Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost

All of the Scottish liturgies authorised, including by the College of Bishops for experimental use, can be found on the SEC website. Specific resources for Lent include: Services and Ceremonies for Ash Wednesday and Holy Week 1967; Services for Lent, Holy Week and Easter 2024; Seasonal Material for use with Scottish Liturgy 1982; and Revised Collects for Experimental Use.

• Pray As You Go.
• Lectio365 and 24-7 Prayer.
• Ignatian Spirituality Centre, Glasgow.
• Stewardship’s 40 Acts.
• Sanctuary First.
• CAFOD.
• Biola University’s Center for Christianity, Culture, and the Arts.

The ministry team at St James-the-Less, Leith, have produced a 6-session lent course for 2026 entitled The Gospel of the Wild Messiah. The session themes are outlined below; if you would like a copy, please contact the DMMC Team.

• Intro to the Wild Messiah Course. 
• Tearing Open Ceilings to let Mercy in (The Paraplegic)
• Attentive to Inconvenient Cries (Blind Bartimeus)
• Touching the Untouchable & Inviting the Forgotten Home (Haemorrhaging Woman)
• Naming the Silenced, Holding the Haunted (Legion)
• Let us be: Wounded, Wild & Faithful

Themed Lent resources of various kinds from other providers are:

• Contextual Theologies: SEI.
• Act on Poverty: Christian Aid.
• Creation-care: Eco-Congregation Scotland.
• Creation-care: Green Christian.
• Ecumenical: Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.
• Fight against modern slavery: The Clewer Initiative.
• Stewardship: 40 Acts.
• Whole-life Health: Living Compass.
• Lent Action Calendar: Mother’s Union.
• Come Follow Me!: Sanctuary First.

• The Desert and The Garden: Art and reflections from Sarah Lea West.
• Praying in Color sheets offer people of every age a way to engage creatively in prayer each day.
• The wide-ranging artistic resources on Art and Theology are always very engaging.

You may also want to be more creative in the church space to aid reflection throughout Lent. St James-the-Less, Leith, always curate their space to reflect the season, whilst St Ninian’s, Comely Bank, invited congregants to add to their wilderness over the season.

• ROOTS provides intergenerational and children-specific resources based on the Lectionary. Get subsidised digital membership for £20 via the DMMC Team.
• Spill The Beans—a Scottish-flavoured set of worship and all-age resources—has a focus on Luke’s Gospel for 2026. There are resources from previous Lents to explore, for £12 per set.
• Worship Words provide creative ideas for Sunday worship.
• Muddy Church offers lots of ways to explore the themes of Lent—and so many more—both indoors and outside. Most of the resources can be downloaded free, or with a donation.
• Sun Hats and Wellie Boots has a range of engaging activities, particularly suitable for children and families.
• BRF’s Parenting for Faith offers ideas for families to engage with Lent through in weekly themes.

Mothering Sunday (Lent 4) can feel tricky to pitch well. The Mother’s Union offers an outline of a service, with prayers, readings, and a reflection. Worship Words offers reflections on being sensitive and inclusive alongside liturgical resources, plus a complete ‘Cafe Church‘ style service.

All of the Scottish liturgies authorised, including by the College of Bishops for experimental use, can be found on the SEC website. Specific resources for Holy Week include: Services and Ceremonies for Ash Wednesday and Holy Week 1967; Services for Lent, Holy Week and Easter 2024; Seasonal Material for use with Scottish Liturgy 1982; and Revised Collects for Experimental Use.

• ROOTS provides intergenerational and children-specific resources. Get subsidised digital membership for £20 via the DMMC Team.
• Spill The Beans—a Scottish-flavoured set of worship and all-age resources—has a focus on Luke’s Gospel for 2026. There are resources from previous Holy Weeks to explore, for £12 per set.
• Worship Words provide creative ideas for worship and reflection throughout Holy Week.

The use of “Christian Seders” during Holy Week is strongly discouraged. Historically, the way Passover/Pesach was celebrated during the lifetime of Jesus is very different from the current Jewish practices. Jesus would not recognise a modern Seder meal. Theologically, replacing deeply symbolic Jewish practices with Christian meaning perpetuates replacement theology / supersessionism, which has been the basis for much anti-Judaism.

For more information, please see this 2023 document from the Council for Christians and Jews: “Why ‘Christian Seders’ are not a good idea: A brief explainer” and this 2023 webinar: “Should Christians Celebrate Passover?”

Stations of the Cross can be used at any time during Lent and/or Holy Week. The traditional version includes non-Scriptural events: here are some examples from the Episcopal Book of Occasional Services (p.53); Episcopal Church ‘For Global Justice and Reconciliation‘; Diocese of Ossory ‘Stations of the Cross for Our Times‘; and Missio. There is also this resource for families/at home.

The Way of the Cross uses Scriptural references only. Examples are from US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Episcopal Book of Occasional Services (p.71). Artwork by Rev Ally Barrett.

Tenebrae service on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Here are resources from Roots, United Methodist Church, and Episcopal Book of Occasional Services (p.89).

During the Maundy Thursday service, if washing of feet feels too much, try washing hands. The use of wet-wipes in a nursing home was particularly well received.

All of the Scottish liturgies authorised, including by the College of Bishops for experimental use, can be found on the SEC website. The Services for Lent, Holy Week and Easter, authorised for use at the General Synod 2024, include liturgy for Ascension and Pentecost.

• Easter Rocks: in 2025, St James’ Goldenacre encouraged children from the nursery that uses their premises, plus members of their congregation, to paint rocks along the themes of joy, peace, love, beauty and faith. With the rocks they then created a trail that went around the church grounds and into the hall. On Holy Saturday the trail was opened to the public. Reflection stations were set up, one for each of the themes, with a linked activity.
• Muddy Church offers guidance for producing Barefoot Easter Stations and an Easter Garden.
• Sun Hats and Wellie Boots have instructions on making an Easter Resurrection Garden and an Easter Garden in an Egg.
• Graves to Gardens, created by Prayer Collective Christchurch (New Zealand), is a free three-day virtual-to-actual experience that helps a group celebrate Easter together with shared practices on Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday. It’s worth exploring for ideas and inspiration, even if you can’t commit to the whole three-day project.

• Easter Resurrection Rolls for Kids to Make
• Easter Nature Frame
• Pebble Easter Eggs

• Engage Worship offers a number of Easter dramas, including ‘Easter Day Drama’ and ‘Easter Dramas’, ‘The Domestic’: Emmaus Re-told, ‘Fresh Start’: The reinstating of Peter

• ROOTS provides intergenerational and children-specific resources based on the Lectionary. You can see some of their Easter resources here. Get subsidised digital membership for £20 via the DMMC Team.
• Worship Words provides creative ideas for Easter.
• RaiseUpFaith has an Easter Curriculum for Kids, new for 2026.
• Illustrated Ministry has lots of arty Easter resources.
• The Bible Society has Easter resources for children and adults for 2026, and on the same page you can access Easter resources from previous years.
• BRF has an Easter Story Multipack for Families, which includes readings, questions, activities and prayers for families to share. Its Easter Inside Out book explores the Easter story through a varied cast of characters.
• Messy Easter includes three complete sessions for Lent, Holy Week and Easter, plus creative prayers, games, food crafts, and ideas for organising an Easter trail.
• Sun Hats and Wellie Boots has 28 Creative Ideas to Explore the Easter Story, 16 Free Printables for Kids, and a Cracking Easter Activity Pack.

• To illustrate the resurrection: plant some bulbs in your church garden or in pots in your grounds. Their dying back and re-emergence every year will be a good illustration of the resurrection inherent in the cycles of nature. You can do this with other plants too, such as a hosta.
• Create a flower cross: Find two large sticks of at least two inches in diameter, and strap them together in a cross shape. You may need to trim the sticks to do this. You could use the bare cross in your Holy Week services, or have it displayed. For Easter Sunday, ask your congregation to bring spring flowers to decorate the cross. Before the service, loop elastic bands tightly along the cross from top to bottom and left to right. Then during the service you can invite everyone to decorate the cross with their flowers.

• The Bible Society offers a set of resources for Easter to Pentecost: The In-Between Time.
• Mark Bradford’s Encountering the Risen Christ has seven chapters that can be used across the seven weeks from Easter to Pentecost in individual reflection or group study.

• To illustrate the celebratory nature of the Easter season: change the usual refreshments after a service to feel more like treats – one church in the diocese offers cake and alcohol-free fizz during the Easter season, rather than the usual tea and biscuits.
• Breakfast on the beach: Recreate Jesus’s visit to his disciples on the beach after the resurrection by holding an early morning breakfast event, with the food cooked by the priest!

All of the Scottish liturgies authorised, including by the College of Bishops for experimental use, can be found on the SEC website. The Services for Lent, Holy Week and Easter, authorised for use at the General Synod 2024, include liturgy for Ascension and Pentecost.

• Muddy Church have a six-part Pentecost trail.
• Happy birthday! How about holding a party to celebrate the birth of the church, with balloons, streamers, hats and a cake?
• Gather round a fire. Put a firepit in the church grounds and encourage people to gather round it to look at the fire – the way it moves, burns, and warms those around it. An alternative would be to encourage everyone to light a candle and study the flame.

• ROOTS provides intergenerational and children-specific resources based on the Lectionary. Get subsidised digital membership for £20 via the DMMC Team.
• Worship Words provides creative ideas for Pentecost.
• Engage Worship offers Pentecost and Ascension worship ideas, videos including a visual reading of Acts 2 and a video to inspire prayer based on the hymn ‘O Breath of Life’, and ideas to include different languages in your Pentecost celebration.
• Illustrated Ministry has lots of arty Pentecost resources.
• Sanctuary First offers two videos: Painting for Pentecost and a Pentecost Prayer in French (with English subtitles).