What Is Our Tomorrow? is a journey through Lent that mirrors the moment we’re in: accessible, asynchronous, and made by showing up.
I’m experimenting with The Lenten Program this year.
The Lenten Program. A stalwart of the late-20th and early 21st Century, many Christians mark the season by gathering weekly for fellowship, food, and study.
The programs I grew up with were labor-intensive, predictable, and varied only in subject year-to-year. But they always required us to be in-person: often at times that encumbered working parents.
Expectations for bringing food for a pot luck increased the burden on time-strapped participants.
And even the least elaborate programs can become solitary affairs for the leaders who produce them.
I love the Lenten program. I always have. However, it seems to be an idea that only works for Program Churches. And one that ignores the present moment.
What I’m doing different this time.
Yes, I’m building the bridge while driving over it. But it is precisely our addiction to (over-) planning and (over-) preparing to manufacture experiences for an evolving and changing church that prevents us from meeting the moment.
In other words, I think we need to be more spontaneous and welcome it when we see it.
- So we’re reading a book together: We Shall Be Changed: Questions for the Post-Pandemic Church.
- And we’re reflecting on it. On our own time.
- I’m offering short videos to be watched when we can.
- And incorporating the material in the weekly sermon.
But figuring out the gathering—that’s actually the work we’re all called to do!
The point isn’t to start with manufacturing a gathering most of us can’t easily get to. Or to gather in a way that gets people worrying about what food to bring. It is to start at the learning. And one of the things we all have to learn to do is make Christian community where we are at.
It isn’t too late to join me. Order the book if you can. Watch the videos and reflect on the questions. Then ask new ones. Talk to friends online, over the phone, and in-person. Bring up the ideas with neighbors and invite them to think about what needs to come along with us into the future.
Regardless of what we want, that is still the work.