Last updated 28th February 2025

Lent and Easter 2025 resources page, including Bishop Philip's Lent Course

Introduction to our 2025 Lent Course

This year's Diocesan Lent Course, 'Hear our Prayer' - led by Bishop Philip - is now available on multiple channels.

Some of you will be using the Lent Devotional which is available in both printed format and on our Fruitful App. 

This course complements these and focuses on the prayer lives of five Old Testament figures. 

There are two parts to the Lent Course:

• The guidance notes. These can be accessed below. 
• The videos. There are five of these, each 15-20 minutes long. 

The videos and guidance notes are also available to view and download on our discipleship app, 'fruitful'. They can also be accessed via our Diocesan YouTube channel here. See more about 'fruitful' below. 

Please note. If you are delivering the course and need to download the videos in advance as part of your preparation (in case they need to be available locally offline) you can do so via a special download button on our fruitful app. 

If you want to know more about the technical side of accessing the Lent Course, please contact Sarah Marston (sarah.marston@blackburn.anglican.org)

Bishop Philip's new ‘Hear our Prayer’ course has five sessions. It examines the prayer lives of five Old Testament figures who prayed, how that relates to the prayer life of Jesus and by doing so, we can reflect on our own prayer lives. The sessions are:

• Personal Prayer (Hannah)
• Ambitious Prayer (Elijah)
• Hopeful Prayer (Ezekiel)
• Communal Prayer (Esther)
• Constant Prayer (Daniel)

If you are following this course as part of a group, there will be a chance for conversation and discussion. And most importantly, in each session, we will do some praying. For each session there will be:

• Opening time of prayer
• Listening to the Scriptures
• Video talk
• Discussion
• Prayer Exercise
• Closing prayer for Growth and Renewal

The course is designed to be reasonably simple for those who are leading it. It should require minimal preparation and can easily be led by a lay-person. It could last anything between an hour and 90 minutes, depending on how long you wish the discussion and prayer to flow.

Transcripts and guidance notes for Bishop Philip's Lent course ...

• Session One: Personal Prayer (Hannah): Transcript; Guidance Notes
• Session Two: Ambitious Prayer (Elijah): Transcript; Guidance Notes
• Session Three: Hopeful Prayer (Ezekiel): Transcript; Guidance Notes
• Session Four: Communal Prayer (Esther): Transcript; Guidance Notes
• Session Five: Constant Prayer (Daniel): Transcript; Guidance Notes; Rhythm of Prayer Printable Document; Rhythm of Prayer Digital Fill in Form (to download and email)

Bishop Philip's Lent course on our fruitful app

As well as the playlist on the Diocesan YouTube channel you can also download the videos to view offline from our own discipleship app, 'fruitful' and its linked website, fruitful.faith 

Fruitful is available to download from Apple’s App Store and Google Play and it provides support to people of all backgrounds and ages in our Diocese to grow in confidence in their faith through this new digital space. 

Once downloaded it's then available 24/7 for people to read the Bible; be inspired in prayer and encouraged to respond in worship in a variety of ways.

Bishop Philip's Easter message

The Bishop of Blackburn, Rt Rev. Philip North, will issue his annual Easter message in Easter Week. Look out for it! 

Visiting a church this Lent/Easter? There's 'A Church Near You'! 

You may feel like visiting a church in person, or participating in an online service at this time. 

You can find the nearest church to where you live by visiting The Church of England's 'A Church Near You' website and putting in the details of where you live. 

Hear our Prayer; Our Lent 2025 Devotional 

This year, our Lent Devotional booklet, will also be titled  ‘Hear our Prayer’ to match with Bishop Philip's Lent Course. More details to be found here: Seasonal Resources | The Diocese of Blackburn

The daily devotionals, along with Bishop Philip's five-week video-based Lent course (see above) is also featured on our Discipleship App; Fruitful: The Diocese of Blackburn.

If you have any questions, please get in touch at makingdisciples@blackburn.anglican.org

Church of England national Lent campaign; 'Watch and Pray'

The national church a new national Lent campaign - 'Living Hope' - for which many resources have been produced which are now available to parishes; with more to come. 

There are resources available for all ages. 

God invites us to bring to him our own journey through everyday life.

In the disappointment of daily setbacks and the pain of deeper hurts, we discover that God is present with us. And God promises a future where all things are healed and made new.  

Living Hope offers us the opportunity to deepen our hope in God and be part of what God is doing to bring hope in the world.

You can find everything available for download and engagement on this special page on the national Church of England website. 

And you can watch a special webinar taking you through all the resources in more detail here on YouTube. 

Resources from our Board of Education for children/young people

The Diocesan Board of Education has provided a whole range of Easter activities for children and young people.

• There are Easter Activity Sheets, two brilliant activity sheets for families to complete outside.
• There is also another resource: ‘Easter Explorers’. Easter Explorers is a guide taking you through the key dates of Holy Week with sessions created for use outdoors.
• Sensory stories are short stories broken up into seven to ten parts designed to engage the senses. Each section is matched with a sensory input to animate it.
• There is a Lent Cross Challenge ... a devotional following Jesus’ journey to the Cross, alongside cross themed prayer activities to download.

All these resources and more are available here now. 

40 ideas for children during Lent 

This lovely image with some wonderful ideas to share with and do with children.

It came from the United Benefice of Balderstone, Mellor and Samlesbury. 

Football-themed resources to share the Gospel at Easter 

Ambassadors Football has produced a free resource for any church to use this Easter.

Either in person or virtually you can send video links for a football coaching session, Bible time and drama all linked to the theme of Jesus’s Friends.

Click here to find more information about the camp resource.

Ronnie Semley, last updated February 2025