 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Unfiltered. Pastor David. How you doing, John? Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for welcoming me, John. Pastor, today is Halloween or October 31st and you know, the it's become a bigger, seems like a bigger event for all the things that are going on with Halloween and and our church provides an alternative. Can you share a little bit why we do this as a church and what the reasoning and the goals behind what we do for the church? You know, John, you know when our church first began back in 81, we knew that our children, I never had my kids go out trick-or-treating. I just didn't. It was something I didn't do. As a parent, I felt that it would be better to keep them, keep them home or something. You know, I had thought about that in that way. I had small children at the time and so in 1981, I wanted to give the children in our fellowship, which it was a new church at that time. We may have had, oh gosh, 60 kids or so. I don't even remember. At the max, it would have been 60. Probably there's a lot less now that I think of it. Anyway, there was a handful of children and you know, the kids in their neighborhoods were out there knocking on doors, getting candy and our children would wonder, you know, why can't we get the candy? They didn't think about the significance of Halloween. They didn't think in terms of it representing evil or anything. They just saw it as an opportunity to get candy. So what we did is we provided an alternative for them. We gave them what we called, we used to call it a Hallelujah Party rather than Halloween. You know, it's a Halloween Eve. You know, normally it's all saints. I mean, they would celebrate saints and all, but we called it a Hallelujah and told the children, you know, if you're going to dress up just like a Bible character. And that's what they did. So they came, the handful of babies that we had, and we gave them a night to play and enjoy themselves and have some treats. And that's what we did. And funny, we were renting a small building at that time from a local quote unquote church, and they kicked us out because they thought we were celebrating a satanic holiday. They also kicked us out for the second reason that we celebrated Christmas, which they felt to be a pagan celebration, and just kind of shows you how people can think in that way. And we are not pagans. We are looking for options and alternatives. And even as Christmas was an alternative for Saturnalia, you know, the Christian church has always taken holidays that the pagans would celebrate and we invested new meanings in them. So we did that with the Hallelujah party. We gave the kids an opportunity to gather for a night of fun and safe. We offer here recreation. We give them things to do. We have worship and we just make it a night for the kids and families gather. We're going to have, you know, quite a number of people here tonight. They'll be through the neighborhood, and the people in the neighborhood, you'll be surprised at how many have never even stepped on this campus. They have an opportunity to be introduced to our church. Plus we have people going throughout the crowd, handing out tracts and evangelizing and ministering. And over the years, we've seen it to be something that is fruitful. And we feel that this is one of the ways that the church can reach into a community that is already doing these kinds of things, but to give them a safe environment. And the kids, you know, they walk out with a bag full of candy, tracts, and a safe night. And so we've been doing it for years. When I grew up, John, we had the, we used to have festivals in our local elementary schools. So we would, we'd all gather in the neighborhood at the school and they'd have things like this where the kids would show up and they'd get candy and we'd have games. And I just don't see any reason not to do that. We're not celebrating Satan. We're not celebrating anything demonic. And anybody who says we are just doesn't know who we are and doesn't know why we do what we do. And that's why I thought it would be a good idea for us to talk a little bit about it. So tonight we're going to have a lot of people here. I pray the Lord will use it. I thank God for all the volunteers we have in this church who give their night to do such a thing. And tomorrow they're going to be very tired, but they're very happy. With lots of candy. Maybe sugared up for, you know, we'll see. Anyway, that's why we do it. And I want to invite you guys to come out. It's this evening, our light fest. And as Pastor David said, there's a lot of things that will be going on. We have the trunk or treats where we will have an area where you can bring the kids and each car will have trunkfuls of candy that they'll be handing out. A little petting zoo. They have all kinds of different things. Yeah, it'll be a fun night. And it's going to be a fun night. So invite your friends and family if you just happen to come across this video. We're Calvary Chapel Chino Valley. We're located at 1205 North Pipeline Avenue. Coming out, bring your friends and family, bring your neighborhood. And it'll be a great time. So, Pastor, thank you for sharing about that. Because a lot of people are like, oh, you celebrate Halloween. Yeah, it's too bad. Yeah. So, but it's a great opportunity. It's an outreach, actually. We're reaching out to the community. And so we look forward to having you come out. Also want to invite you to our Wednesday evening services. Pastor, you started a study in Esther. Yeah, we'll be looking at for such a time as this. We're in the book of Esther. So come out and join us. We got a couple of events for you to come out and join us. We look forward to seeing you. And Pastor David, thank you again for spending some time with us. God bless you guys.