THE Church of England has produced its Lent and Easter campaign. Material available in print, through social media, and through an app on Amazon’s voice activated assistant, Alexa.
The Lent Pilgrim and Easter Pilgrim reflections series have both been written by the Bishop of Oxford, Dr Steven Croft.
The Lent and Easter campaign seeks to build on the successes of the Christmas #FollowtheStar campaign (News, 5 October), which Church House said was seen by 7.9 million people on social media, while 120,000 print copies were sold through Church House publishing.
The head of digital at Church House, Adrian Harris, said that the Lent and Easter campaign was also a partnership with Church House publishing.
“We are producing high-quality resources and making them as accessible as possible, in many different formats. We’ve invested in audio, through the Alexa app.
“The Lent and Easter reflections are perhaps more aimed at regular churchgoers, but we are also producing lots of other social-media resources, explaining Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday, for example, which were very popular. We found at Christmas, and last year in our #LiveLent campaign, that we have a broad range of people engaging with us, across different age ranges.
“By producing resources in different formats, we are giving people different ways in.”
The Eastertide reflections — which take the Lord’s Prayer as their theme — run only until Ascension Day, which is when the Archbishops’ Thy Kingdom Come prayer initiative begins.
#LiveLent18 reached 3.54 million people on Twitter and Instagram, and 35,000 copies of the booklet were sold, Church House said. Short videos explaining the significance of days over Easter were watched more than 160,000 times, and the app won best corporate app at the Digital Impact Awards 2018 (News, 19 October). All those who downloaded the app for the Christmas campaign will automatically get the new Easter app.
Independent research carried out by the Saltley Trust found that 78 per cent of users questioned found last year’s #LiveLent reflections very helpful or extremely helpful in bringing them closer to God and supporting their Christian faith, Mr Harris said.
www.churchofengland.org/lent