all in this together.

Kelly:We’re hopeful that it’s helping our kids see themselves in every location that God has put them as evangelists, as missionaries. That’s really why we do this, is we really do believe God put us in this house and in this street and in this neighborhood for a reason. And there are people who don’t know him right here.

And if we were in a foreign country as missionaries and there was some foreign festival going on celebrating false gods, we would be out doing the same thing. Everybody’s out in the community thinking about religion and spiritual things. Let’s get out there. It’s the time for us to find ways to tell people about the good news of Jesus. And they’re seeing that modeled, and we’re hopeful that that will translate later, that they can see their own local places.

Dave:It is exactly what God wants us as families to do. One of our missions at FamilyLife®, I don’t know if you even know this, but at the Weekend to Remember marriage conference, we talk about this. Every marriage drifts toward isolation. And so if you’re not intentional, you’re going to drift. That’s natural.

Kelly: That’s right.

Dave: But God wants us to be one. So to be one, you have to be intentional and say, “Okay, how do we come to oneness?” But here’s the thing, I think most, maybe ministries do this, but I know a lot of marriages think that’s the goal. I want to go from isolation to oneness. We’re like, “Nope, that’s not the goal.” That’s part of the goal. But then in that oneness, God wants to impact, we call it your corner of the world. You are impacting your corner of the world. Ann and I call it, make a dent where you’re sent. Where am I sent? I’m sent on Sleepy Hollow cul-de-sac or wherever it is. It’s like so often we as Christians, we pull away from the darkness and we say, “Okay, if you want to impact, you got to come find us over here.” But you’re like, “We’re right here.” When you said—

Ann: This is lighting you up to because you have an evangelistic—

Dave:Oh, I just love it. It’s like you said, “Our house has a,” what’d you say? History?

Kelly:Reputation.

Jimmy: Reputation.

Dave:Yeah, reputation. I thought every Christian family should have that perspective.

Ann: Aren’t you thinking—

Dave: My house, where I live, my workplace, the reputation is God has strategically placed us here.

Ann: That’s what I was going to say.

Jimmy: That’s right.

Dave:to shine His light.

Ann: the light of the world.

Dave: You’re doing it in such a way. That’s why I’m tearing up over here. There’s a family doing it, and you’re creating a legacy with your kids. By the way, you’re never going to be able to stop. You can’t move.

Jimmy: I know. We’re done for.

Kelly: I know.

Dave:It’s forever.

Jimmy: We’re actually raising funds right now, if you want to like—

One of the other cool byproducts has been our church family and other Christians around the country who follow us have kind of picked up this mantle too.

Dave: Oh, I bet.

Jimmy: We call it redeem Halloween.

Kelly: Redeem Halloween.

Jimmy: And it’s become like a hashtag on the socials and things like that. But we’ve got lots of families in our church and other places around the country that are going, “Hey, in the various spots that God has put us, we want to leverage this night for the glory of God.”

Kelly:Well, in our culture, it’s one of the few days of the year when there really is a cultural moment of the neighborhood is out.

Ann: Yes.

Jimmy: It’s very rare.

Kelly: It really is very rare nowadays, and this is one of the only times it’s happening. And that for us feels like as believers such a strategic time to be engaged. Let your neighbors know you. It is I think, helpful for the people you live nearby to have your face and your name. And if they realize who you are and that you’re a safe person, you might be the only person they know that they can come to in a crisis. And this might be the moment that they meet you.

And we’ve had that happen too, by the way. We had someone knock on our door, July one year, never met her before—the front door. Again, we have all these steps so—

Jimmy: She had to work for it.

Kelly: I opened the door, and she says, “Hi, you don’t know me, but I came here on Halloween this past year and I don’t have enough money to turn my lights on. Is there any way you could help?”

Ann: Wow.

Jimmy: She knew—

Dave:—you’re the generous house.

Kelly:We’re the generous house.

Jimmy: That’s what she knew. That’s all she knew.

Kelly: We invited her in, and we ended up in a relationship with her and her daughter to just free some support.

Jimmy: For a year or two.

Kelly: We brought our church family into it. We provided them a fridge. We were able to help with some financial counsel through somebody at our church. So all of that happened though, because someone knew who we were, where in our community.

Jimmy: And our reputation on that.

Kelly:Right. And we, by the way, have friends who don’t do this for convictional

reasons related to their children or their past. It’s just not a holiday that they’re willing to participate in. Amen to that. Paul commands all of us in our conscience to make, be clear before God where we stand and be obedient to our conscience and where it’s leading us.

So if that’s you don’t hear this and feel guilt or shame, but most of what we experience is that there are Christians who have thought very little about it. They don’t have a strong conviction. They don’t have a strong conscience about it. They just don’t have thoughts about it. And we’re hoping to introduce this idea that this might be a really strategic moment for you as a believer in your community. Think about leveraging it because it might bear a lot of fruit.

Dave:What other holiday, or what other situation do thousands of people come to a front door—

Kelly: Come to your door. They came to your door.

Jimmy: Christmas Day; that’s the other.

Dave:We’re going to turn off our lights and say— It’s like, no, this is an opportunity. Literally, God puts them in your lap,

Kelly:And if you were a missionary in a foreign country, you would literally be rejoicing.

Ann: You would.

Kelly: This is the best day ever.

Dave:I was just thinking, if you ever move, someday, there’s going to be a person walking around the street, they going to come up and go, “You know your house has a reputation.” What? You have a gospel. They have a sign, and they pray for you.

Ann: They have a prayer table.

Jimmy: That’s right.

Ann: That’s pretty great.

Jimmy: Awesome.

Ann: Well, and FamilyLife, we want to help you for this Halloween season. And so we have a little fun family activity that you can go online and get, and Shelby will talk more about that.

Dave:Yeah. You can do something with your pumpkin to sort of shine the light of Jesus. So we created something to help.

Ann: Needhams, you guys are the best. Thank you for being with us.

Dave: Way to go.

Kelly: Thank you for having us.

Shelby: I am Shelby Abbott, and you’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Jimmy and Kelly Needham on FamilyLife Today. Well, Ann talked about this, so let me give you some information to be able to help you this Halloween. It’s coming up soon, and depending on how you think about that, it can be a great opportunity to reach your neighbors and your neighborhood for Jesus Christ.

So Jimmy and Kelly Needham have some advice to help you with that too, just based on a few things that they have done. You can watch a video, read the article, and download a specific playbook that they have come up with. It’s able to be edited so you can add to it and subtract from it as well for you to use and utilize this coming Halloween. You can head over only to FamilyLifeToday.com or look for it in the show notes and it’ll point you in the right direction this Halloween.

Ann: Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute to jump in and say whatever you’re going through today, listen to this. You aren’t alone. I know that you know that God is with you but let me add this. Did you know that Dave and I have a team here at FamilyLife Today ready to pray for you? And it’s this incredible honor and privilege to lift your name up to God. So if you need prayer, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Dave:And here’s an easy way to do it. You can text us and we will pray for you. Here’s how you do it. Text FLT to 8 0 5 4 2. Again, that’s FLT to 8 0 5 4 2. And we will send you an immediate text back to let you know that we’ve connected, and then you can respond to our texts with your pray request and we will pray for you.

Shelby: Now, coming up next week, Amberly Neese is going to be here with the Wilsons. We’ll discover how to connect like Jesus, overcome loneliness, and build meaningful relationships. That’s next week. We hope you’ll join us.

On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We’ll see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

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