Lent 2020

Lent 2020

This year, for the season of Lent, we will be using the texts from the Revised Common Lectionary as our guide to the themes of the season. The Lectionary is a worship planning tool used by many churches throughout the Christian world. There are a variety of lectionaries, but most Protestant churches that use the lectionary follow the Revised Common Lectionary. You can find tons of lectionary resources online and in print, but a few good ones to start with are The Worship Sourcebook, the Vanderbilt lectionary site (https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu), and the Centre for Excellence in Preaching from Calvin Seminary (https://cep.calvinseminary.edu).

The lectionary groups together four texts for each day, one each from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles (New Testament Letters). The general idea is that what is proclaimed in the Gospels is foreshadowed in the Old Testament, celebrated in the Psalms, and explained in the Epistles. The pastors will choose one of these four texts as the preaching text, but as you plan and prepare each week, meditate on the four texts all together, drawing themes, phrases, and ideas from each of them to incorporate into the service.

Since Lent is a season of preparation, we generally change the tone of the services to be more meditative and reflective, selecting songs that focus on confession and prayer; the passion, suffering, and death of our Lord; the gift of redemption (the subject of many songs within our congregational repertoire); and the justice and mercy of God in Christ.

In addition to the “Lent” section of our regular repertoire of songs, other appropriate songs for Lent include Amazing Grace and its variations, Create in Me a Clean Heart, Give Thanks, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, I Stand Amazed (How Marvellous), In Christ Alone, My Worth is Not in What I Own, The Power of the Cross/Oh to See the Dawn, and There is a Redeemer.