Planning for a Season

Rev. Joshua Patty
Regional Minister and President

As we find ourselves firmly into February, I imagine that many of you are now planning worship for the Lenten season. You may even be making plans for Easter.

The upcoming weeks offer a great opportunity to reengage people in worship. We have a defined season -- Ash Wednesday through Easter -- where we can invite people to participate.

After two years of wondering if we can make plans more than a few days ahead, this might be a good place for our church to say -- here's this season. Here's this time when we focus on deep questions of faith and the way we live our lives. Here's this time each year when we focus on key lessons from the example of Jesus, including the emotional roller coaster of Palm Sunday to Good Friday to Easter.

With a defined timeframe and broad theme, you can focus on the other key part of the invitation -- explaining why people should want to participate. What might they learn? What will they experience? What connections can they make?

And then you can create graphics and text about this season's worship to share in many ways.

This may not seem like worship planning -- but this vital work can greatly help you to increase the number of people who experience the fruits of that planning by worshiping with you.

And remember to find ways to engage people in person and online this Lenten season and Holy Week. As Religion News Service reminded us last week, there have been good things for many congregations about online worship. Even more, there are ways that online engagement is a better option for some people who otherwise might be disconnected from your church.