2023-11-03 14:39:32
Pastor André Valadão responded to criticism made on social media of his church, Lagoinha Orlando Church, about the Happy Pumpkin party, celebrated on Halloween.
Highlighting the cultural context, he pointed out that the party has an evangelistic character and emphasized that there are no references to the occult: “We do not celebrate Halloween. We don’t celebrate death, demons, terror, fear, blood, witchcraft. Point. Any article, news, saying ‘André Valadão, Lagoinha, celebrates Halloween…’, for the love of God, right people?”
Proving right irritation with the repercussion on social media, the pastor responded to questions such as “why do you have a costume party on the day of the Halloween costume party?”, and accusations that he was “taking the world into the church”: “No, we are not taking the world into the church, we are taking the church to advance within the world, it is very different”, he stressed.
Cultural context
“In the United States, where we have this party, the culture of Halloween, the Halloween party, as they call it here, is very strong. It’s strong in every school you can imagine. In the houses, in the apartments, all the children dress up in costumes and they live a whole day of terror, fear, exaltation of death, a whole day under a whole context that we understand is a demonic portal, literally”, contextualized André Valadao.
According to the pastor, Lagoinha Orlando’s action aims to offer an alternative to Christian families who do not want their children exposed to the cultural context of the rest of society: “It is an open door to generate many situations in the lives of many children. They go from house to house to get bullets, but along the way there are several situations of terror, fear, and so on.”
“We, as a church, have intentionality on this day to take the children – from our church alone there are around a thousand children, or more – into the church, for an activity at the church, and not in the middle of the street, at school, where It’s completely different and opposite to what we believe,” he declared.
The initiative, according to the pastor, yields results: “We hold the event at church and many of these children take their friends and colleagues to church, their families go, their parents go, and we also do theater, an evangelistic play, where hundreds of children give their lives to Jesus during the party that we call ‘happy pumpkin’, Happy Pumpkin”.
Safe environment
Valadão also demonstrated the intention of offering a space for families to enjoy a day of celebration without major worries: “’Ah, so you mean you have a party parallel to the Halloween party?’. Yes, we do a parallel event to the event that is completely focused on fear, witchcraft, terror, death, blood, disgrace.”
“We do an event for our church that people can go to calmly, without fear, without dread, without demons, consecration, witchcraft. And it’s a place where we do wonderful theater for children, specifically for conversion and the impact of knowing the Lord Jesus,” these o pastor.
“There is no point in me talking to you in this video when you are very out of the context of what I am saying, of the culture that exists here in the United States. You won’t understand, you won’t get it, it won’t get into your head. There’s no way this can get into people’s heads. So, what I see and what I want to leave in this video, is to tell you what happens at the party”, reiterated André Valadão, promising to maintain the program: “We have been having this party for six years. And I’m going to have this party every year. On October 31st, I’ll wait for you trying to criticize, curse, hit, do whatever, because we’re not going to stop having this party. Many children accept Jesus at this party, many people who have never been to church come, and we celebrate life, we don’t celebrate Halloween.”
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