Our pastor has been preaching a series about the characteristics of a Christian disciple. The ‘prayer’ sermon will be offered on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. On our staff retreat last fall, as we made plans for 2016, a fellow staff member shared an experience at a previous church to stick with prayer during lent. So we’re doing it!

Picking up large, wooden craft sticks from the local craft store, we wrote names on each stick. We used the directory, the phone list, the youth list, even the regular visitor sign-in sheets, to write names on the craft sticks. We’ll have them placed in red galvanized buckets (only because that’s what I’ve got in the basement…and it’s February!) throughout the sanctuary during lent for folks to pick a stick and pray for that person or couple.

On Palm Sunday, we will have our egg hunt, donkey appearance, and missions lunch following the last service of the morning when folks can bring their sticks and meet up with the one they’ve been praying for during lent. I know…not everyone will come, but maybe they will.

What are you planning to build family and community for the season of Lent?

“They all  joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” Acts 1:14