By Sharon Mager
North Glen Community Church’s 2015 Fall Festival drew 300 people from the community. The church is gearing up for even more this year!
GLEN BURNIE, Md—North Glen Community Church will have their annual Harvest Festival from 1 to 4 pm on Oct. 2. It’s the church’s biggest outreach event of the year, drawing about 300 people, more than triple the number of church members.
Paul Bachman, pastor of the church, said the festival began small and has grown. In addition to advertising in the local paper, and giving out invitations at church, Bachman takes flyers to a local elementary school that distributes them to their students.
Members serve free hot dogs, hamburgers and barbecue along with chips, snacks and sodas. They’ll have children’s games with prizes, moon bounces, crafts and face painting. They’ll also have pumpkins for kids to decorate and take home. The church’s praise band will play near the road to draw visitors.
Bachman said members are prayerfully preparing, and will meet an hour before the festival to pray and to share a meal together. They’re being strategic in making the event a true outreach, loving their community and sharing Christ as the Holy Spirit leads.
The church, being intentional, will have a prayer table manned by members who will offer prayer, as well as free Bibles, books and tracts. Bachman said he would share a very brief message during the event.
“We get very good responses from the community,” Bachman said. “We’ve had people get saved.”
They also had one person so appreciative of the free festival that he wanted to do something in return and removed snow at the church for free.
The church will use the registration information for follow-up and to invite folks back to their annual Trunk or Treat later in Oct.
Bachman said the church is small, and a large event is more than they can handle, but God always provides the people, some who have shown up for the event and stayed to help.
The opportunity to bless the community ahs also been a blessing for the church, he said. “They’re growing in their faith and excited to serve the community.”
In the case of inclement weather, the rain date will be Oct. 9.
The harvest festival is one of two each year. The church celebrates Pentecost Sunday with a spring festival. They also have ongoing coffee houses, and a monthly downtown homeless ministry. In mid-October, the church will participate in Arundel House of Hope’s Winter Relief, for the first time, housing the homeless for a week, providing meals and other services.
For more information, see the church website, Northglenchurch.com.