Emily Houlsworth strolled the car-lined parking lot with a mostly forgotten pumpkin bucket dangling from her hand. Her wide eyes flitted as soldiers, ballerinas, princesses, and firemen darted and dashed about at Quest Church’s annual Harvest Festival on Halloween Day.
There were other distractions, too.
Carnival games, dance performances by Quest Kids, food trucks, hay rides, inflatables, a petting zoo, and the Pumpkin Lighthouse, where little ghosts and goblins were treated to the Gospel story using the ugly insides of a pumpkin to teach the lesson of salvation over sin, light over darkness.
Now in the Trunk or Treat zone, Emily lost sight of the task at hand: collecting sweet morsels from the decorated cars. Her friend, noticing how absorbed Emily was in the activity around her, reached over, grabbed her orange bucket, thrusting it toward the women hosting one of the cars.
“It’s her first time Trick or Treating,” he said, nodding toward Emily, an almost 30-something.
Emily, still watching the happy chaos, focused back on the bucket as the women dropped sweet goodies into her bucket. She smiled at the surprised volunteers.
“You’ve never Trick or Treated before?” one of them responded.
As a young child living in Sioux City, Iowa, Halloween was off-limits for Emily and her siblings.
“My parents kind of took the ultra-conservative side of thinking,” Emily shared. “So, we just never (did it). Every time we had anything going on in school, we would get pulled out.”
But this night, Emily, her friends, and their kids found themselves at the El Cajon church—situated where the community merges with neighboring Lakeside and Alpine—after spotting a street sign promoting the family-oriented event.
“It’s satisfying the inner child in me for sure,” said Emily, who now lives in Ramona and attends a church in La Mesa, several communities west of Quest. She expressed her gratitude to the church for providing a perfect—and wholesome—opportunity for families to celebrate together while also sharing the gospel at a time when people are more receptive.
Lead Pastor Sherwood Patterson said the purpose of the event, which drew about 1,800 people, is to shed light on a holiday that has increasingly celebrated darkness and evil. Planners and volunteers were intentional in creating Gospel touch points at every activity area throughout the festival grounds.
“Now more than ever, there is an overwhelming sense of pervasive fear in our communities while at the same time a willingness to turn to God for comfort and peace,” Pastor Sherwood said. “We approached our Harvest festival outreach as a way to expose those fears in a safe environment for families and kids and point all in attendance to faith in Christ.”
That theme was at the center of a Gospel message Patterson presented from the stage.
“I talked about how Halloween is a holiday of fear and how many people are overwhelmed with personal fears but that God has made a way to calm our fears and deal with the greatest fear of death by sending His Son Jesus Christ to conquer death and sin,” he said. “During the invitation, many indicated their need for God and prayed the sinner's prayer.”
While there was little doubt that festival visitors were impressed with the atmosphere, they weren’t alone, especially for a few dozen first-time volunteers.
Lindsay McDowell and her husband, Gary, have attended Quest for several years, but after Quest took a sabbatical from the festival last year, this year’s event was their first. Gary participated as one of the tractor drivers for the hay ride, while Lindsay made an impressive appearance as the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Her trunk display was a nod to the famous story and included large playing cards, a neon Cheshire Cat, and giant illuminated mushrooms. McDowell hosted one of about 20 vehicles participating in the Trunk or Treat.
“I think the thing I loved the most was seeing the kids and the special needs adults and how they were so excited,” she said. “It was such a great safe place for it to be happy and positive.”
An administrative assistant for a local school, McDowell said she was tickled with the planning team and “how they pulled it together and how it just made such a light (filled) experience of Halloween.”
In all, more than 150 volunteers served on teams focused on decorations, set-up and tear-down. welcoming, Trunk or Treat, hayrides, stage and technical, games, inflatables, Kid Zone, the Pumpkin Lighthouse, security and parking, and concessions.
“I loved how we had so many people that picked different places that they wanted to participate, and how that joy came out in whatever they were giving, and just how we all came together as a community and put on such love for our community,” McDowell said. “I think that was really special.”
Thanks to the generosity of the San Diego Southern Baptist Association, the concessions team was able to provide guests with free popcorn, snow cones, cotton candy, coffee, and hot chocolate through their mobile entertainment outreach trailer. For the first time in the festival’s 8-year history, it partnered with a nearby middle school to provide much-needed overflow parking as attendance had outgrown the 400 parking spaces on the church campus.
The first focus was prayer
Although Quest was a beehive of activity in the days leading up to Halloween, the planning began months earlier, with the big kick-off coming Oct. 22 with the launch of the 33-Day Prayer Challenge, based on Jeremiah 33:3. The prayer and fasting campaign hosted daily prayer at 3:33 p.m. and a weekly emphasis under the congregation’s giant outdoor cross.
“Prayer has been foundational in laying the spiritual groundwork for this outreach,” Sherwood Patterson, lead pastor at Quest, said. “There was a lot of work and labor on the night of the event but the heavy lifting was done on our knees through fervent and persistent prayer. This helped us to prepare God’s people, plow up hard spiritual ground, and place the details in God’s hands.”
Throughout the prayer campaign church leadership encouraged members to focus on three praises, three people and three petitions. While the festival was a major prayer theme, the congregation also focused on the upcoming election, elected officials and revival in America.
“I was extremely grateful for the amount of leaders and volunteers who served this year,” the pastor said. “This was by far our largest participation and is a direct answer to our prayers based on Matthew 9:37-38, where Jesus reminds us of the great harvest of souls but few workers. As we prayed, God moved on hearts and not only did we see many in our community receive the gospel but God’s people received a blessing for serving Him and others.”
‘Light the Night’
As part of its mission to Reach, Teach and Launch, volunteers from the church brought a “Light the Night” carnival to a Christian-operated San Diego homeless shelter, which ministers to and houses more than 450 people seeking resources to end homelessness.
“We’ve realized that many people who are far from God do not join us for the harvest event or come to church on Sunday,” Pastor Sherwood said. “That’s why it’s important for us to take this good news out in the community to our neighbors. This year we multiplied our outreach efforts by going mobile with the Light the Night outreach and blessed families with good fun and great news.”
As part of that effort, several dozen volunteers served the families at the off-site event through food booths, craft stations, the Pumpkin Lighthouse and inflatables. As a result, numerous new relationships have been established.
Living love
Tomika (a pseudonym used for privacy), who lives at the facility with her three daughters and a niece, said having the carnival helped the residents—many of them new believers—work through the confusion about Halloween and its appropriateness for Christians.
“Having a Christ-centered program was such a joy,” she said, sharing that one of her favorite features was a photo booth where guests were given actual prints. The booth allowed adults to take pictures with one another, important keepsakes for a population with high transient rates because of graduation and new admissions.
“It was a luxury they would not otherwise be able to afford,” said Laura Riolo, one of the Quest volunteers.
Tomika said residents were especially grateful for the on-site gathering because of transportation logistics. Most of the residents don’t own cars and facility curfews limit their time away from the shelter.
“We don't get to go to a lot of places,” she said. “They spread the love of Jesus to us and we didn't even have to leave the campus.”
Quest’s fall ministry effort did not end with the Night the Light or the Harvest Festival. Two days after the Harvest carnival, as tear-down was still progressing on campus, the congregation hosted its annual Hula Worship Workshop, which drew 27 women to the sanctuary. The Nāleonū'oliakeakua Hula Ministry, which means the Voices that Bring the Good News of God, meets weekly at Quest and presents the sacred dance at a variety of community events throughout the year. Every song and message points to Jesus.
A day later, while many of the Quest kids were still picking through their Halloween candy, the church kicked off Operation Christmas Child, a joint venture with Samaritan’s Purse. Congregants took home 100 empty boxes that first Sunday, with 200 more now on order. In addition to commitments by members, Quest is also an OCC regional pick-up center for the community.
Lori Arnold is a writer and editor who has covered religion for 40 years, first for a community daily newspaper and then as managing editor for The Christian Times/Christian Examiner. She has her own freelance business StoryLori Media.