Thank you to newsletter subscriber Rhonda for suggesting this topic! Some of you may have already had your parish festival for the year, so if so, save this in your back pocket for next year's planning.

The smell of sausage and peppers, pierogis, and funnel cake wafts through the air.

The normally serene church parking lot is bustling with the sounds of children screeching, loud music blaring, and adults crammed onto the few plastic picnic tables in the shade.

And you better join the line for Mrs. Jones' famous pie on a stick now — it's longer than the line for ashes on Ash Wednesday.

Parish festival season is upon us, and there's just something about them so deep in our summer and fall core memories that brings out people in droves.

But have you ever considered how some attendees may be at the festival more for the nostalgia (and amazing food) than to gather as a faith community?

In other words — there's a lot of evangelistic potential at a parish festival. You may have people on your property who haven't stepped foot in a church since the last family sacrament...which means we should capitalize on the opportunity to share Christ with them!

Here are a few ideas for how you can weave faith and evangelization into your parish festival:

(These work for any event that might attract "outsiders:" Fish fries, Breakfast with St. Nick, even CYO basketball games.)

Set up an information table about the parish...but don't make it boring.

This is about more than pointing about where the bathrooms are (but that's important too!). Likely, the audience you'd be looking to evangelize at these kinds of events would have questions about the faith, so create an information table answering some of those "big life questions" that might be keeping people from coming to church — but make it interactive and engaging! Even a simple "lift the flap for the answer" kind of thing would work. For each question, consider having an engaging pamphlet or suggested YouTube/Formed/Word on Fire, etc. video they can scan to dive deeper.

Even better, have one of the priests or a lay catechist available to answer questions people might have about the faith, or really amplify it with one of the events being "stump a priest" with the opportunity to ask questions (you need to have a priest willing to think on the spot for this!).

Have your ministry fair at the same event, and incentivize going around.

Maybe the people at the carnival attend Mass every Sunday, but don't get involved in much else. Combining the carnival and ministry fair can be a great way to get more people to see all the awesome things you have going on! To make sure people go around, you can set up a simple bingo card for people to use to check off which ministries they've been to, and get their cards stamped to enter to win a prize like a free food voucher.

Have prayer teams available and answer faith questions.

One of the easiest ways to evangelize? Offer to pray for people! Have a simple station set up with a place for people to write prayer intentions, consider a rosary walk around the church campus, or even have prayer teams set up with a simple sign, "Need prayer?"

Have a booth with religious-themed games.

Step aside, Whack-A-Mole — offer a booth with free games that are religious in theme, like pin the halo on the saint, saint ring toss to give saints their "halo," and others that will subtly introduce faith elements into the day through play.

Offer a talk/religious movie as part of the experience.

Invite one of the priests to talk on a really engaging topic (the intersection of sports and religion can be a big draw!) or rent an outdoor blow-up screen/projector and show a (not cheesy) religious movie after dark with popcorn.

Make sure everyone goes home with an engaging parish overview.

When people purchase their tickets, don't just hand them their ride wristband — give them something they can take home too! A beautifully designed parish brochure or lookbook highlighting what you do as a parish and your ministries can be great, or even just repurpose your bulletin that week to focus on things interesting to "outsiders" (DEFINITELY promote your Alpha/ChristLife/seeker event if you have one coming up!!!).

Bonus if you want to give them something they can use to live out their faith at home — something like a great religious book aimed at those in the "seeking" phase or a postcard with QR access to a platform like Formed or Word on Fire.

Simply engage.

Honestly, the best thing you can do to evangelize at events like these? Have friendly parishioners around to engage with people! Ask some volunteers to walk around the food area or other high-traffic areas of the event and encourage attendees to simply make conversation with them. 95% of the work of evangelization is done in listening, and a simple friendly conversation with a "make sure you say hi if you see me at Mass!" can be all the invite someone needs to go deeper in their faith.

Save some sausage and peppers for me!

For His greater glory,

Emily