On Wednesday we will gather at the Table and in worship to mark the beginning of the Lenten season.  Ash Wednesday we call it.  I like this service and its somber and simple mood. I hope you will join us.

Among its lesser attributes, our Ash Wednesday service is an exercise in what the Evangelical Presbyterian Church calls liberty in the non-essentials.

Sixty years ago, no self-respecting church calling itself Presbyterian or evangelical would have thought of holding an Ash Wednesday service.  That was the stuff of papists and their too-close-for-comfort Episcopalian friends.  What was the Reformation about, anyway? Vatican II changed all that as we learned to be less suspicious of others in the holy catholic church. While eschewing any sense of penitence as righteousness-inducing work, many mainline Protestants and some Evangelicals, found Ash Wednesday observances and Lenten discipline to be spiritually helpful practices. Continue reading →