Engaging Lenten Family Devotions and Lenten Coloring Pages

We are excited to announce the launch of our newest family Lenten devotional resource: An Illustrated Lent for Families (2018 edition)!

This is our third year of providing families with a resource for faith formation at home during the Lenten season. Our Illustrated Lent for Families and Illustrated Advent for Families have been used by thousands of families around the world. We are excited to share with you this new edition for 2018.

It can be challenging to find meaningful ways to engage your family in faith formation.  It can even feel awkward at times. We don’t always know what to do, and sometimes we have a difficult time finding the words to share our faith.

An Illustrated Lent for Families is one way to do that – to slow down, ask questions, have fun, be intentional about how you spend your time, and try new things. There are coloring pages for your children, but we’ve often found that parents enjoy coloring them as much (if not more…) as their children enjoy the coloring. And there are devotions for you to do with your family – no matter the ages of your children.

Keep reading to learn a bit more this year’s edition, and to hear testimonials from people who have used previous editions of An Illustrated Lent for Families.

Family Lenten Devotions

This year’s Lenten devotions are based on the Gospel passages from the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings (Year B) and are written so they can be used by both children and adults. We believe you’ll find questions and discussion topics in each devotion that will work for all ages. Each devotion consists of the below elements. We invite you to take a look at the devotions and see what will work best for your family.

• Scripture: The Gospel passages come from the Revised Common Lectionary (Year B) for Lent.
• Reflection: A brief reflection is offered for each of the scripture texts. It might make sense for you to read this section with your family, or you may just want to read it for yourself. See what questions or themes will resonate best with your family.
• Discussion and Coloring Page: This is a chance for some discussion for your family. We find that often some of the best conversations happen while coloring and doing something creative together as a family. We suggest discussing the questions offered while coloring the week’s coloring sheet. This works great because it ties in with both the weekly scripture and activity.
• Family Activity: The activity provided each week invites your family into an act of fasting aligned with the week’s scripture reading. Each activity is written to allow for your act of fasting to both challenge your family and be incorporated simply into your week. As with all our suggestions for spiritual formation, please feel free to adjust for your family so that it works within your daily lives and also opens you up to mindfully participating in the opportunity for spiritual formation.
• Prayer: Finally, each week’s devotion ends with a short prayer that you can end the devotion with. This is a simple ritual to end your family’s weekly devotion time. You can also use the prayer throughout the week with your family.

This year’s edition of An Illustrated Lent for Families also comes with a bonus Ash Wednesday devotion (with an accompanying Labyrinth activity sheet) to use with your family.

Coloring Pages

Click on the images below to see the coloring pages in more detail.

Obviously, we love coloring here at Illustrated Ministry. But it’s not just that we like getting messy with markers and crayons. It’s really the conversations that happen when you’re coloring that we treasure. If you’ve used any of our products before, you’ve probably experienced these types of conversations with children. When they’re immersed in coloring, you’ll be amazed at what they share with you.

Our coloring pages for this year’s Illustrated Lent for Families all connect to the theme of the week’s devotions. These pages will provide you with a creative outlet to work on with your family while you are discussing the devotions. Above you can see a few examples of the coloring pages (which come as black and white PDFs). We’ve colored a few of them to give you an idea of what they could look like.

Grab a Sample & Check it out!

Over 900 churches purchased last year’s An Illustrated Advent for Families – and we’ve heard amazing feedback from those churches and families. I was recently at the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators Annual Event, and I was amazed at how many people stopped by our booth just to let me know that their families so appreciated our family devotional materials. Of course, that’s the main reason that Illustrated Ministry exists: to support families!

We hope you’ll take some time to check out An Illustrated Lent for Families, and let us know if you have any questions. If you’d like to download a sample of the resource to check out before you purchase, you can click here.