Lent generosity campaign 40acts returns
Howard Lake | 22 January 2015 | News
40acts, the Lent generosity campaign, will run again in Spring 2015 for the fifth consecutive year.
Run by Christian charity Stewardship, 40acts challenges people to perform a different act of generosity each day for Lent. The campaign launches on 18 February 2015.
This year’s campaign has already secured nearly 40,000 people who have signed up and nearly 1,000 churches are taking part.
Giving up or giving something?
The period of Lent traditionally involves giving something up, but 40acts encourages participants to give something to help those around them as well.
Stewardship reports that last year’s campaign produced over 1.8 million acts of generosity both in the UK and worldwide. These range from small acts like saying thank you, to sharing a skill, donating to charity, talking to strangers, sending anonymous gifts and forgiving people.
Indeed Stewardship hopes that the campaign will help inspire more Christians to adopt a daily habit of living generously.
[youtube height=”450″ width=”800″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y-2uVqjda8[/youtube]
Making more of Lent
Debbie Wright, head of content at Stewardship, said:
“40acts began as a simple idea that asked, ‘What if Lent could be about more than simply giving up chocolate? What if it was a preparation for a lifetime of big-heartedness?’”
“Lent marks a pivotal point in the history of the church, when Jesus prepared to give himself up as a sacrifice for all mankind. Although traditionally Lent is about giving something up, over the last four years we have seen a growing number of people embrace a new idea: that we can reflect God’s incredible generosity on the cross by creating a daily habit of generosity throughout Lent”.
The campaign won the Christian New Media Awards 2014 for ‘Innovative Use of New Media in Outreach’ and ‘Most Creative Use of Social Media’.
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Individuals and groups involved
Initially 40acts promoted the campaign to individuals but from last year it also started inviting families, schools, small groups and churches to take part. It offers ’40acts Together’ resources for these groups including sermon notes, event planners and children’s wall charts.
This year the campaign is being expanded to students, and the charity has developed resources for them including Word 4 U 2Day.
Participants are sent a daily challenge along with a biblical reflection from 40 well known contributors. This year each email will have three different versions of the challenge in order to make the generous acts accessible to everyone irrespective of financial or time limitations.
These emails will be sent from 18 February to 2 April 2015, so registration to take part in 40acts is open now.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.