Lenten Collects

TODAY'S COLLECT

Wednesday, February 22nd

Dear God, giver of every perfect gift, who can do things greater than we can imagine and challenges us to redefine our treasure: We ask for courage to swim against the strong currents of pop culture, so that we may experience the liberating freedom of your kingdom. Amen.

A Collection of Collects

From All Saints

Education for Ministry (EFM)

A collect is a short liturgical prayer, typically once sentence long, that captures a certain theme or concept concerning our relationship to God. At least one collect can be found in every service in the Book of Common Prayer. A collect typically highlights one or more of God’s attributes and then asks for God’s help in living out our faith.

The collects in this year’s Lenten devotional book are the creative work of our two Education for Ministry (EfM) groups at All Saints, which are led by mentors Bryson Waldo, Stephanie Diethelm, and Conrad Ponder. EfM is a long-running and highly regarded program of theological education for lay persons that originated at the School of Theology of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. The heart of this four-year program of study are the weekly group meetings, during which participants gather for support, learning, and worship. The groups also engage in a process of theological reflection and then write a collect together that sums up the insights from that reflection in the form of a prayer. We are grateful to our All Saints EfM groups for sharing their work as an aid to our devotion to God this Lenten season.