During this Lenten season at Smithfield UCC, we are focusing on spiritual disciplines. Each Sunday, Senior Minister Doug Patterson is going to challenge the congregation to try a specific practice during the week. For instance, the first week’s focus is Silence, and the “homework assignment” is to spend three 20-minute periods in silence — not reading, not doing the dishes, just being still and listening for God’s voice. Meanwhile, during Pilgrim Adventures with the kids, I’ll be introducing the same practice the grown-ups are talking about upstairs, and I’ll give them a similar challenge (five minutes of silence seems like a lot when you’re only five years old!).
To kick this off, we’re having a special intergenerational workshop this Sunday morning, in place of our regular Smithfield School classes. I’m planning to begin with a quick trivia game to introduce some basic facts about Lent. Then, working in household groups, we’ll be making Lenten calendar banners to chart our progress in the six spiritual disciplines. Here’s how the banners work:
- Cut a long, narrow piece of white butcher paper, approximately 10.5″ x 43″. (If you have purple butcher paper, that would be even better; we just have a giant roll of white. Such a roll is an investment well worth making, by the way.)
- Print outlines of the letters “L-E-N-T” in a large font (I used Maiandra 250 pt) on dark purple paper. Cut out the letters and glue them to the top of the banner. (Dark purple paper can be hard to find … mine is from a ream of Astrobrights paper in assorted colors.)
- Cut six 4.5″ squares of the dark purple paper. Glue them beneath the lettering, leaving approximately 1 inch between each square.
- Glue a small envelope (3 5/8″ x 6 1/2″) below the dark purple squares, with the flap facing out. This will be the pocket to hold upcoming Sundays’ cards and the star stickers that will track your progress.
- Using light purple cardstock, create a 3″ square for each of the weeks of Lent. At the top of the square, print Sunday’s date; at the bottom of the square, print the spiritual practice for the week (e.g. “March 7 - Charity”). Leave space in the middle of the card. This would be much easier if you can find sheets of lavender cardstock; I couldn’t find any, so I had to wrestle with my printer until I got it to print on 3×5 index cards.
With colored pencils, fine-line markers, or other art supplies, illustrate each spiritual practice in the center of the card. I found some of them much easier to represent than others — fresh veggies for “Health” was pretty straightforward, but what to draw for “Silence”? (I settled on a snow-covered landscape, remembering the deep silences of Lake Sunapee in midwinter in my childhood.)- Apply Velcro tape hooks to the center of each dark purple square, and the matching loops to the center of each light purple square, so that you can mount each spiritual practice on the calendar when that week arrives. Place the cards in the envelope at the bottom of the banner.
- Add a sheet of multicolored star stickers to the envelope. Decide which color star will represent each member of the family.
- Bring the banner home and hang it in a place where you will see it often: on the fridge, on the back of the front door, etc.
- On each Sunday in Lent, gather as a family to remove the card with that day’s date; use the Velcro to attach it to the banner. As the week goes on, when you have completed your “assignment,” add your star sticker on that week’s square. Use the banner to chart your family’s progress as you experiment with spiritual disciplines, together with your church community!
Special thanks to Greg for his tremendous help with late-night brainstorming as we came up with this idea. I think these will be fun to make on Sunday, and, even more importantly, they will help our families make the connection between church and home during the season of Lent.
At Smithfield, kids borrow a worship activity bag each week from the ushers as they enter the sanctuary. At the start of last summer, I had the children decorate plain canvas bags with drawings of their favorite Bible story, using fabric markers. (Note: use smocks when working with fabric markers, and beware: they have an amazing ability to find their way onto kids’ Sunday clothes. Sigh.) I think that’s Zacchaeus in the tree in the bag at left.
I put two books in each bag, swapping them out for new titles each week. We don’t have a terrific library of kids’ books at Smithfield, although there are a few good ones here and there — mostly we have assorted mass-produced Bible story picture books like the ones at right. They’re not too offensive, but not very memorable either. I would love to make an investment in new, high-quality books on faith for kids, but I know our budget won’t allow for that this year. (Got suggestions for books we simply must buy? Share them in the comments!)
The next ingredient is a clipboard. The clipboard prevents hymnals and pew Bibles from being used as hard surfaces for writing, keeping errant crayon lines far away from them. Plus, kids think clipboards are fun for some reason. Beats me. They can be purchased for cheap in packs from office supply stores.
I tuck children’s worship bulletins (one for ages 3-6 and one for ages 7-12) into the clipboard. We download and print these from 
Underneath the children’s bulletins, kids find a coloring page that also matches the text of the day. (See 
Two sheets of construction paper also provide ample room for drawings, writing, and games of tic-tac-toe. I try to use two contrasting colors of paper, since as any child will tell you, some colors are simply better than others.
What to use for all this coloring? Well, a bag of crayons, of course! In a fit of organization, I separated our baskets of assorted crayons into Ziploc bags with one each of all the essential colors. After all, I well remember what it’s like to wind up with all orange and brown when what you really need is purple and black.
And for the piece de resistance, I enclose a simple craft kit or game — a different one each week. I spent about $50 at 
Because surely we can do better than this.