Apologetic booth at Church Festival?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kermit
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
K

Kermit

Guest
Does an apologetics booth at the Church Festival sound like a good idea?

Has anyone had or seen one at their festival before?

How did it go over?

We are getting ready to have our first meeting for this years festival and want to try new things. I think an apologetis booth would be a great way to bring people to the Church and get more people interested in our school. I though we could give away free CDs and Rosaries and maybe have some local seminarians work the booth to answer questions. I have not presented this to the comity our our Priest yet.
 
Sounds like something I’ve always wanted to do.

Go for it, and let us know how it goes.
 
Have you come across Donald Miller’s ‘Blue Like Jazz’. He talks about having an apologetic booth at a festival - with a twist. The ‘staff’ apologised. Apologised for the times when the church had failed people. Apologised for the arrogance and unwillingness to listen, and tendency not to engage with the real issues. Apparently it was an amazing hit - people were impressed to see the church acting with humility 🙂
 
We had a booth similar to that last year at our festival. It wasn’t apologetics, so much as information about parish ministries. We had brochures on the K of C, St. Vincent de Paul, Youth Group, photoboard of parish activities through the year, scrapbook of newspaper clippings from festivals of “yesteryear”, etc.
 
Eddy said:
Have you come across Donald Miller’s ‘Blue Like Jazz’. He talks about having an apologetic booth at a festival - with a twist. The ‘staff’ apologised. Apologised for the times when the church had failed people. Apologised for the arrogance and unwillingness to listen, and tendency not to engage with the real issues. Apparently it was an amazing hit - people were impressed to see the church acting with humility 🙂
Click to expand...
Thank you for your response, but I’d rather defend the Faith, and help Catholics learn more about how great it really is.
 
I agree that an informational booth would be good. Apologetics bad.

How about handing out Pillar of Fire. It gives an accurate, condensed, clear teaching on Doctrines of the Church.

My former parish did an informational booth like this at its last festival. I’m not sure how it went over. They had Pillar of Fire and church bulletins to hand out.
 
After 30 years, our parish decided to “break with tradition” of having little or nothing Catholic at a festival open to all.

I provided the “booth” with tapes, CDs, Rosaries, tracts, and info on local ministries (Oders of Priests, Catholic Radio etc).

The response was unbelievable… all the items were free, and those of us watching or working the booth were amazed at the interest. 'Course, we couldnt have done it without the support of the good pastor. And even he was amazed… and pleased.

We even had some who insisted on making donations, which went to the church general fund…

PM me if you want more details on what we gave out, and where to obtain supplies.

.
 
Eddy said:
Have you come across Donald Miller’s ‘Blue Like Jazz’. He talks about having an apologetic booth at a festival - with a twist. The ‘staff’ apologised. Apologised for the times when the church had failed people. Apologised for the arrogance and unwillingness to listen, and tendency not to engage with the real issues. Apparently it was an amazing hit - people were impressed to see the church acting with humility 🙂
Click to expand...
Which Church apologizd? Baptist? Evangeleical? Mormon?

Actually it sounds like one of those apocraphal stories designed to slam the church for engaing in issues like abortion rather than supporting homosexual “rights”
 
MrS said:
After 30 years, our parish decided to “break with tradition” of having little or nothing Catholic at a festival open to all.

I provided the “booth” with tapes, CDs, Rosaries, tracts, and info on local ministries (Oders of Priests, Catholic Radio etc).

The response was unbelievable… all the items were free, and those of us watching or working the booth were amazed at the interest. 'Course, we couldnt have done it without the support of the good pastor. And even he was amazed… and pleased.

We even had some who insisted on making donations, which went to the church general fund…

PM me if you want more details on what we gave out, and where to obtain supplies.

.
Click to expand...
Thank you, this is just the kind of response I was hoping for.

I would love more detail.

Pardon me but I’m new and don’t know what PM means.
 
Kermit said:
Thank you, this is just the kind of response I was hoping for.

I would love more detail.

Pardon me but I’m new and don’t know what PM means.
Click to expand...
click on my name… then click on the first line in the box that results…takes you to the “profile” page for me…

click on the line on the right side that says "send a private message (PM) to MrS "

I will respond… and you will see the Messages in the upper right corner of everything you do go from 0 to 1…
 
Kermit, I want to encourage you to have an apologetics booth at your church festival. We are a foreign service family, and so we live overseas for years at a time. When we were in the US in the early 1990’s for leave, I discovered the wonderful Divine Mercy devotion because the Diocese of Buffalo had a booth at the Erie County Fair! They were giving out the Divine Mercy manual, and I picked one up. You may reach people who you would never have reached otherwise so go for it!
 
We did that at my parish festival last year. I am on the Evangelization Committee. We had Catholic tracts, rosaries, prayer cards, and schedules of Masses/phone numbers for the parish. I just sat at the table and answered any questions people had or referred them to the parish staff. It went well, and many people took the rosaries.🙂
 
Wish me luck, our festival meeting is tonight. My wife will be presenting the idea of the Apologetics booth for me because I have to work. I’m sure she’ll do a better job than I would have.

If nothing else comes of this I think it was pretty cool after send an e-mail to The Bible Christian Society getting a repsonse from it’s president John Martignoni himself. I’m a big fan. My wife thinks I’m a dork but she’s stuck with me.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.
 
Kermit said:
Wish me luck, our festival meeting is tonight. My wife will be presenting the idea of the Apologetics booth for me because I have to work. I’m sure she’ll do a better job than I would have.

If nothing else comes of this I think it was pretty cool after send an e-mail to The Bible Christian Society getting a repsonse from it’s president John Martignoni himself. I’m a big fan. My wife thinks I’m a dork but she’s stuck with me.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Click to expand...
doesn’t she know Kermit was a frog… smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/16/16_9_3.gif

%between%
 
So far so good I’m getting good feed back from the comity, but still don’t the OK to move foward.

We decided to present as a two part booth
One part CDs, Rosaries, etc
Second half promoting our school

I don’t see how anyone could say no to that.
 
How cool! That’s a great idea…

Our parish has a huge festival every year and we’ve never had an apologetics booth… I’ll have to suggest that too… wonderful idea!
 
Wonderful Idea, and if it works, I would love to mention this my my parish council, it would be a first.

Our parish has never had a festival, but our county has a fair every year and many protestant churches set up booths,except the Catholic Church:( I thought some “catchy” sayings on posters might give interested people in coming over and checking out what the Catholic Church truly teaches and has to offer. How Bout…

“Mary ‘worship’” Are you Kidding me!?

“Idols” whats behind all that plaster?

“Rosary” and you thought it was just another necklace!

Be surprised on how many cradle Catholics have issues with some of these. While going through RCIA, I ran into alot of cradles who took issue with these very things that alot of protestants do.:eek:
 
This isn’t unheard of , I was at a Greek food festival here in Pittsburgh a few years back and the Orthodox priest made himself available at a table if anyone had any questions about the Orthodox faith.

I think there is a problem with lay people that aren’t fully trained answering questions, wrong or misunderstood answers might be given to people’s inquiries.

Its an idea, but it should be thought out and manned carefully, the idea should be to give totally accurate answers instead of just arguing with people.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top