Now that we are entering the second working week of 2021 you might be starting to thinking about Lent courses. We may not be able to gather in our normal way, but all of the courses suggested below would work virtually. If you need support on how to conduct an online group then the Church of England Digital Team have put together a helpful guide here.
Live Lent: God's Story, Our Story (National Church of England resources)
The National Lent campaign encourages us to take a fresh look at evangelism, exploring how Jesus and his first followers communicated the good news of God's love by inviting, listening and responding creatively to others.
From Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, there will six reflections for each week, written by Stephen Hance, the Church of England’s National Lead for Evangelism and Witness. Each reflection will include a short passage from the Bible, a brief exploration of the reading, and a prayer. Additionally, each week will have a unifying theme and an action to be taken during the week.
The daily reflections will be made available through a booklet available to buy from Church House Publishing, as well as a free app, emails, audio and through the Church of England’s social media accounts. Webinars will be offered early in 2021 to help churches plan how to make the best use of the range of resources and content for both individuals and groups.
Living His Story - Revealing the extraordinary love of God in ordinary ways: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2021 By Hannah Steele
The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book 2021, Living His Story, is a devotional book that explores evangelism as a way of sharing God’s love with people. This book provides the basis for the national Lent campaign. Perhaps your lent group could read this book together and reflect in a weekly zoom session?
Everyday Witness Course
Some of you may remember that for Lent 2020 the diocese launched it’s very own Lent course ‘Everyday Witness’. Due to the March lockdown many groups were unable to finish the course having only done the first session. This course follows a very similar theme to the Live Lent national course, but was developed locally. If you still have all of the resources you could run the course this Lent. Unfortunately we are unable to print or send out any new material this year but as there are nearly 1500 copies with churches from last year but it would be a shame for all of the copies sent out last year to go to waste!
Living in Love and Faith course
The LLF course looks at how questions about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage fit within the bigger picture of the good news of Jesus Christ. What does it mean to live in love and faith together as a Church? The course aims for participants to pray, study and learn together so that they can play a part in discovering God’s call to the Church of England today.
The diocesan Living Well Together Group completed the LLF study course just before Christmas. The Group is meeting again on 19 January to review the course together, but some members have already submitted written feedback. On the whole, this feedback has been positive with Group members appreciative of the opportunity to talk together and engage with the carefully structured course material. However, the written feedback contains some concerns and as we know that some churches are planning to start the course in the next few weeks, we would encourage you to make contact with the Group to learn from our initial experience (livingwelltogether@leccofe.org) before you begin.
Caring for Creation - York Courses
This course, written by our very own Brian Davis, consists of 5 sessions focusing on climate change the role we play in caring for the world, and the hope for the future we can find in God.
‘The human race is facing its greatest challenge: global warming, leading to climate change. This, along with the damage we have done, and are still doing to the environment, God’s wonderful creation, means that we all have to make radical changes to our whole way of life.’