Every year at Sutton Vineyard, we throw a Light Party for our Kids and our Community. We do this as an alternative to Halloween, where we choose to celebrate goodness and light instead of darkness. It’s always such a special event but this year it was bigger and better than ever! We welcomed 127 children through our doors along with their grown ups. They had a huge amount of fun playing games, making crafts, jumping on the bouncy castle and soft play, having their faces painted, exploring our awesome glow room and eating sweets and cakes!
The thing that blows most of our guests away is that there is no cost to them at all. All activities and refreshments are completely free of charge and every year, people ask us why we would provide something like this for free. This is a great opportunity for us to tell them that, as Christians, we believe we are called to be generous and to spread the love of Jesus far and wide. Our Light Party is one way in which we can show God’s love to our friends and community.
Another huge encouragement from this year is the culture of invitation that our kids at Sutton Vineyard have truly embraced. We spent a session in the run up to the party thinking and praying about who to invite and dozens of our guests were invitees of our amazing kids! They are learning how to extend the table in their own circles and it is such a blessing to witness and be a part of! Another large proportion of our guests came through our Lighthouse and Wendy House community ministries, helping us to bridge the gap between our community projects and our church.
This year we have planned a follow up event of a Kids Disco which will be happening on Saturday 30th September. We already have many of our Light Party guests signed up to join us again in a few weeks time and we are so excited to see what relationships we can form and what might come out of these joyous events!
