Resources To Help Congregations Celebrate Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, the penitential season that marks 40 days leading up to Holy Week, capped by our celebration of Easter Sunday.

The 40 days recall the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and dealing with temptations from the devil.

Some Christian Reformed congregations will hold special services today, and a few will use ashes to thumb the sign of the cross on people’s foreheads as a sign of personal repentance and our need for God.

Congregations can mark Lent and Holy Week in several ways. A range of resources are available for individuals, families, and churches aiming to walk with Christ on his way to the cross and then to the resurrection.

Faith Alive Christian Resources has a variety of resources to help you celebrate Lent and Easter at church and at home, including devotions, children's Bible story books, Bible studies, and more. For instance, you can download a free Lenten sampler of Seeking God’s Face for your personal or family devotions, or to post on your church’s website or on social media. Seeking God’s Face is available in standard, large print, compact, and ebook editions.

Also from Faith Alive is Discover Easter: Looking for Jesus, a Bible study based mainly on the accounts of Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection in the gospel of Matthew. Available as well is Through Tears to Joy, a collection of daily Lenten devotions for personal or congregational use.

The CRC’s quarterly magazine Reformed Worshipoffers a Lenten worship series titled "From Dark to Sight: A Lenten Journey." Put together by the Creative Team of Maranatha CRC in Lethbridge, Alta., this resource includes sermon notes, Scripture passages, song suggestions, and more.

Meanwhile, the Office of Social Justice has created a Journey through Lent with the Climate Witness Project. The Climate Witness project works to provide help to churches seeking to care for God’s creation.

During this journey through Lent, participants will have the chance to contemplate and lament the devastation humans have wrought on creation, and take positive action to reduce reliance on single-use plastic.

In addition, participants can read the new book Wild Hope by Gayle Boss as part of a way to contemplate and lament the suffering and plight of 25 of God’s creatures in our broken, polluted world today.

The Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary is offering suggestions for sermons to be given during Lent and Holy Week. Each sermon suggestion comes with an observation on how the text fits into and helps people better understand and appreciate the season.

For example, the sermon text for the first Sunday of Lent, March 1, is Matthew 4:1-11, about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Offering a look at this text, this resource says that “Matthew’s account of the Temptation of Jesus is crisp and direct and loaded with Old Testament background. . . . As a Lenten text, Matthew 4’s crispness may cause us to gloss over the fact that these were real temptations for Jesus. The fact that he was so adroit at dispatching the devil with one biblical quote after the next should not make us forget the fact that these were powerful temptations for Jesus.”

Faith Formation Ministries will be releasing a free printable Holy Week devotional titled: "God's Big Easter Story: A Holy Week Journey for Families." A resource from Dwell at Home, it will provide simple, active daily devotions for the week preceding Easter. It invites families to "breathe, read, wonder, and pray" together as they prepare to celebrate the high point of the Christian year. It will be available in March on the Dwell at Home website (DwellCurriculum.org/home).  

The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship invites people to make their hearts ready for remembering Jesus’ passion and celebrating Jesus’ resurrection.

“As a period of preparation, Lent has historically included the instruction of persons for baptism and profession of faith on Easter Sunday; the calling back of those who have become estranged from the church; and efforts by all Christians to deepen their piety, devotion, and readiness to mark the death and resurrection of their Savior,” according to the Worship Sourcebook, Second Edition, (pp. 557-58).

The Institute of Worship offers several planning resources and services for Lent. These include Books for Lent, Prayers for Lent, and Psalms for a Lenten Journey.

In addition, there are planning resources and services for Holy Week such as Songs for Holy Week and Meditations on Lenten Hymns.

Three programs from ReFrame Media are offering special Lent-specific content. A special devotional series from Today called "Focus on the Cross" offers a daily devotional message. For those who prefer audio series and longer reflections, Groundwork has a seven-part Bible study podcast called "Words from the Cross." Finally, Kids Corner also offers a family lenten devotion called "Preparing for Easter."

The primary focus of the season, according to the Worship Sourcebook, “is to explore and deepen a ‘baptismal spirituality’ that centers on our union with Christ rather than to function only as an extended meditation on Christ’s suffering and death” (p. 558).

This year, for the first time, the CRCNA is also offering a social media challenge. Called the “#CRCLentPhoto Challenge,” this activity encourages all CRC members to participate in daily Scripture reading and reflection, think about a theme word, and take a photo of something related to the theme.

The Scripture passages draw from the Revised Common Lectionary and are selected by Worship Ministries with a specific word to reflect on each day.  Participants are encouraged to post their photos to social media with the hashtag #CRCLentPhoto so that others can follow their Lenten journey.