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You are here: Home / Archives for Devotionals

Devotionals

An Interview with The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows about our Lenten Family Resources

Adam Walker Cleaveland 3 Comments

Lenten devotions for families

In a few weeks, we will be launching our second series of Lenten devotions for families called An Illustrated Lent for Families. It will include devotions, coloring activities and more, for the weeks during Lent, leading up to Easter. We are really excited about this project but unfortunately can’t share much more than that for now. However, it will be very similar in form to our last Illustrated Lent for Families project.

A few months ago, I met The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows at an Episcopal event in Chicago. Baskerville-Burrows told me about how she had been worshipping at a church that handed out our Illustrated Lent for Families last year, and she was able to have a copy and use it with her son. It was so encouraging and energizing to hear just how excited she was about our Lenten devotions for families, we thought it was worth having her share a bit more here on our blog.

The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis. Good paper, pens, pencils and living the way of Jesus are among her obsessions which she is diligently passing on to her 5-year-old son. It’s an honor to have her guest blogging for us today, and I think you’ll be blessed by her comments and wisdom.


ICM: How important do you think faith formation at home is for children today?
JBB: I believe faith formation in the home has always been vitally important. Parents/families are the first teachers—not just for grade school academics but for all aspects of life, especially faith. The formation that takes place in the home is the foundation upon which faith formation in the church can be built.

ICM: Why do you think it’s difficult for parents to know where to start?
JBB: Though there are books out there—ones by the Rev. Anne Kitch come to mind, there aren’t many resources to help parents feel confident about igniting conversations about faith and religion in the home. Most of us were not raised with home spiritual practices beyond night prayers and table graces. Having age and faith appropriate entry points for engaging conversations about faith, teaching the stories of our scriptures, and making time to introduce new practices into jam-packed lives can be really daunting.

ICM: What resources from Illustrated Ministry have you found helpful at home?
Lenten Activity SheetJBB: I was overjoyed when St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Wilmette sent each child home from its Ash Wednesday service with “An Illustrated Lent”. I love colored pencils, fountain pens, and good paper and my kindergartner loves crayons so it was a match made in heaven. Once a week we would read the featured scripture verses, talk about the theme of the week, “serve, give” etc., and post it on the fridge. Then after dinner each night, or whenever the desire struck, we would spend time coloring the page of the week (we each had our own book). Now to be clear, my five-year-old and I were not having deep spiritual conversations but, as importantly, we were making time in the day to slow down, spend time together—sometimes talking, sometimes not—and every time we opened the fridge we’d ask how we were doing with our commitment to “serve, give, listen” that week.

St. Augustine’s also used the huge coloring posters that multiple people can color on the floor. We’ve used those on play dates as one of the house activities to settle the boys down from running around.  I believe the spiritual practices of slowing down, resting the mind and creating something of beauty is important faith formation work.

ICM: What made An Illustrated Lent for Families particularly helpful or accessible for you?
Lenten Coloring SheetJBB: The illustrations are beautifully drawn and invite—almost compel—one to get out the markers and spend time with it. The devotions that are assigned to each week are easily adapted for whatever age person is in the conversation. They don’t presume that you’ve been to seminary to engage the questions and they serve as prompts for how we are called to live as Jesus would have us live.

ICM: What do you think Illustrated Ministry is doing well?
JBB: Illustrated Ministry is making faith formation fun, beautiful and creative. I’m mindful that kids don’t spend a lot of time coloring in kindergarten anymore. It is wonderful to reclaim time for being artistic which frees the mind to be open to the Creator. Coloring and pondering are natural tendencies, I believe, and ICM uses those opportunities to enter what could be an intimidating conversation and reflection spaces. But those spaces become accessible because our hands are busy creating (co-creating) something beautiful.

To view our Lenten family resources, you can visit our store here.

An Illustrated Lent for Families

Adam Walker Cleaveland 7 Comments

Our new 2018 edition of An Illustrated Lent for Families is now available. You can download a sample and purchase it here.

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AnIllustratedLent

Many customers have been asking for details about An Illustrated Lent and I apologize for not getting that online for you sooner. It’s been a little crazy the past week as we’ve gotten off to a great start with our Lenten Coloring Poster pre-orders. Over the past week, we’ve received more than 236 orders! I can’t wait to see how all of you get creative with these posters and integrate them into your churches and families this Lenten season.

An Illustrated Lent is going to launch next Wednesday, January 27. Like we did for Advent, we are releasing two editions of An Illustrated Lent: a Church Edition and a Family Edition. Below I want to share with you what you can expect to find included in both of those editions.

A complete listing of our products for Lent is below – we hope they will help your community and family live into the season of Lent.

  • Lenten Coloring Posters – Vector Files Only
  • Lenten Coloring Posters – Physical Posters Only
  • Lenten Coloring Posters – Physical Posters & Virtual Files
  • Lenten Coloring Sheets – 8.5×11
  • An Illustrated Lent: Church Edition
  • An Illustrated Lent: Family Edition

An Illustrated Lent: Church Edition

Illustrated Children’s Moments: The core of the Church Edition is what Illustrated Ministry focused on back in the day (you know, because we’ve been around for so long): Illustrated Children’s Moments. For Lent, we’ll be including illustrations and leader guides for the five Sundays of Lent, for Palm Sunday and then for Easter as well. The Illustrated Children’s Moments will be based on the Gospel texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Lent.

These illustrations will come in a variety of different formats so that they are ready-to-print and use when you open them up. They also make really good bulletin covers as well as coloring sheets to print out for kids for during worship or Sunday School. An sample of the Illustrated Children’s Moment for the first Sunday of Lent can be seen below:

JesusInTheWilderness

Worship Activity Sheets: For Advent, we released our first Worship Activity Sheets. These are additional tools and resources you can use during Lent and Holy Week. They will include a variety of activities on them, including Complete-the-drawings, Word Searches and more coloring opportunities. Also – if you used An Illustrated Advent last month, if you could take 1 minute to fill out this survey about the Worship Activity Sheets? It really is just 3 very short questions.

Lenten Poster: We know many of you have bulletin boards, classrooms and nurseries that need decorating – and we’re also aware that most people don’t have a lot of time for things like that. Well, maybe we can help you out a little bit. This Lenten Poster will include themes, characters and drawings from throughout the resource, and you can share it on your bulletin boards or classrooms to help remind people about An Illustrated Lent, especially if you’re going to be encouraging families to get involved, and perhaps sending the Family Edition out to them electronically.

What are we missing? It’s probably a little late for any large additions to this resource – but if there is something that you would find super helpful, please let us know and we’ll see what’s doable for our team before the launch date of January 27.

An Illustrated Lent: Family Edition

Doing some Advent Family Devotions.
Doing some Advent Family Devotions.

Family Devotions: We heard some great feedback about our Family Devotions from An Illustrated Advent and so are glad to be able to include them in An Illustrated Lent. For An Illustrated Lent, the devotions are written by Rev. Erika Marksbury, senior pastor at the First Baptist Church of McMinnville, Oregon. There are devotions for 7 weeks, starting with the 1st Sunday of Lent.

We know how busy families are and so we wanted to provide you with a way to connect with the Lenten season, but do so in a way that could fit into your daily routines. Our devotions are meant to be done over a family dinner, or before bedtime. Each devotion is 1 page and includes a scripture, some questions (a few very accessible ones and some Going Deeper questions as well), a suggested activity/practice to focus on during the week, and a short prayer.

Each of the devotions has a theme word for the week – and these are based off the Narrative Lectionary readings for Lent, and connect with the Lenten Coloring Posters.

Weekly Refrigerator Sign: Also included are weekly signs that correspond to that week’s devotions. On the sign will be a space for the family to write in what they decide to try and work on during the week, based on the activity/practice from the week’s devotion. Then the sign can be placed somewhere visible in the home, so everyone remembers what they are working on.

An Illustrated Lent Lenten Coloring Poster
This poster design goes with the story of the woman anointing Jesus from Mark 14:3-9.

Lenten Coloring Sheets: Because the devotions connect with our Lenten Coloring Posters, we thought it would make sense to provide you with a smaller version of those coloring sheets, which you can use together with the devotions. These are meant to be printed out at 8.5×11 size and your kids will have fun coloring a different sheet each week.

You can also hang them up and watch the design come together over the course of Lent.. If you want something larger, or just want more flexibility, you can also always purchase the vector files here.

What are we missing? We still have some time, so if there is something else you think would be helpful for your family, please let us know and we’ll see what’s doable for our team before the launch date of January 27.

One More Thing

While the Lenten Coloring Posters are included in the Family Edition (in the 8.5×11 size) – we are going to be selling those a la carte as well starting January 27. We know not everyone may want or need to buy the Family Edition, so we wanted those smaller versions to be available to everyone.

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