Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

Tomorrow we’ll host our first ever Ash Wednesday service at Extraordinary Ventures in Chapel Hill at 5:30pm.  Ash Wednesday kicks off the Lenten Season culminating in Holy Week and Easter.ASH WEDNESDAYAsh Wednesday offers a really startling reset.  Its startling because it hits us between the eyes.  Our mortality, or sin, or limits.  This is a chance to stop and be still.  A time to pause and reflect.  A time to repent where we need to, stop running and hiding, and turn back to  a relationship with God.  And a time to be refreshed, to feel the burdens lifted.  To feel all the pressure that we put on ourselves in our sin to be god, gone.

Excerpt from the Worship Sourcebook:

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. By the fourth century the Western church determined that the Lenten period of fasting and renewal should correspond to Christ’s forty-day fast (Matt. 4:2), and, by counting forty days back from Easter (excluding Sundays, which remain “Feast” and Resurrection Celebration days), arrived at the Wednesday seven weeks before Easter. At one time Lent was primarily viewed as a period during which converts prepared for baptism on Easter Sunday, but later the season became a general time of penitence and renewal for all Christians. Thus Ash Wednesday became the day that marked the beginning of the Lenten renewal.
The aim of Ash Wednesday worship is threefold:
-to meditate on our mortality, sinfulness, and need of a savior; 
-to renew our commitment to daily repentance in the Lenten season and in all of life; 
-and to remember with confidence and gratitude that Christ has conquered death and sin. 
Ash Wednesday worship, then, is filled with gospel truth. It is a witness to the power and beauty of our union with Christ and to the daily dying and rising with Christ that this entails.
Make sure you get a FREE copy of the “Less is More” devotional to help you journey through Lent.  Available at the service:
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Sing ahead.  Here are some of the songs we’ll sing together: