Book of Faith and Lent

[Chad King]

Looking ahead to the upcoming Lenten season, is anyone doing anything special with a Book of Faith focus to encourage growth of biblical literacy and fluency during that time?

[Tracy Bieger]

We are ordering some copies of the Book of Faith 40-day Lenten Journey. There are devotional readings that connect with scripture, and are based on the 7 petitions of the Lord's Prayer.

[Tim Delkeskamp]

We are looking to go through the 40 Day Lenten Journey as a congregation. Does anybody know of a small group resource for this book? The idea would be that people could individually go through the book book but then they need a weekly small group to process the experience. I have not seen the book yet- so maybe there are small group question in the book.

[Anne Cox]

I wrote an article for our parish newsletter to urge others to join me in reading the Book of Faith: 40-Day Lenten Journey book over the season of Lent. Have you guys read the sample pages at the Augsburg-Fortress site? Quite impressive! In the same article I mentioned the Lutheran Study Bible coming our March 1, 2009.

[John Welch]

We will probably run with the BoF Lenten, after Starting BoF.

One question..or request to BoF Central: can you all describe more clearly the differences among the versions of each BoF support-tool. For instance, do we want one, two, or ten BoF "leader" versions of any item? What is the real difference, in content, between a "leader's" book and a "follower's" book?

[Kristina Patten]

Hi John,

I think I can help you with this one. For most groups, one leader guide should be enough. Of course if you have more than one leader, or a larger group, you may want to use more than one. Leader guides for Book of Faith studies are designed to help Bible study and small group teachers. They have ideas for discussions, help with planning a study group meeting, ideas for engaging different learning styles, reproducible handouts, ways to connect the group study to worship, and more. A learner book is designed for those participating. It is a book you can take home and use between study groups to reflect and journal and keep to refer back to as you engage in further study.

Also, the Lenten Journey includes tips on using it in a small group. Having your whole congregation participate is a great idea. I'm attaching a section from the book on keeping a journal and ideas for using the book with others.

[Sara Jensen]

Is anyone thinking of using the Lenten journey worship helps on the Lord's Prayer for Sunday worship during Lent? It would have to be adapted somehow since there are seven sessions and only 5 Sundays, excluding Palm Sunday. I'm trying to figure out how I want to use this resource. I'm also considering "How Lutherans interpret the Bible" video series from SELECT. It features Mark Allan Powell and gives some background on Bible interpretation. The video also comes with worship helps. Ideas?

[Tim Delkeskamp]

Our Church will be doing this as a congregation. We will be doing a Lord's Prayer sermon series on the Sundays in Lent. We will be using the worship helps- March 1st will be the first Sunday and we will starting with worship helps #2. We are also a CC group congregation and so people are going to be in small groups every week reflecting on thier daily devotions. We have developed a small group curriculum for our groups and are happy to share it. Please note that many of the questions in the group curriculum were taken from New Testament Lesson Maker.

[Sara Jensen]

What is a "CC Group"?

[Tim Delkeskamp]

Good Point. A "CC" group is a Christ Care small group. So basically it is a small group of about 12 people. ChristCare is simply a system of organizing small group ministry developed by The Stephen Ministry company.

Sara Jensen said:

What is a "CC Group"?

[Steve Laufman]

Anyone have any tips on getting my congregation fired up about the 40-day Lenten Journey? I approached the church council about trying to do it as a congregation and received a somewhat cool response.

[Chad King]

Hi Steve - I have a few questions to dig a bit further in on this that might help others in generating some ideas.

• Do you have a sense as to why they might be resistant to the idea?
• Is the idea of using a daily devotional resource daunting or unfamiliar to those on the council?
• Based on the Lenten heritage in your local context, what expectations for Lent do they already have?
• Have there been especially successful (or unsuccessful) initaitives or programs that might be infuencing their response to the idea?
• If you were to use this resource as a congregation, how do you envision (and hope!) it could positively impact the congregation?

[Steve Laufman]

I don't know that I would say they are resistant, but they weren't excited either.

We traditionally have services on Wed. nights during Lent. Recently, we have been joining together with other congregations of all denominations in the area for community-wide services. We rotate from church to church and we usually have a community meal before the service. This has been pretty popular, so perhaps there is reluctance to disrupt that.

My suggestion to the council was to commit to the Lenten Journey and have the Wed. evening worship be supporting of the effort, if not directly a part of it. I also suggested that we could use Sunday worship, if Wednesdays were too difficult to make work.

We are a small rural congregation and are currently without a full time pastor. We are in the process of trying to establish a two-point relationship with a neighboring congregation. With that situation in a state of flux, I think the problem is really one of committing to the 40 day program while everything else may be changing. It could also be concern over our lack of a full time pastor and trying to get lay leadership involved to lead the effort.

We have had an adult Sunday School with an interim minister and the attendance has not been very goodl.

I would hope that by using this resource together as a congregation, it would make us all more engaged. More engaged with scripture, more engaged with each other and more engaged in our efforts at making our community a better place to live. In a word, I am hoping this will energize us.