Themes

• Give your fair a theme.Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
  
  Give your church fair a theme to increase interest and focus awareness on an important issue. For example, have a health fair. Invite the Red Cross to do a blood drive, ask medical school students to set up a tent for taking vital signs and give away free health items, such as flu shots.
  
  You also could have a county fair theme. Spread red-and-white-checked tablecloths, sell cotton candy, hire clowns to perform and have plenty of food on a stick.
  
  

Merchandise

• Sell something for everyone at your church fair.Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images
  
  Have the ladies of the church create handicrafts and invite local vendors to buy booth space and sell their wares. You also could reserve a large portion of the fair for a swap meet. Tell attendees to bring items or even services to swap, such as old furniture or proofreading services. Canvas community businesses for donated goods and hold a silent auction. Have each Sunday School class make baked goods to sell at the fair and encourage congregants with cooking skills to sell their own specialties by the plate.
  
  

Contests

• Set up a batting cage and hold a home run derby.Creatas Images/Creatas/Getty Images
  
  Sell raffle tickets at the door and award donated prizes to the winners. Organize father-daughter or mother-son relay race. Have families sign up to play your own version of "Family Feud." Rent a karaoke machine and have a singing competition, or set up a stage and let attendees compete in a talent show or pageant. Set up an old-fashioned cake walk. Have the community seamstresses or aspiring stylists compete in a fashion show and ask church teens to serve as models. Set up a batting cage and hold a home run derby.
  
  

Entertainment

• Games and small prizes are popular with kids of all ages.Digital Vision/Digital Vision/Getty Images
  
  Hire a magician or illusionist to wow your attendees, or a comedian to keep everyone laughing. Have the local high school theater troupe put on a play. Hire a jazz band or an improv troupe to entertain everyone. Enlist performers, such as fortune tellers, hypnotists or celebrity impersonators, to interact with the crowd. Get a deejay to play music on request and a caricaturist to draw funny pictures of attendees.