visible worship through Lent

The Sanctuary is delighted to announce the publication of two new resources for Lent, produced in partnership with Geoff Hudd.

visible worship through Lent

The following are all available to download now from the Sanctuary’s new seasonal page:

Creative prayer ideas: journeying through Lent with symbols and prayer is designed to be used in church services during Lent, and includes ideas for a simple visual instillation, prayer and song suggestion for the start of each service as well as a prayer and prayer points for intercessions together with corresponding visuals.

Creative prayer ideas: worshipping through Lent is a related resource that has been created for individuals, families and groups to use, and centres around having a cross in and outside your home, and using it to incorporate simple but creative prompts for prayer and worship during Lent.

There’s a story behind them both…

The idea for the Lent liturgy all began in the Autumn when Geoff Hudd, a friend of the Sanctuary, approached us to see if we could answer a question. Did we know of any liturgy that anyone had written to perform a similar purpose to the advent ring, but for Lent? He was hoping to find something short, and linked to visual symbols, which could be used at the start of each Lenten service… we agreed to work on creating something as didn’t know of anything in existence.

But meanwhile, Geoff obtained a copy of the sort of liturgy he had in mind from a friend. It appeared to be old and attributed to Revd. F. Barrie Heafford BA.

Geoff revised this liturgy and sent it to us.

We liked the result so much that we asked if we could build on it further by introducing a couple more dates, and some related intercessions for each slot. He said yes and, with the help of St John’s Methodist Church in Amersham , we managed to find Barrie, who had been a minister there between 1986 and 1993. And he was happy to give permission for his symbols to be used in this way – true team work!

We’re really excited by the result, and pray that many of you will find this useful this Lent, or in the future.

And the individuals’ and families’ resource? Well for a number of years we’ve been putting large-ish crosses outside our homes on Good Friday, and then, on Easter morning, we’ve decorated them with flowers and left it there as a testimony to our belief in the resurrection for several days following. We’ve found it really helpful.

Barrie and Geoffs’ work on visual symbols, combined with some of our other prayer ideas, and our experiences with using crosses in this way during the Easter Week all came together to inspire this new resource – and we’re looking forward to using the fuller ideas ourselves this Lent.

It’s our hope that many people will be blessed by the experience of bringing a cross into their home to inspire worship and prayer during Lent, and that others in their community will be touched by them taking it outside as a testimony over the Easter Weekend.

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