As a working clergyman I have more than once scoured the internet for a book divided into forty short sections, covering a topic consonant with a penitential season, with food for self-examination and stimulus to seek deeper faith. Ideally I start hunting in November. Sometimes it’s as late as February.
I have tried to write, among other things, the book I hope to find.
If you have come to A Season of Silence because you need to set up a Lent course or something similar, I hope it works for you and those among whom you live and minister.
You can use it in lots of different ways – it’s your book, after all. If you find interesting and creative uses please let me know so I can share. But if you would like a starter, here’s a simple outline for using the book as a course with a small group, here it is. This is set out as a Lent course but you can adapt it for other times of the year.
I give a lot of detail in case someone is coming to leading a group like this completely fresh. Those with experience will have their own ideas and can ignore much or all of what follows. In the rest of this section you will find
Some suggestions about how to set up the group and what to do before you start.
An outline and some tips on how to run the group each week.
Six prompt sheets to help you stimulate discussion based loosely around the chapters you will probably have read by the time you meet:
- Week 1 (chapters 1-6)
- Week 2 (chapters 7-12)
- Week 3 (chapters 13-18)
- Week 4 (chapters 19-24)
- Week 5 (chapters 25-30)
- Week 6 (chapters 31-36)
Group prayer – some different forms in which you could conclude your evening, running from the more to the less formal:
Season of Silence 