A Letter from Our Pastor About the Lenten Season

A joyous Lent to you from the Central Christian Church community!

My prayerful hope for us is that 2008 will be our very best Lent ever. Our goal is to refresh and invigorate our prayer relationships with God and our faith sharing with each other and our neighbors. You will have a variety of ways at different levels to participate in Unbinding Your Heart: 40 Days of Prayer and Faith Sharing.

Perhaps you will get started as a traditional Lenten discipline, even if it isn’t the customary “giving something up for Lent.” I am confident that with a little spiritual expectancy, you will discover that Christ will give you something wonderful this Lent. And, yes, I am anticipating that these Lenten disciplines will nudge us all, individually and as a faith community, to be giving something of Christ to our neighbors.

We will be making quite a bit of use of Martha Grace Reese’s book Unbinding Your Heart through this Lent. The forty prayer exercises are well worth the investment in the book all by themselves. If many of us are doing them regularly, we can talk to each other about our experiences. Such conversations are indeed faith sharing.

The Live Hope Groups will be using the Unbinding Your Heart small group exercises during Lent, and are all open to new people joining them during this season. Check the enclosed schedule for one that works for you or come to one of the table-talk times that Todd will be leading. Each one stands on its own, so you can come to as many as you can make work.

For four Sundays this season, we’re recasting the worship messages into “monologues” and “interviews” with lay people who have exciting faith sharing experiences to tell. You won’t want to miss any of them. Following the successful pattern of our Advent cantata, our choir will present “The Seven Last Words” on March 9. Each of these will be events to which you can invite your neighbors, confident they will have a great experience. And a special festival of spirituals with Otis Lloyd the Sunday after Easter, March 30, will help us keep up the momentum.

Some time ago my wife and I read Tim Madigan’s book I’m Proud of You, and I said, “This is exactly what we need to hear at Central Christian Church. I wonder if there is any way we could get him to speak in worship.” Well, he will be here on Palm Sunday, March 16. Bring your neighbors to hear his extraordinary story and enjoy Palm Sunday dinner after worship.

As one form of faith sharing, a number of our people have written brief statements of the difference Jesus makes for them. You can find these on our website along with a blog link that allows you to enter into this conversation. I believe this is a unique, attractive approach that we can encourage our neighbors to investigate with a, “My church is doing something different on-line this Lent. You ought to check it out.”

Unbinding Your Heart: 40 Days of Prayer and Faith Sharing is a major ingredient in making 2008 a wonderful year for Central Christian Church. Clearly it is much more than a seasonal program. It is about three love relationships: with God, with each other as a faith community and with our neighbors.

May God’s Spirit flood you with joy this Lent!

Peace,

Norman Stolpe
Senior Pastor
Central Christian Church

DON'T GIVE UP SOMETHING FOR LENT, ADD SOMETHING!

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