Don't Give Up in Lent: take the Challenge instead, says Bishop of St Albans
The Bishop of St Albans, The Rt Revd Alan Smith, says that the way Lent is observed is changing and he is encouraging this with a new project of his own – Challenge, which starts tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.
Challenge sends participants a daily email or text during Lent containing some words of Jesus. Participants are asked to ‘Read it, learn it, pray it, do it’ in order to make a difference to another person, to their community or to the world at large.
Thirteen hundred people have already signed up online to do this, a week before lent begins, with nearly four hundred joining in the last few days. The project has been promoted primarily to the Church of England in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, but the beauty of being online is that anyone can do it.
Already, a gap-year student going to New Zealand will be able to keep in touch with something his own church in Wheathampstead, Herts, is doing while he is away.
Another student is going up the Amazon and is doing Challenge by text - until she loses her mobile signal, anyway.
Prisoners at The Mount Prison in Hemel Hempstead have also signed up to the Challenge and will receive the verses on laminated cards from the chaplain the Revd Phil Abrey. He will run a group each Wednesday to discuss what the prisoners have learnt. He said: “What attracted me was the simplicity of the Challenge and 17 men so far have asked for the material.”
The Bishop of St Albans, said:
“Giving something up for Lent is still widespread in our culture, usually chocolate or alcohol or maybe for the more eccentric, something like shoes. But it’s easy to question what that’s for. It works better for some if they take something up, either instead of or as well as giving something up and I think people are already discovering that for themselves. I am encouraging them.”
“There’s nothing especially spiritual in itself about giving something up for its own sake although in a materialistic society it might be thought provoking. In these more austere times, many people have given up a lot already. I’m asking people to take up something this Lent that makes a difference to others by taking up my Challenge.”
“Challenge is a chance to discover that the words of Jesus are transformative and as radical now as when they were spoken.
“It is based on the idea that although the Bible is the best selling book in the world, there are far too many Bibles unopened on bookshelves. Well, I’ve taken the words of Jesus out and brought people face to face with them, without anyone telling them what they mean, to let them encounter them at first hand.”
People might be moved to do some small act of kindness like mowing the lawn for an elderly person next door when you do yours (ask first!) or refraining from joining in the character assassination of an unpopular person at work in response to Jesus words about loving others as he has loved us.
People have the chance to tell others what they were moved to do on our interactive website www.challenge2010.org
A test verse posted la week ahead of Ash Wendesday immediately drew several comments and a video.
