It's the Great Pumpkin River Valley Community Church!

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

A word you don’t hear too often in church these days is “apologetics.” The idea and practice has become somewhat associated with the argumentative religious debates that framed modern evangelism concerning things like proving Jesus’s resurrection, advocating for literal creation, and such conversations that, in our more postmodern culture today, seem to do more harm than good. The p

ractice of apologetics itself, however, still has an important role to play in how we talk about our faith in God with others.

Simply defined, it means making Jesus plausible to your context; helping those around you connect to the living God by “clearing away the underbrush” of their concerns and doubts. For some, this may still involve explaining the scientific concerns of Christianity, but for most the issues are more focused on whether or not Christians can be trusted; whether or not the church is a safe place to belong free from judgment; helping people find purpose and identity in Jesus’s atonement and the Spirit’s transformation. None of this can happen, however, if we as Christians are unable to find ways of connecting Jesus’s kingdom gospel to our culture in positive ways, similar to the way’s Jesus connected His good news to Jewish culture through parables and the Rabbinic tradition. That’s what River Valley’s young adult MATCHbox group will be doing this year for Halloween with an awakenings514.com event.

Halloween has become a holiday avoided by the church in America in recent years due to its association with the occult, and while this can be justified, especially for parents of young children whom they don’t want exposed to such things, it does leave the millions of people outside of the church who enjoy Halloween for either spiritual or nominal reasons with a picture of Christians as isolated and unwilling to relate. Could there be a way to find some common ground here?

Join us on October 31st to find out. We’ll be having a Halloween party at Eli and Katie Suddarth’s house (617 Gates Ave. in Aurora) starting at 6:00 p.m. All the traditional fun activities will be there, including games, pumpkin carving, carmel apple dipping, and a costume contest. We’ll also spend some time talking a little about the history of Halloween and some ways of helping people discover Jesus on those terms. Everyone’s invited so we hope to see you there (“dressed your best” if you know what I mean).

Eli