Home Worship Planning Preaching Resources Evangelistic Preaching Helps: Preparing for the Lenten Season

Evangelistic Preaching Helps: Preparing for the Lenten Season

crossThis year, Lent begins March9 with Ash Wednesday. With some prayer, forethought, and preparation, Lent can be a time of tremendous spiritual renewal.

The Lenten season affords churches many evangelistic opportunities. Historically, Lent has been an opportunity for Christians to engage in spiritual renewal through penitent prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Don't miss the opportunity to guide your congregation and community through a season of personal and corporate renewal.

Spiritual renewal should be both for your congregation and community. Remember to invite FRAN (Friends, Relatives, Acquaintances, and Neighbors) to your special Lenten activities. And don't forget about children.

Get People Involved in Lenten Activities

  1. Invite people from your congregation and/or community to decorate your worship space to reflect your Lenten activity. Some churches opt for a stark look, using gray and dried flowers or rocks on the altar during Lent. This is especially effective if a flowering cross is used to celebrate the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. (See "The Flowering Cross.")
  2. Invite people who enjoy drama to do chancel drama(s) during Lent. (See suggested resources.) Children are great actors: Find things for them to do. See Mission Easter;Gospel Dramas for Lent and the Easter Triduum, In Him Was Life: Four Dramas for Lent and Easter.
  3. Invite dancers to choreograph a few sacred movement pieces with appropriate music.
  4. Invite people to design handmade or computer generated invitations to your Lenten activities and to hand them out to FRAN in the community.
  5. Collaborate ecumenically. Do a joint worship service or other Lenten activity with other churches in your community. Include a fellowship meal opportunity to build relationships.
  6. Be creative. What ideas do you have?

Lenten Season Activities

  1. Fasting. The Lenten season is a great time to invite people to study and practice the spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting. Invite your congregation to pray specifically for FRAN: Friends, Relatives, Acquaintances, and Neighbors who are not Christian. Encourage your congregation to pray specifically about what your church can do to reach out to others through almsgiving during the Lenten season. The finances could come from money normally spent on food or other items that we may be abstaining from.

    Imagine the impact of a simple fast. Imagine the impact of helping a family pay their rent or utility bill. Imagine helping an elderly person pay for much needed prescription medication. Imagine your congregation making a difference in people's lives in your community. If one disciple in your church were to fast for a meal a day that normally costs $3, that individual could offer over $20 a week toward a designated ministry effort. If fifty people fasted for a week, this would provide more than $1000 of benevolence funding. Invite your congregation to consider fasting and redirecting the money to help someone. This type of self-sacrifice for others enriches the fasting experience. (For more on fasting, see
    "Offering Christ Today: During Lent, Less Provides More.")
  2. Lenten Bible studies and devotions. Invite disciples in your congregation to organize informal lunchtime Lenten meditations with prayer, devotions, or short Bible studies — if allowed in their workplaces.
  3. Preach a special sermon series with a Lenten focus: "Less for More" (fasting and abstinence), "Extreme Christianity — Following Christ for Real," "Passion: Are You Ready for It?"
  4. Special prayer emphasis — personal and corporate. Place prayer boxes in business establishments and pray weekly for prayer requests.
  5. Fellowship meals — Some churches have special Lenten soup and bread meals for the congregation and community.
  6. Special worship services for Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Holy Week, and Good Friday.

Good Friday Options

The Seven Last Words of Jesus Christ. Participate in an ecumenical service featuring brief meditations and music based on the seven last words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the gospel traditions:

Father, forgive them ... (Luke 23:34)
Today you will be with me in Paradise. (Luke 23:43)
Woman, here is your son ... (John 19:26-27)
My God, my God ... (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34)
I am thirsty. (John 19:28)
It is finished. (John 19:30)
Father into your hands ... (Luke 23:46)

Tenebrae (Latin for "shadows" or "darkness") — The service is frequently held in the evening of Good Friday. Typically, the service consists of a series of Scripture readings and meditation done in stages as the lights and/or candles are progressively extinguished. This increasing darkness symbolizes the approaching darkness of Jesus' death and of hopelessness in the world without God. The service concludes in darkness, sometimes with a final candle, the Christ candle, carried out of the sanctuary, symbolizing the death of Jesus. A loud noise may also sound symbolizing the closing of Jesus' tomb. The worshipers then leave in silence to ponder the impact of Christ's death and await the coming Resurrection.

Stations of the Cross. This service can involve visuals such as paintings or banners to represent various scenes from Jesus' betrayal, arrest, trial, and death. The worshipers experience Christ's passion journey by moving to the various stations to sing hymns or pray as the story is told. Various faith traditions use different numbers of stations to tell the story.

The opportunities for spiritual renewal and evangelism abound during Lent. Get involved with some of the above suggestions. Pray that God will lead you and others into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ this Lenten season.

Lenten Resources

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Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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