If you begin on Ash Wednesday, your church can offer a seven-week Lenten series. If you already have a traditional Ash Wednesday service and a full Holy Week schedule, then a special five-week series is worth considering.

Who do you need to reach or teach? If very few of your employed adults are involved in Sunday morning education, try reaching them at other times and places. Perhaps a pre-work breakfast series will interest them, or if your church is downtown or near a workforce that can spend its lunch hour elsewhere, a weekday lunch might work. Evening midweek services or programs that once were commonplace may be timely again. The point is that during the Lenten season, many people are open to experiencing an inspirational activity at a different time of the day and week. Who do you need to reach?

Consider a lunchtime series: a simple and inexpensive menu with one or two choices could be ready to be served five minutes before the noon starting time.

Table tents with blessings set the mood as people gather and begin to eat. Appropriate background music will help fill the room for those first to arrive.

Is twenty minutes a lot of time? It’s not if you are doing a group process that encourages small group discussion and feedback. However, consider how much can be communicated in a fifteen-minute sermon on Sunday; better yet, consider a thirty-minute television program. For fun, time the length of the actual program and count the number of commercials. This exercise demonstrates how much good news can be shared and scriptural content presented, and how great the opportunity is to challenge people to grow in faith and to express that faith in daily actions in the workplace.

Your content can be drawn from a wide variety of resources. Look in the 2004–2005 Resource Catalog (#079934) from Congregational Ministries. Two sample resources to explore are:

The Kerygma Program—
God Calls Leaders: Great Themes of the Bible Series by James A. Walther (Item #1882236580 and Item #1882236599; p. 37) or Shalom: A Study of the Biblical Concept of Peace ( Item #1882236122; p. 39)

We Believe
Young Adult Curriculum: Real Faith, Real Life Bible Study Series; The Matrix and the Gospel (#621600), or Beyond the Outer Limits (#622600). You will find more information about both on page 12 of the catalog.

Remember, the final decision about the content of the series should be made with potential participants in mind.

What better time is there than during the Lenten journey toward new life in the resurrection to start a new series, a new tradition, and a new way to take the Living Word into today’s marketplace?

Share your new traditions with others. Write to “Idea Exchange,” Scott A. Dowd, editor, 100 Witherspoon St., Rm. 1416, Louisville KY 40202-1396. To order any of the resources mentioned call (800) 524-2616.