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Lent and Easter at Fourth Church
Easter Sunday Worship
Daily Lenten Devotions
Weekly “Rhythm and Word” videos
One Great Hour of Sharing
Ash Wednesday
Palm/Passion Sunday
Maundy Thursday
Good Friday
In 2022 Fourth Church offered four worship opportunities on Easter Sunday (the schedule for Easter 2023 has not yet been announced):
6:30 a.m. | Easter Sunrise Service
at Oak Street Beach with Communion
9:00 a.m. | Easter Service in the Sanctuary
11:00 a.m. | Easter Service in the Sanctuary
4:00 p.m. | Easter Jazz Service
in Buchanan Chapel with Communion
A resource for meditation and prayer, our daily Lenten devotions include reflections written by Fourth Church members and staff. Devotions are available in a variety of ways:
Also available for your reflection during the Lenten season is our “Rhythm and Word” video series. These 15-minute worship experiences, which weave together scripture, prayer, and music, are released on our YouTube channel on Wednesdays at 6:00 p.m.
To receive notification when new videos are released, subscribe to our YouTube channel, or sign up at www.bit.ly/rhythmandwordemail to receive the videos by email.
Each year throughout Lent and on Easter we receive the One Great Hour of Sharing Offering. Your gifts to the One Great Hour of Sharing Offering touch the lives of those in need, respond to injustice, provide shelter, and feed the hungry, both here in our city and around the world.
Your gifts support
You can designate a gift to a “One Great Hour of Sharing” when making a gift online.
To begin our Lenten journey, we gather for worship on Ash Wednesday. The services include Communion and the opportunity to receive the imposition of ashes.
We also offer “Ashes on the Way,” making the imposition of ashes available outside the Sanctuary throughout the day on Ash Wednesday. This is offered for those in our community who are unable to be with us for worship but who find the ashes to be a meaningful way to mark the beginning of this season of repentance and reflection.
One of Fourth Church’s most beloved traditions takes place during morning worship on this Sunday: the Palm/Passion Sunday processional of children entering the Sanctuary waving palms.
On this first day of Holy Week—the most important week on the Christian calendar—we celebrate with palms and loud hosannas Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. But the tone quickly changes, as shouts of “Hosanna!” give way to the cries of “Crucify him!” and we remember where this journey leads: to the cross of Good Friday.
Maundy Thursday receives its name from the Latin mandatum novum do vobis, “A new commandment I give you.” This new commandment, given by Jesus on the night he washed the disciples’ feet, was “to love one another just as I have loved you.” It is his example of—and our call to—love and service that we remember on Maundy Thursday.
It is also the day we commemorate the Last Supper.
On Maundy Thursday our evening service follows the ancient Office of Tenebrae (from the Latin for “shadows”). The service portrays the progression from light to darkness in the passion of Jesus, beginning with his abandonment on Thursday and concluding with his crucifixion. The service ends with the Sanctuary in complete darkness.
On this most solemn day of the church year, we gather for two Good Friday worship opportunities: a noonday service and an evening service.
The evening service includes a major choral work sung by the Morning Choir. Then, as we extinguish the flickering Christ candle and enter the solemn observance of the weekend, the bells toll thirty-three times, once for each year of Jesus’ life on earth.
Each year we are invited to recognize those who are special in our life by making contributions toward the purchase of Easter flowers, wreaths, and garland to decorate the Sanctuary and Buchanan Chapel. The names of those honored or remembered by the gifts are printed in the Easter bulletin. Further information is posted here every year a few weeks before Easter.
