Returning and Inviting During Lent

From Ashes to Alleluia: Building a Lent That Leads Somewhere

Lent is a season of preparation, and preparation has a destination. If your congregation keeps the forty days without a clear line to Easter morning, the season can feel like a long corridor with no door at the end. What follows is a way to connect Lenten disciplines, small groups, and Holy Week outreach so that the whole season points at the invitation Easter extends.

Start with what the season actually is, then build the practices that carry people toward it.

What Lent Is, in Plain Terms

Lent is the solemn Christian observance in the liturgical year that prepares believers for Easter. It echoes the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, before he began his public ministry. The season is usually observed in the Catholic, Lutheran, Moravian, Anglican, United Protestant and Orthodox traditions, among others, and a number of Anabaptist, Baptist, Methodist, Reformed and nondenominational churches observe it as well, though many churches in those traditions do not.

That last point matters for a mainline congregation that shares a building or a community with other traditions. You are not assuming everyone in the pews grew up with ashes on the forehead. If you want the full account of the season, its names and its history, the Wikipedia article on Lent gathers it in one place. Your task in the pulpit is narrower: make the forty days legible to people who are meeting them for the first time.

Why Forty Days, and Why It Ends Where It Ends

The pattern of fasting and praying for forty days runs through Scripture. In the Old Testament, Moses went into the mountains for forty days and forty nights to pray and fast before receiving the Ten Commandments, and Elijah went into the mountains for forty days and nights until he reached Horeb. In the New Testament, Jesus fasted and prayed in the desert for forty days and forty nights, and it was during that time that Satan tried to tempt him. The fasts of Moses, Elijah and Jesus prepared them for their work.

Which days count as part of Lent differs among denominations, though in all of them the season lasts a total of forty days. In Lent-observing Western churches, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and ends roughly six weeks later. Depending on the denomination and local custom, it concludes either on the evening of Maundy Thursday or at sundown on Holy Saturday when the Easter Vigil is celebrated. In either case, Lenten fasting observances are maintained until the evening of Holy Saturday.

One detail trips up newcomers every year: the Sundays of Lent are not regarded as days of fasting, because Sunday is the Lord's Day. That single fact can reshape how you teach the season. If people think they have failed when they break a fast on Sunday, they have misunderstood the season, not abandoned it.

What Are the Three Pillars of Lent, and How Do You Teach Them?

The purpose of Lent is preparation of the believer for Easter through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, often called the three pillars of Lent. Mortifying the flesh, repentance of sins, simple living and self-denial belong to the same movement. In Lent, many Christians commit to fasting and to giving up certain luxuries in imitation of Christ's sacrifice during his journey into the desert, and this is known as one's Lenten sacrifice.

Many Lent-observing Christians also add a Lenten spiritual discipline, such as reading a daily devotional or praying through a Lenten calendar, to draw themselves near to God. If your congregation already runs an adult formation hour, a Lenten calendar is the lowest-friction entry point you can offer. It gives a household something to do on a Tuesday night without requiring a committee or a budget.

The deeper history is worth knowing even if you never preach it directly. Before the sixth century, Lent was normatively observed through the Black Fast, which enjoins fasting from food and liquids with the allowance of one vegetarian meal after sunset, and this form continues in certain denominations. In the Roman Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran and Anglican traditions, the Stations of the Cross are a devotion observed during Lent, especially on Fridays.

Where Small Groups Carry the Weight

A Sunday sermon can announce a season. A small group can sustain one. The three pillars are practices, and practices need a place where someone will ask how the week went. If your congregation's groups already meet, Lent is the natural moment to give them a shared shape rather than a new program. If they do not meet, Lent is a short enough commitment that a first-time group can say yes to six or seven gatherings and see Easter on the other side.

Think about what a group can hold that a service cannot. A weekly check-in on a Lenten sacrifice. A shared reading plan. A collection for almsgiving that the group decides together and tracks together. None of this requires curriculum purchases, and none of it competes with the worship life of the congregation. It simply gives the season a room to happen in. Congregations that want to compare published options before committing can start from the reviews on the mainline resources and reviews page and work outward from there.

One caution: a group that only subtracts will lose energy by week four. Fasting without prayer and almsgiving is a diet, not a Lent. Pair every subtraction with an addition, and say so out loud when you launch the groups.

Holy Week Is Where the Invitation Gets Concrete

In most Lent-observing denominations, the last week of Lent is Holy Week, which begins with Palm Sunday. Following the New Testament narrative, Jesus' crucifixion is commemorated on Good Friday, and at the beginning of the next week comes the joyful celebration of Easter, the start of the Easter season, which recalls the resurrection of Jesus. In some denominations, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday form the Easter Triduum.

The viewing of and participation in Passion Plays occurs during Lent, especially during Holy Week, and these are often interdenominational productions. That word, interdenominational, is the opening for a small congregation. A Passion Play or a community Good Friday service does not require your church to own the event. It requires your church to show up at it, and to invite a neighbour to come along. This is where Holy Week outreach stops being a flyer and becomes a person standing next to someone in a pew they have never sat in before.

If your outreach committee is looking for the shape of a year-round plan rather than a single week, the guide for outreach committees lays out how Lent and Holy Week sit inside it. The point is not to add events. The point is to make sure the events you already hold have an open door on the side facing the street.

Do the Dates Change Every Year?

They do. Easter is dated by the paschal computus, so the whole season moves with it, and the date of Lent also depends on the calendar a particular church uses, such as the revised Julian or Gregorian calendars typically used by Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches, or the Ethiopian and Coptic calendars used by some Oriental Orthodox churches.

For planning purposes, the Western dates run as follows: in 2025, 5 March to 17 April or 19 April; in 2026, 18 February to 2 April or 4 April; in 2027, 10 February to 25 March or 27 March; in 2028, 1 March to 13 April or 15 April. The two end dates reflect the different points at which denominations conclude the season. Eastern dates fall separately, beginning on Clean Monday: 3 March to 11 April in 2025, 23 February to 3 April in 2026, 15 March to 23 April in 2027, and 28 February to 7 April in 2028.

In Eastern Christianity, including Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholics, Eastern Lutherans and Oriental Orthodox, Great Lent is observed continuously without interruption for forty days, starting on Clean Monday and ending on Lazarus Saturday before Holy Week. If your congregation shares a city with an Orthodox parish, the calendars will not line up, and that is a fact worth naming rather than ignoring.

Who Actually Keeps the Season?

The observance is not as uniform as a first glance suggests. Anabaptist, Baptist, Methodist, Reformed and nondenominational churches include many congregations that observe Lent and many that do not. Even among churches that keep the season, the rules bend. In the Roman Rite, Lent has started on Ash Wednesday and ended on the evening of Holy Thursday with the Mass of the Lord's Supper since 1970. In the Ambrosian Rite, Lent begins on the Sunday that follows what the rest of the Latin Catholic Church calls Ash Wednesday, and the special Ash Wednesday fast is transferred to the first Friday of the Ambrosian Lent.

The practical upshot for a pastor is that your people arrive with wildly different assumptions about what is required. You will have someone who has fasted every Lent since childhood and someone who has never heard the word Quadragesima. A single sentence of explanation in the bulletin does more work than a paragraph of history.

What Does Lent Lead To?

Lent ends, and the ending is the point. The season is a period of penitence that ends at the arrival of Easter. Everything the forty days ask of a congregation, the fasting, the prayer, the giving, the added devotional reading, the small group that meets on a weeknight, the Good Friday service attended with a neighbour, is preparation for a morning that is not solemn at all.

That is what makes the season a season rather than a discipline for its own sake. The veiling of images and the omission of the Gloria and Alleluia are customs of the season, and they are customs with a horizon. They are set aside when Easter arrives.

So the question for your congregation is not whether you will keep Lent. It is whether the Lent you keep will end with an empty building on Easter morning or with people in it who came because someone walked through the season beside them. Invite one person to Holy Week this year, and let the forty days do the rest.

Entity note. The Wikipedia article on Lent describes the solemn Christian observance in the liturgical year that prepares believers for Easter, echoing the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the desert. It sets out the season's names in many languages, its origins in Scripture and early Christian practice, the differing ways denominations calculate its dates and duration, and its related observances, including Holy Week and the Easter Triduum.

The Parish & Pew editorial team [email protected]