Preparing to lead: Lent and Easter

‘Preparing to lead’ is a new initiative designed to make the task of leading worship and planning services that little bit easier!

Created by Stuart & Joseph Townend, each package is a complete ‘worship time’ of songs/hymns, prayers, readings and quotes around a specific theme; some will link specifically to the church calendar, while others will be on more general aspects of the Christian faith.

Some (but not all!) of the suggested songs will be Stuart’s own songs, with direct links to the lyrics, audio and sheet music. Others are readily available from other publishers’ websites.

We’ve started with a series of worship times for the seven Sundays in Lent, exploring the Lenten themes of temptation, confession, forgiveness, and community. The series culminates by reflecting on the death and resurrection of Christ.

Please use these resources as flexibly as you like - completely ‘off the shelf’, or as a starting place for your own bespoke combination of elements.

We hope that you will find ‘Preparing to lead’ both inspirational and practical. Please feed back to us how we could make this resource more useful to you.

Lent 1: Temptation, confession, vigilance, God’s promises

Themes

Lent is a time of preparation, waiting and penitence. Like all aspects of the Christian life, this time of the year hinges upon the death and resurrection of Christ. The five weeks of Lent leading up to Holy Week make for an appropriate time to reflect upon our own lives - our struggles, our goals, our prayers - in light of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

This first week, we are looking at the themes of temptation and confession. The reading concerns Christ’s time in the wilderness, and His steadfastness and faith in the most difficult of circumstances. The passage also, however, highlights Christ’s humanity, and therefore his knowability and relatability, as he struggled with very real, very human temptations. At the outset of Lent, it can be helpful to focus on Christ’s trials and temptations, so that Christ’s historical life on earth is the central inspiration for the time of preparation ahead.

The songs we have chosen for this Sunday explore Christ’s closeness to us in times of temptation, and his complete and immediate acceptance of us when we turn and repent our wrongdoings to Him. There are also elements in these songs of encouragement and challenge to the congregation, not to fight these battles on our own, but to choose to fix our eyes on the cross, to live in hope and to celebrate forgiveness, when our natural instinct might be to turn away from God and try and fix things on our own.

Reading

Luke 4:1-13 (a passage describing Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness)

God’s saints of old (Promise of the Ages)
From the breaking of the dawn (Every promise)
Great is thy faithfulness
Christ be with me

Communion song

Behold the Lamb (Communion hymn)

Closing prayer

God, thank you that you are with us always and that your love is not dependent on what we do. Thank you that we can turn to you today and know the fullness of your love. We pray you’ll guard our hearts when we desire to stray from you, and help us to be quick to confess when we put other things before you. Thank you for making forgiveness a reality and displaying your love on this earth; speak to us in the coming weeks and bring us into a deeper understanding of who you are and what you have done for us. Amen.

From Augustine’s Confessions

“In seeking for you I followed not the intelligence of the mind, by which you willed that I should surpass the beasts, but the mind of the flesh. But you were more inward than my most inward part and higher than the highest element within me.” (43)

Lent 2: Forgiveness, community

Themes

In this second week of Lent, we are exploring what it means to be forgiven by God, and consequently what forgiveness looks like in our own relationships and church communities. This is such an important area to consider communally, and Lent is a great time to reflect and deal with what is sometimes a very difficult and challenging subject.

The tradition of giving something up over Lent can be a hugely beneficial practice, but it’s important we don’t turn it into a time of discipline for the sake of discipline, or a season of self-improvement purely for our own sake. Are we giving up chocolate to help draw our sight towards God and as an act of spiritual discipline, or because we want to be a bit healthier and feel better about ourselves over a time that it is popularly considered a detox period? There is nothing wrong with the latter, but the former is surely what Lent is meant to be about. Forgiveness is perhaps the ultimate call to ‘give something up’; it is the process in which we are able, by the grace of God, to fully and lovingly ‘let go’ of the things which might be damaging our relationships - things done to us or things that have happened between us. This can be a long and difficult process, but the truth of Easter is that forgiveness is possible, not only for us as sinners but for us as those who have been sinned against by brothers and sisters.

The songs we have chosen for this Sunday revolve around the message that God welcomes everyone, no matter who you are or what you’ve done. They are also about how the Church, and all Christians, should welcome others universally, and take seriously the things that get in the way of our relationships, prayerfully bringing them before God and before each other wherever we possibly can. There are also moments in these songs which remind us of the bigger picture of forgiveness and community; harmony and love are possible for us because of who God is and what He has done for us. His historical work on the cross, which we traditionally celebrate at Easter, is also an unending, unlimited present work which is available to us and our human relationships today.

Reading

Ephesians 4: 31-32 (a passage on letting go of anger and bitterness, and forgiving those who have sinned against us)

Vagabonds
Oh how good it is
Amazing grace (with Chris Tomlin chorus)
I stand amazed (How marvellous, how wonderful)
When I survey

Communion song

Blessed Spirit of the King (Puritan prayer)

Closing prayer

God, help us to be a community of loving people. We pray you’ll be the centre of and inspiration for all of our relationships, inside and outside the Church. Help us to live in the reality of your love and forgiveness today by forgiving others who have hurt us. Help us to forgive ourselves, too, as we know in our hearts the power of your forgiveness over us. Amen.

From Augustine’s Confessions

“See how the human soul lies weak and prostrate when it is not yet attached to the solid rock of truth. The winds of gossip blow from the chests of people ventilating their opinions; so the soul is carried about and turned, twisted and twisted back again. The light is obscured from it by a cloud, the truth is not perceived. Yet look, it lies before us.” (66)

Lent 3 (Annunciation Sunday): God speaks, God calls us, God is with us

Themes

Wednesday 25th is the official calendar day for the Annunciation, so this Sunday is a great time to consider this incredible moment in the Bible. Mary, an unmarried female teenager, is visited by an angel and told that she will carry God himself inside her and deliver him into the world. This has to be the most dramatic and shocking message anyone has ever received! There are three things I think we can consider in our worship times off of the back of this story.

Firstly, God speaks. Before He arrived in flesh, He spoke to Mary and called her to a very specific mission. Are we expectant that God will speak to us? Do we give enough time to the practice of listening to His voice? When we read the Bible, are we doing it passively or are we doing it prayerfully, understanding that God’s word is indeed his word?

Secondly, God calls us. Mary literally carried Jesus in her womb for a time. Her reaction was one of amazing faith, humility and trust. As Christians we also have Christ dwelling inside of us; what is our response to this? Are we excited enough by this miracle? Do we have the same faith and trust that Mary did to go forth and live a life that explores the magnitude of the fact that God Himself lives in us and speaks and acts through us?

Thirdly, God is with us. When he calls us to something specific, in whatever sense that might be, he does so with the firm and unfailing promise that he is with us always. We should live, therefore, with an attitude of trust, expectancy and excitement. And on a more specific and related note, our communal worship should display these characteristics. Do we lead on a Sunday with an attitude of complacency or reserve? Or are we prayerfully expectant that God will use our time together to do some incredible things? The songs we have chosen for this Sunday speak about how God is faithfully close to us when we live a life that is committed to doing His will.

Reading

Luke 1: 26-38 (a passage describing the angel Gabriel’s message to Mary)

For the cause
Facing a task unfinished
Guide me O thou great Jehovah
Speak O Lord

Communion song

With every morning (Liturgy of the hours)

Closing prayer

God, thank you that the life of worship and service you call us to is so much greater and fulfilling than any lifeplan we devise for ourselves. We ask you to fill us with a spiritual peace and confidence to trust in your calling upon us. Help us to be more diligent listeners, seeking your voice daily and in every area of our lives. Thank you for the ultimate assurance that wherever we tread, whatever we do, and however faithful or not we have been in the past, your love and might will be with us always. Amen.

From Augustine’s Confessions

“When father and mother and nurses are not there, you are present. You have created us, you call us, you use human authorities set over us to do something for the health of our souls.” (167)

Lent 4: God’s love

Themes

Part of understanding the wonder of the events of Easter weekend is to understand the love that was shown to us individually through Christ’s life, death and resurrection. And part of Lent’s preparation is not only to confess, forgive and fast, but also to prepare our minds by dwelling on the wonder that God Himself is in love with us.

Traditionally, the time of Lent focuses on bodily and physical tasks or sacrifices which help to lift our mind’s eyes up towards God. These can be helpful and powerful practices. It is important, however, that we never view these disciplines as a way of earning or achieving greater standing with God. His love for us never changes, and no Lenten fasting or improved prayer life changes how he feels about us. In all of Lent’s waiting and penitence, perhaps the most crucial and spiritually mature thing to try and get to grips with is that these practices do not affect God’s love for us! We are free from trial and effort when it comes to our relationship with God. The other side of this, of course, is if you’re having a ‘bad Lent’ - maybe you didn’t even realise we are even in Lent! - then God loves you no less, thinks of you no less and your relationship with him is just as rich and healthy as anyone else’s.

It is also important to recognise that sometimes we are weary and in need of rest. This is true in Lent as well as any other season. Dragging our bodies to tiredness through fasting everyday, for example, may not be the most appropriate course of worship for you right now. That is OK. In today’s relentless world, feeding your mind with the truth of God’s love for you could well serve you better than going without food at work all day. God does not call us to spend Lent struggling mentally or spiritually for the sake of bodily sacrifice.

The songs for this week focus on how much we are loved and how free we are in Christ. They remind us that we are all welcomed into relationship with Him, no matter how well or how badly our Christian walk is going at the moment. It is essential that we spend some time in Lent communally reminding each other that we are loved, and that that love is not earned and cannot be lost.

Reading

Luke 15:11-32 (Parable of the prodigal son)

How good it is to sing
Come people of the risen king
Loved before the dawn of time
Forever reign
In Christ Alone

Communion song

With a prayer you fed the hungry (Love Incarnate)

Closing prayer

God, never let us forget that you are Love itself. Direct our vision towards this incredible and mysterious truth. We thank you that you love us for who we are, for who you made us to be, and not for what we’ve done or failed to do. I pray your love for us will be the inspiration for our week ahead, and bring us joy even in the midst of hardship and difficulty.

From Augustine’s Confessions

“So too let him rejoice and delight in finding you who are beyond discovery rather than fail to find you by supposing you to be discoverable.” (Augustine Conf. p8)

Lent 5: Waiting, anxiety, trust

Theme

We spend a lot of our lives waiting for things. And we sometimes find some time on a Sunday to wait on God and see what he wants to do or say to us in a service. Learning to see a period of waiting as valuable is so important if we want to live life to the full, whether that be five minutes in Church or a few decades in our private lives.

The longer you wait for something, the more you have to trust it will arrive; and the more you have to trust that the waiting process is happening for a reason, and that God might be teaching you things through the waiting that might otherwise pass you by. Further, living in a state of anxious waiting has the potential to remind us of God’s centrality in our lives. It often takes the prospect of losing something to remind us, albeit perhaps painfully, that God is indeed bigger than the thing or scenario we were waiting on and hoping for.

Waiting can help us not only to deepen our trust, but to heighten our listening and desire for God. Learning to see and partake in these gifts in the midst of waiting can be a life changing shift for a Christian. I think it’s important, especially during Lent, that the days we spend anticipating Easter are days of value, of learning and of growing. It might be helpful to consider how this reflects on our times of sung worship on a Sunday; the songs below are ones that focus on God’s unchanging faithfulness through our changeable and hidden futures. If we can enter into a place of worship, where we are seeking God’s peace in and through our worries and our waiting, without sidelining or diminishing them and yet without allowing them to become obstacles that rival God in size and importance, then I think we are in a healthy and expectant place.

Reading

Isaiah 40:3 (a passage about the strength gained by waiting on God)

Great is thy faithfulness
The sun comes up (10,000 reasons)
Out of the depths (I will wait for you)
The Lord’s my Shepherd (Psalm 23)

Communion song

The perfect wisdom of our God

Closing prayer

God, help us to see our times of waiting as opportunities to grow in our relationship with you. Thank you that you are with us in uncertainty, offering peace, joy and unchanging hope in all moments of our lives. Guard our hearts from trusting too heavily in earthly things, and help lift our vision to the eternal picture of who we are and what we have in you.

From Augustine’s Confessions

“You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (Augustine Confessions p3)

Lent 6 (Palm Sunday/Holy Week): Gethsemane, suffering, pain

Theme

The idea of worshipping in the midst of suffering and pain can be an incredibly difficult one. And yet, we are called to be worshippers all the time, in every area of our lives. This does not mean, however, that we try and sideline our pains and struggles when we come to sing together on a Sunday; in fact, the Bible seems to continually encourage us to bring those pains and emotions before God, in all their raw agony and confusion. God is not just the God of Sunday morning songs of adoration; He is also the God who cares enough about our individual pain that He became human and walked an even greater road of suffering than we do. He knows what we feel, not merely sympathetically as an omniscient stranger, but empathetically as the man who was despised, abandoned, brutalised, and unloved. The Psalms, and books like Ecclesiastes and Job, are full of people bringing their suffering and righteous anger to God, asking ‘why, God, are you letting this happen?’ This is an important and legitimate form of worship, and neglecting to do this will only serve to remove those areas of our lives and emotions from our relationship with God. This can all too easily become a dangerous habit.

Jesus wept when he learned that His friend Lazarus had died, even though he then immediately went to raise him from the dead! God doesn’t just say to us ‘you’ll get through this’; he says ‘I know how it feels’, and weeps alongside us. A resolution or a miraculous outcome further down the road does not lessen the integrity of current pain. It is important to remember this in our communal worship, and to sometimes give space for properly embracing and emotionally engaging our congregational voice with the realities of our everyday lives. Holy Week is a time to remember Christ’s pain and suffering in the garden of Gethsemane, but it’s also a time for us to bring our own pain and loss to God, asking God to ‘take this cup from us’, while also ultimately encouraging each other to say ‘yet not our will be done, but his’.

The songs for this Sunday incorporate the themes of Christ’s journey in Holy Week, our own promise from God that He is with us in our suffering and will ultimately deliver us from it, and the power of our Church communities to be there for each other in difficult times.

Reading

Matthew 26:36-56 (a passage describing Jesus in Gethsemane)

You have called us (May the peoples praise you)
Blessed be your name
Oh Church arise
How deep the Father’s love
There is a hope

Communion song

Kyrie Eleison

Closing prayer

God, you walked the road of pain far further than any of us ever will. You know us in our sadness, our anger and our frustration. Thank you for becoming like us and sacrificing everything just so we might know you. We pray for those of us in deep anguish and pain, and we ask that you will be with them in the depths of their experience. Thank you that you don’t offer us trite answers, but instead you give us your blood, your humanity, and your peace that is beyond all understanding. Be with us on our journey. Amen.

From Augustine’s Confessions

“But you, Lord, ruler of heaven and earth, turn to your own purposes the deep torrents. You order the turbulent flux of the centuries. Even from the fury of one soul you brought healing to another.” (Aug Conf p168)

Lent 7 (Good Friday): Christ’s crucifixion, forgiveness

Theme

One of the biggest challenges the worshipper can face is feeling far from God, despite knowing that he is close to us. We can sometimes turn on autopilot and pay lip service to him on a Sunday, while our hearts and minds are elsewhere, or perhaps even resentful. There is something valuable and special about singing truth even when we don’t feel like it; it can be the sacrifice we make that invites God to come and change our perspective.

But sometimes our lack of engagement in worship can stem from the fact that we are focusing on our experience of worship, rather than trying to lay that to one side to focus on our Father: who he is, what he is like and what he has done for us. Good Friday remembers the day that Christ broke the barrier between us and him, the day that God bought us perfect forgiveness and eternal life. Christ died so that we don’t have to approach him ritualistically, like believers in the Old Testament had to.

This means that we don’t have to get our hearts perfectly ‘right’ before coming to him; we come to him because he makes us right. It also means that we don’t need to try and conjure an experience in ourselves as we come to worship; as we come to sing about who he is and what he has done, he will speak to us and change our lives. It may be in dramatic or subtle ways. But what happened on Good Friday is so all-encompassing and life changing, in a very literal sense, that it changes the very fabric of everyday life. If we are happy or unhappy, satisfied or finding our desires distracting us, there is good news for us at the cross.

Perhaps instead of seeking a life-changing experience on a Sunday within the allotted worship time, sometimes we need to remember the ways he is changing our lives everyday through the cross. When we come ready to worship with this in our hearts and minds, we come humbly to the cross, with God as our focus (over an above ourselves and our worship experience). God can and does speak to us at any time and in any emotional state, but when we come to him with this kind of faith and humility, our hearts can be incredibly attentive to his voice.

Good Friday reminds us that the rich experiences to be found in communal worship are not ours to build, but they ours to receive, because Christ gave everything for us on the cross. This might be a good week to allow for more time at the communion table, perhaps giving some space to reflect on the song ‘Gethsemane’.

Reading

Isaiah 53:1-12 (a passage foretelling the death of Christ)

Song list

How shall I sing?
And can it be
Who, O Lord? (You alone can rescue)
O to see the dawn (The power of the cross)

Communion song

To see the King of heaven fall (Gethsemane)

Closing Prayer

God, thank you for becoming one of us and ultimately giving everything so that we might know your love forever. Thank you that you know our emotions, our challenges, our temptations to do things our way. Help us to remember the cross as the basis for our life. We thank you for your sacrifice and pray that you will continue to remind us of the depth of love you showed on that historic day, and continue to show in every moment of our lives. Amen.

From Augustine’s Confessions

“O Lord our God, under the covering of your wings (Exod. 19: 4) we set our hope. Protect us and bear us up. It is you who will carry us; you will bear us up from our infancy until old age (Isa. 46: 4). When you are our firm support, then it is firm indeed. But when our support rests on our own strength, it is infirmity. Our good is life with you forever, and because we turned away from that, we became twisted. Let us now return to you that we may not be overturned. Our good is life with you and suffers no deficiency (Ps. 101: 28); for you yourself are that good. We have no fear that there is no home to which we may return because we fell from it. During our absence our house suffers no ruin; it is your eternity.” (71)

Lent 8 (Easter Day): Resurrection and salvation

Theme

Resurrection and salvation

Easter Day is a day of celebration. Although the consequences of Easter span our whole lives (I’ve heard many people say how every day is Easter day!), it’s helpful to have a day dedicated to remembering it because it reminds us of the historicity of the event. Our faith is not built upon speculative theology and theories; it is built upon the historical footsteps of Christ on this very earth, his historical death and his historical resurrection. Having a calendar day especially dedicated to his resurrection helps us to remember that we are celebrating a real day in history on which death was defeated.

The songs we sing, therefore, need to celebrate both the everlasting and all-encompassing nature of Christ’s death and resurrection, while also drawing our attention to the fact that Christ lived, died and rose again as one of us, on this planet, at a set point in time. If Easter is allowed to become a vague idea of the celebration of freedom, then we might subtly begin to lower our understanding of who God is and the depth of love he showed, and continues to show, to us. Our Easter Day services should, of course, be fun, happy and celebratory, but we must also seriously embrace the magnitude of the day which we are remembering in awe, wonder and thanksgiving.

Reading

Colossians 1:13-14 (a traditional Easter passage on salvation and redemption)

See what a morning (Resurrection hymn)
Christ the Lord is risen today
I cast my mind to Calvary (O praise the name)
O to see the dawn (The power of the cross)
In Christ alone

Communion song

I will sing the wondrous story/From the squalor

Closing prayer

God, thank you for the life you bring us. Thank you that, as we remember that day in human history, your victory over death impacts every generation, and every area of our lives. Thank you that you’ve brought us life beyond the grave. Thank you that we are perfect and faultless children in your eyes because of your sacrifice. Help us to build our lives upon your life, death and resurrection, and to know that you are enough for us in every scenario we will ever face. Amen.

From Augustine’s Confessions

“But you, the Good, in need of no other good, are ever at rest since you yourself are your own rest. What man can enable the human mind to understand this? Which angel can interpret it to an angel? What angel can help a human being grasp it? Only you can be asked, only you can be begged, only on your door can we knock (Matt: 7: 7-8). Yes indeed, that is how it is received, how it is found, how the door is opened.” (304/5)

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Preparing to lead: Lent and Easter

‘Preparing to lead’ is a new initiative designed to make the task of leading worship and planning services that little bit easier!

Share this post:

Playing “How Deep The Father’s Love For Us” in alternate guitar tuning

Playing “All my days (Beautiful Saviour)” in alternate guitar tuning

Playing “In Christ Alone” in Alternate Guitar Tuning

‘Preparing to lead’ is a new initiative designed to make the task of leading worship and planning services that little bit easier!

Share this post:

Recent post from my blog

Playing “How Deep The Father’s Love For Us” in alternate guitar tuning

Playing “All my days (Beautiful Saviour)” in alternate guitar tuning

Playing “In Christ Alone” in Alternate Guitar Tuning