Lent, Holy Week and Easter Sunday
Go deep for Lent!
Pick up complimentary Lent Devotional “Into the Deep” at worship or in the JPW Library. Mirroring the 2025 General Synod theme, “Into the Deep,” our 2025 Lent Devotional invites reflection on God’s mysterious depths.
As Mary Luti writes in the introduction, “God inhabits the depths of life, love, loss, ecstasy, and pain, God dwells in the profundities of prayer, in sighs too deep for words. God loves the deep.”
What courage, what faith, what reckoning, what wonder might find us as we go deep into God’s depths this Lent?
Easter Donations for Easter Lily and Organ & Carillon:
This is a wonderful opportunity to make a donation in honor of, or in memory of, a loved one! Easter Lily and Organ & Carillon donations can be made online HERE. Click HERE for a printable form and return it to the church office with your payment. If you wish to have your donation listed in the Sunday Bulletin, please make your donation by Sunday, April 13. If you have any questions, please contact Bethany at office.manager@whfirstchurch.org or 860-233-9605.
Open Chapel
The Spirit Team is pleased to once again offer Open Chapel during Lent. This is an opportunity to rest and quietly reflect in the sacred space of the First Church Chapel. You are welcome to drop by for any part of the hour. We hope that you will find peace.
Remaining Dates:
Friday, April 18, 12-1 pm
Lenten Wednesdays Together
Wednesdays at 6 p.m. beginning March 12th through April 16th | Come to one or All
Fellowship Room (Rm. 303)
With Rev. Laurie Andersen, curator and facilitator
During the sacred season of Lent, we’ll gather midweek to create a safe space to welcome feelings of worry and prayers of any kind and let the liturgical rhythms guide us in the Way of the Cross. Rev. Laurie Andersen invites you into a quiet prayerful space where you can share or just listen and receive (light refreshments served). Come and see where the Spirit takes us.
Lenten Book Study
Thursday afternoons at 1 p.m. (hybrid)
UNTIL April 17
Join JPW Library Director Jennifer deSimas Thursday afternoons in March and April for a Lenten book study. Using short videos and readings from Dr. Amy-Jill Levine’s 2021 book, Witness at the Cross: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Friday, we will explore the events of Holy Friday.
“Levine takes us by the hand and walks with us through the story of Jesus’s last day, pausing alongside each of the characters to see and hear and feel how they individually experienced it, how each was affected by it. This is not just a fresh retelling of the Crucifixion narrative; it is a remarkably personal immersion and participation in the narrative. Levine breaks open new dimensions and possibilities of the story’s meaning for all of us” (review).
Free program; please REGISTER HERE.
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Sunday, March 30 – 10 a.m. Worship Service
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Sunday, April 6 – 10 a.m. Worship Service
Palm Sunday
Sunday, April 13 – 10 a.m. Worship Service with music and palm fronds
Good Friday
Do Good Friday Community Event
Friday, April 18, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
First Church Auditorium
Good Friday is an ideal time to engage in acts of service and charity. This year, the Outreach Team invites you to do just that at our “Do Good” Friday community compassion event. By giving time and resources, you embody the spirit of Christ’s selflessness and make a tangible difference in the lives of others.
Join us to make brown-bag lunches and no-sew blankets for Mercy House in Hartford. We’ll also bake brownies and create Easter cards to add to the lunch bags. AND we’re stuffing plastic eggs for First Church’s Easter morning Egg Hunt! All are welcome!
Admission: A package of men’s underwear (L-XXL) or a bag of laundry detergent pods. Please see Jennifer with questions.
Good Friday Worship Service
Friday, April 18 at 7:00pm in the Chapel
The Service of Shadows — or Tenebrae – is an immersive, commemorative experience featuring scripture readings, sacred music, and the gradual extinguishing of candles. After the pageantry of Palm Sunday and before the joy of Easter Sunday, there is the passion of Holy Friday.
Easter Sunday
Sunday, April 20 – 10 a.m. Worship Service featuring a brass ensemble followed by an Easter egg hunt.