Good friday & EASTER

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, ends on Holy Saturday. Our Lenten season of worship will conclude with Good Friday. All of the Lenten season is meant to prepare us for the celebration of Jesus' resurrection on Easter Sunday.


Good Friday: Seder Service | March 29th | 6pm
Seder: A Jewish home or community service including a ceremonial dinner held on the first or first and second evenings of the Passover in commemoration of the exodus from Egypt


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Easter Sunday Services | March 31st
8:15am | 9:45am | 11:15am
No Sunday School

Lent is a season in the church calendar set apart as a time of intentional preparation for Easter, typically marked by increased fasting, reflection, and giving to those in need. The season begins roughly forty days before Easter, and Holy Week is the seven-day period from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday.


The entire church year revolves around two celebratory cycles, one culminating in Christmas and one in Easter. As the Christmas cycle begins with the preparatory season of Advent, the Easter cycle begins with Lent. Advent helps us prepare to celebrate Jesus’ incarnation and to look forward to his Second Coming, while Lent prepares us to celebrate and commemorate Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.


While Sundays are typically understood to be a weekly day of celebration marked by worship and feasting, Lent is traditionally marked by fasting. This year, we are emphasizing a different weekly theme as we prepare our hearts and minds for Resurrection Sunday. The weekly emphases (you’ll hear more about them as they come) are Scripture, worship, service, prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. We will provide suggestions for both individuals and families. Take our resources and make them your own. Some of them you may totally cut out. Others may need to be adapted based on your situation.


May we prepare our hearts with diligence and gratitude this Lenten season to joyfully celebrate the empty tomb that changed the course of human history!


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Fasting & Penitence

When fasting, we train our bodies to resist its compulsive desires. We don't fast because food is bad, or because entertainment is never a good thing. Instead, we fast as a way of disciplining our minds and bodies to resist temptation, to discover new opportunities to turn to God in prayerful dependence, and to remind ourselves that we are not slaves to our sinful appetites (again, nothing against food!). As a church, we ask you to consider using the season of Lent to practice a fast of some sort: skipping a meal once a week, giving up sweets or caffeine for the whole season, or abstaining from social media or other forms of entertainment. 


Suggested weekly fast can be found here.


Our prayer is that fasting, prayer, and reading the Scriptures will allow us to enter a season of increased penitence. As our hearts are prepared to focus on the grace of Jesus' cross, we can joyfully pray that God will turn our hearts toward him in repentance. Notice how Isaiah thinks about his worshipful fasting in connection with his need to repent and live rightly:


Will the fast I choose be like this:
A day for a person to deny himself,
to bow his head like a reed,
and to spread out sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast
and a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 Isn’t this the fast I choose:
To break the chains of wickedness,
to untie the ropes of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free,
and to tear off every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
to bring the poor and homeless into your house,
to clothe the naked when you see him,
and not to ignore your own flesh and blood?[b]
8 Then your light will appear like the dawn,
and your recovery will come quickly.
Your righteousness will go before you,
and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard.

Isaiah 58:5–8 (CSB)


This Lent, let us look closely as the conditions of our hearts. Let us grow closer to God by giving up certainly worldly pleasures, and let us turn toward in him in repentance as we prepare to celebrate the central event of human history—the empty tomb!