Welcome to our Lent Garden.
Today’s Lent 1 garden is one of six Lent Gardens you will find uploaded here week-by-week during the season of Lent. The gardens have each been created for people of all ages to interact with over this season of as we journey toward Jerusalem and Holy Week together.
(more…)
Are you interested in learning how to create interactive Google Slides of your own?
Since the launch of the Lent Gardens over the past few weeks I’ve received a number of requests from church educators who are wanting to learn how to create slides of their own for their churches’ online Sunday schools, youth activities and family ministry programmes. I’m more than happy to help and want to invite you to join me over a Zoom meeting in a couple of weeks time.
(more…)
Welcome to our Lent Garden.
Today’s Ash Wednesday garden is one of six Lent Gardens you will find uploaded here, week-by-week, during the season of Lent. These gardens have each been created for people of all ages to interact with over this significant season as we journey toward Jerusalem and Holy Week together.
(more…)Did you read that right? Yes – money for free!
As Covid restrictions have continued, two things are happening. First I spend way too much time in front of a screen, often on the same old websites. Second, it seems like every time I open my email or answer the phone, there is a new scam for me to be fooled by. It never ends.
(more…)
Are you thinking of adding something new to your daily life this Lent?
Lent is a wonderful season to begin a new faith practice; the practice of reading an entire book of the bible, day-by-day, is one members of your church might like to participate in.
This year, if your congregation follows the lectionary, the Gospel of Mark will be featured most weeks of our year. Journeying through this very readable gospel as a individual or a congregation early in the season offers all ages the opportunity to hear this gospel first as a complete story before they return to its individual texts through the year in worship, study and Sunday school.
To help everyone with this faith practice, here is a free, downloadable devotional booklet for individual or churches to use this Lent.
(more…)
Did you ask to receive the links to the six Interactive Lent Gardens?
I hope so.
I just want to let everyone know that I just emailed out the links to the six interactive Lent Gardens to everyone who asked to receive them. But, I don’t want anyone to slip through the cracks. With entering well over a hundred email addresses into the BCC, I’m just a little bit worried.
So, if you asked to receive the Interactive Lent Gardens and have not yet received an email that includes the six links, six garden screen shots, a materials shopping list and instructions for uploading all of this onto your website, facebook page or include in your weekly email – PLEASE EMAIL ME AND LET ME KNOW. I want to make sure you get them. My email is torismit@gmail.com.
If you didn’t ask to receive them, and you’d like to, email me too.
And, if you asked for them, and you got them. I’m thankful. I hope these enhance your church’s journey through Lent in wonder-filled ways.
Peace, Tori
A couple of weeks ago I invited you to ‘Save the Space’ for an exciting new interactive Lent resource being created for your church. I teased you with a picture of a Lent Garden wall beautifully decorated with flowers, a garden gnome and a picnic basket filled with tasty treats. I said every item in the garden would unlock a collection of bible readings, videoed stories, crafts, music, and other garden adventures for your congregation to explore every week of Lent.
And then I said, “but not quite yet.”
Well today is the day! Today is the day I want to unlock the first two of six Lent Gardens for you to explore for yourself.
(more…)
by Laura Stephens-Reed, Clergy and Congregational Coach, laurastephensreed.com
Reprinted with the permission of the author
I recently posted the thoughts below on my Facebook page. They seemed to strike a chord, so I’m offering them here as well. Lay leaders, judicatory and denominational leaders, and ministers working outside the congregational context, I urge you to share these reflections on behalf of those local church pastors who cannot.
Churchgoers, I know you are tired of this pandemic. I know you want to hug your friends and see their full, unmasked faces on Sunday mornings. I know you are frustrated when your fellow church members start attending services and programs in congregations that are taking fewer precautions. I know you are heartbroken that Advent and Christmas observances won’t look the same this year.
(more…)
Are you beginning to look for great resources for Lent that are suitable for all ages and appropriate for people who are continuing to spend most of their time at home during this pandemic?
If so, I would like to tell you about an exciting resource we’ve been working on for you and your church to use this Lent.
(more…)
A number of years ago, my then minister, Rev. Dr. Karen Dimock, preached a sermon in which she talked about light. She reminded us that the light of Jesus’ time was the light of an oil lamp not the light of a light bulb and certainly not the light of a spot light. Her point was simple, the light Jesus describes does not usually allow us to see the end of our journey or even the whole picture; often it only allows us to see the next step.
(more…)