Ministry Matters - A surprising gift for the Great Fifty Days

You've been preparing for Easter since Ash Wednesday. Maybe earlier, if we're honest. You've planned Holy Week services, coordinated volunteers, written sermons that hold both grief and hope, and somehow tried to maintain your own spiritual life while leading everyone else's. By Easter evening, you'll be depleted. And then you face fifty more days of resurrection preaching. What if this post-Easter season could be different? What if the Great Fifty Days became a source of renewal rather than another marathon to survive?

Starting the Tuesday before Easter (during Holy Week), join author and pastor Jim Harnish for a 7-week journey through the often-neglected season between Easter and Pentecost. "Great Days for Great Living" weaves together three strands: → The intimate resurrection stories - Mary at the tomb, Thomas's doubt, the Emmaus road, and the small, ordinary places where Jesus shows up → Harry Emerson Fosdick's WWII preaching - how a pastor preached hope during genuinely dangerous times → Your actual life in 2026 - political tensions, cultural anxiety, and the challenge of sustaining ministry when the world feels ghastly This isn't another program to add to your exhaustion. It's a companion for the journey. Each Tuesday during the Great Fifty Days brings a new reflection—about 1000 words, perfectly timed for your sermon prep for the following Sunday. You'll find: Insights you can borrow for your own preaching that Sunday Wisdom for your soul, not just techniques for your ministry Hope that's real rather than manufactured The series takes its title from a sermon Fosdick preached during World War II: "This is certainly a ghastly time to be alive. Nevertheless, this is a great time to be alive, and alike the personal and the public issues of it depend on whether we see that." Eighty years later, we still need that pastoral imagination—the ability to name what's ghastly while proclaiming what's great, to be present to people's real fears while pointing toward genuine hope. Here's what's coming, Easter Sunday through Ascension Day: Week 1 (Holy Week): A Ghastly and a Great Time to Be Alive Mary weeps at an empty tomb. Week 2: No Dry-As-Dust Religion Will Do Now Thomas and the gift of honest doubt  Week 3: Starting With Trouble and Ending with Hope "We had hoped..." - the Emmaus Road journey  Week 4: Why Is God Silent While Evil Rages? When God's power is quiet and evil is loud  Week 5: The Light That No Darkness Can Put Out Enduring hope in dangerous times  Week 6: Taking Jesus Seriously Discipleship vs. admiration  Week 7: Christianity Not A Form But A Force Preparing for Pentecost power  FOLLOW THE SERIES HERE You're not alone in the Easter-to-Pentecost stretch. The resurrection didn't end on Easter morning. Neither does our proclamation of it. Let's walk these fifty days together. Grace and peace, The MinistryMatters Team   P.S. - Know a colleague who's dreading post-Easter preaching? Forward this email. We're all in this together.