An Invitation to join me in Getting Ready For Lent and Easter

Lent is still over a month away. It officially begins on Ash Wednesday – this year on February 25^th. However I know that many people and certainly a lot of churches start thinking about how they will celebrate Lent the moment the Christmas season is over. A couple of years ago, after the 10^th person told me they were giving up chocolate for Lent I became extremely frustrated and decided to produce a Lenten guide that encouraged people to make some meaningful sacrifices during this season. Each week we focused on a different aspect of the brokenness of the human condition – with activities from easy to challenging that people could participate in.

 

This year I am working to update this resource and expand it into the celebration of Easter – not just the day but the whole season up to Pentecost. I am inspired by NT Wright’s comment, “If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering and training up things in your life that ought to be blossoming…” I am also concerned that when I look at images that portray both the despair and hope of our world that it was easier to find the images of despair than of hope. So often our celebration of Easter seems to focus on the walk to the Cross rather than on God’s resurrection-created kingdom.

The new version of the Lenten guide is now available. It will contain more ideas of activities as well as resources that will enable people to carry out these suggestions. It will also provide a weekly reflection on the focus topic.

So here is where I would like your help. I would like to conduct a synchroblog during Lent and Easter to focus on the meaning of Lent and the celebration of Easter in this practical way. Would you consider being a part of this? I realize that it involves far more than a simple blog post as each person involved would need to engage in at least one of the activities listed. You may like to just use the guide for a single week. The most popular activity last time was the Mutunga $2 Challenge to restrict one’s food budget to $2 per person per day for a week.

 

If you would like to be a part of the synchroblog, I would ask you to commit to a minimum of one week involvement during Lent and one week during the Easter season. The weeks during Lent would focus on the brokenness of the world; the weeks of Easter leading up to Pentecost would focus on what is blossoming – signs of the kingdom that give us hope and encouragement. Hopefully this is a season when we can profile organizations and individuals you know who are making a difference in their communities and around the world and so giving hope to all of us that our lives can make a difference for God. The topics for each of the five weeks of Lent will be: inner brokenness, poverty, homelessness, creation, and broken unity within the church. For the Easter season, the topics will focus on where God’s new world is blossoming: in inner healing, in overcoming poverty and homelessness, creation stewardship, and unity within the body of Christ.

 

Each week I will post the links to the reflections bloggers have written as well as other resources that can help people for the following week. I intend to provide a video meditation reflection for each week too. This will culminate in two celebration presentations, one during Holy week when I would like to put up a special “Stations of the Cross” presentation compiled from some of the ideas expressed in the blog posts, and one during Pentecost when the focus would be on “Stations of the Banquet,” images and reflections that show the glory of God

 

Second, would you let others know about this resource and encourage them to send me reflections, photos, or ideas that can be incorporated in either the Stations of the Cross presentation or the Stations of the Banquet presentation?

 

Please let me know in the next couple of weeks if you can participate. I want to be able to list participants on my blog as soon as I know who they will be. If you know of others who would like to participate in the synchroblog don’t hesitate to pass this on to them too. I want this to be open and as widely used as possible.  I think it will be a fun way to enter into the true meaning of Lent and Easter… and keep on eating chocolate!!!

The 2009 lenten guide is now available

 

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