A mother, father, and child smiling at a church event with inflatables and games visible in the background. The post title is overlaid on the image.

One of the big three events almost every kidmin leader leads is a Fall Festival. While this event can be a lot of work, it’s never been as difficult as putting together a VBS. Planning a one night 3-hour event is far easier than a 5, three hour events in sequence.

Fall Festivals are special events because they are pure outreach. A goal of any Fall Festival is to provide a safe place for families to bring their children on a dark night.

Over the years, I’ve led many of the festivals with only a few coming to thousands. No matter how big or small you plan your event, the principles are the same. And that’s what I’ll share in this post. This is part 1. I will share part 2 next week.

1. Decide what kind of Festival You’re having

There are two kinds of outreach events. I call them stay and play or come and go. I’ve done both for my Fall Festivals with great success. It all depends on your goals.

For a stay and play event, you want to have many activities that motivate families to stay. You can have a stage or a central meeting area to present the Gospel. If you do a drawing, require people to be present to win. My Egg Hunts have always been stay and play.

The idea is to create a safe place for people to spend Halloween Night. A place away from all the dangers of walking the streets with people and neighborhoods they may not know. These can be very evangelistic, and you can attract a lot of young families. The trick is to have a lot of activities that people will want to do over and over or will take them 3 hours to complete. I talk about how to take your Fall Festival to the next level here. (link)

A come and go event can look similar, but the goal is different. You want people to come to your campus, but after they complete your activities, they leave. It is possible to have a salvation message, but you’ll miss the people who already left or the ones who haven’t come yet. It also breaks the momentum of the night. That’s why I like to do a prayer tent as well.

With a come and go event, you’re still providing a safe place, but your church may just be one stop among many. I personally like come and go events, like a Trunk or Treat, because it takes fewer volunteers and less work to put together than a traditional Fall Festival. You can see what I ask of my volunteers for a Trunk or Treat here.

2. Plan Marketing

My Fall Festivals have always been outreach oriented. I want people who don’t attend my church or who are just looking for a safe place to visit that night. I’ve had parents ask me to do this event just for the church, but I push against that.

The church’s natural inclination is to look inward. A Fall Festival pushes their look outward. It helps them see the need for the Gospel instead of just focusing on themselves.

As you plan your marketing, you need to create graphics and use pictures wherever possible. Canva just released a study that says visual content triggers memory 74% faster than just text on page. A quality graphic or photo can say way more than great copy.

But creating great graphics takes time. A good graphics or web designer can throw something together in a day or so. But if you want excellence, they need a lot more time. Don’t wait until September or October to ask. By that time, they’re already planning for Christmas and won’t have time for you.

I found starting my marketing for my Fall Festival on the first weekend of October is best. To be ready for that, I commission all the media I need by the beginning of August. That gives the graphics/web person (that could be you!) plenty of time to put it all together before it goes live.

If you want to see how I market any of my events, you can read this post here.

3. Start Recruiting

Whether you’re doing a Fall Festival with carnival games and inflatables or a Trunk or Treat with tons of cars, you need a lot of volunteers.

Thankfully asking people to serve for this event is far easier than recruiting for VBS. Many times, you’re just asking them to stand next to something and help kids participate.

The big thing you need to figure out is how many volunteers you’re actually going to need.

When I did a Trunk or Treat, I asked my volunteers to plan to stay the whole night, which works out to be 2-3 hours on site.

For my Fall Festivals I break the different activities into shifts. When I started at one church they traditionally asked for 30-minute shifts for a 3 hour event. We had 30 activities and many of them needed more than one person. By having 30 minute shifts I needed 6 times(!) as many volunteers as I would have if I asked them to serve the whole night. Thankfully the next year, I was able to push the shift up to an hour, cutting my needed workforce in half.

Once you know how many activities and shifts, you can start recruiting volunteers. I make an announcement in the Main Auditorium and push them to a booth in the lobby. There, potential volunteers can find a chart with all the activities and the available shifts. All they need to do is sign their name and email to secure that spot. I typically don’t background check volunteers for Fall Festivals because their parents will be with them. I’ll talk more about that in another post.

I used a booth like this for many of my volunteer signups.

4. Volunteer Training

No one likes to come to a meeting that could have been an email. As much as I like to meet in person, many of the things I need to communicate to the volunteers can be an email. So that’s what I do. But I don’t just send one. I send at least three.

The first is confirmation that they’ve signed up for a particular activity and the time slot they’ve signed up for. I talk about when they need to show up and when they can expect to be done. I also share how they can help leading up to the event by recruiting their friends or making donations. Finally, I share my contact information if they have any questions.
The second has all the information the volunteer needs to know. This goes out a week before the event. I answer the questions:
- When do they show up?
- Where do they go when they get there?
- When can they leave?
- Who do they report to if they have a problem?
- What do they wear?
- Do they need to bring anything?
  Finish the email with a call to action to continue helping you with recruiting, activity collection, or candy donations. Whatever you’re lacking.
The third email goes out on the day of the event. It includes all the information you spoke about in the second email. Make this one fun and exciting. Talk about how they can share their experience on social media or with their friends. If you have any photo policies, this is the place to share them.

There is a lot more prep you need to do before the Fall Festival. But these are the essentials. In the next part, I’ll talk about set up on the day of, how to collect guests information, and follow up strategies.

A Fall Festival is a great outreach tool to get people on your campus and comfortable with your people. It’s a gateway to your winter events and pushes your people to look beyond themselves. Follow these steps before the big day and your event will be a success.