Asheville, North Carolina
EXPLORE FAITH. EMBRACE COMMUNITY. MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
60 Church Street, Asheville, NC 28801 | info@trinityasheville.org | Tel: 828-253-9361
“You Hate Nothing You Have Made”
Dear friends, Lent begins with a prayer that tells the truth about God and about us.
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have
made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and
make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily
lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission
and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.
We come on Ash Wednesday for the imposition of ashes on our foreheads not to perform sorrow, but to practice honesty. We do not pretend we are whole; we admit our wretchedness—those habits, omissions, and sharp edges that have wounded others, drained our joy, and bent our lives away from love.
And then we dare to say the next sentence: “You hate nothing you have made.” Before we can change, we have to be known, and before we can be healed, we have to be honest. So in this season we lay everything before the God of all mercy—not to be shamed, but to be forgiven.
God’s purpose is not to crush us with guilt, but to create in us “new and contrite hearts”: hearts softened enough to receive grace, and strong enough to make amends.
Lent is God’s renewing work in us. As we pray, fast, give, and worship together, may Christ meet us with remission, heal what is broken, and send us forth—lighter, clearer, and more ready to serve.
This brochure offers pathways for that journey at Trinity: services, studies, and practices, so we may walk to Easter together in hope.
By Grace,
Scott+
Changes in Sunday Worship in Lent
You will notice that our worship services during Lent differ from our ordinary worship. Worship changes to reflect the solemn nature of the season so that we may reflect on our relationship with God in light of our imperfections–sin. The season’s color is violet, flowers do not appear on the altar, the tone of our music is more subdued, and we refrain from using the word “Alleluia.” These changes help us focus on the season and will be “lifted” on Easter morning.
Alleluia Sunday
February 15
The Last Sunday before Ash Wednesday is traditionally called “Alleluia Sunday.” It is the last day we use the praise word alleluia until Easter. During Lent, we refrain from saying alleluia to honor this time of reflection. Our children will be part of our procession out of the church with our “Alleluia Banner,” excited to bury it until Easter when they process back into the church with it.
Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner
February 17 at 6:00 pm
Our Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner will be held in Tuton Hall on Tuesday at 6:00 pm. The cost is $6.00 per person. Please join us in preparation for the start of Lent as we enjoy pancakes, sausage, and bacon, all prepared by the gentlemen of Trinity. No reservations or registration are required. Trinity Men, your help is needed to set up, cook, and clean up! Please sign up on the bulletin board near the Conference Room or at debbie@trinityasheville.org.
6:00 pm | Dinner and crafts for children
6:30 pm | Pancake race and other games!
Ash Wednesday Services
February 18
7:30 am | Holy Eucharist and the Imposition of Ashes
This service is intended to last 30 minutes for those who would like to attend before heading to the office or other responsibilities of the day.
11:30 am | Holy Eucharist and the Imposition of Ashes
This service is intended to last one hour for those who need to return to work.
5:30 pm | Holy Eucharist and the Imposition of Ashes
Our Adult Choir will lead this service. Nursery care is available. Livestreamed.
The Reconciliation of a Penitent
By Appointment
Not everyone realizes that the Episcopal church maintains the sacramental rite of reconciliation, or what is commonly referred to as “Confession.” You can find the service for this rite in the Book of Common Prayer on page 447. The seal of confession is absolute. The sacrament can be a balm for the spirit and the soul. The ability to share and ultimately release one’s imperfections–sin–with a priest who can pronounce God’s forgiveness is a grace of profound depth. It can be a significant part of one’s Lenten journey. If you wish to make your confession, please contact one of Trinity’s clergy to make an appointment.
Lenten Devotions
Daily Devotions Sent by email on Weekdays
We are blessed to have devotions written by members of the Trinity community for the season of Lent. These devotions will be shared on weekdays, and will also be posted to our website. If you would like to receive these devotions, want to be on the emailing list, please email office@trinityasheville.org
Intercession and Silent Prayer During Lent
In Lent, we are called to a more intentional season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Anyone desiring an opportunity to deepen their intercessory and personal prayer life during this season, please join us beginning on Ash Wednesday and each Wednesday thereafter from 10:45 to 11:15am in the Redwood Chapel. Contact the church office or email Sue at sjhgraff@yahoo.com with questions.
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Guided Retreat: Inner Peace in Friendship with Jesus
Join Fr. Mike for a collaborative four-week retreat with both Trinity and Church of the Advocate titled “Inner Peace in Friendship with Jesus.” The retreat is a twenty-four day journey taken in the midst of our daily lives. Prayers are offered four days per week, with each week leading us more deeply into our companionship with Jesus. In addition to daily prayer, retreatants will journal about their experiences in prayer, and come together as a group once per week to engage in spiritual conversation about the insights, joys, and challenges we are each working through in our personal retreats. This retreat is informed by the Ignatian tradition. It is a significant commitment. Expect to spend at least 30 minutes in prayer each day. All participants will receive a journal, as well as a copy of daily prayers and reflections that will guide our time together. We will join together every Monday from 1:00-2:00 PM in the Redwood Chapel beginning March 2nd through March 23rd. We will gather for an orientation on February 23rd at 1:00 PM.
If you are interested in participating in this retreat, please email Mike at mike@trinityasheville.org.
Sunday Adult Formation for Lent
Sundays 9:30 - 10:30
James in The Suburbs
March 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
Dr. April Love-Fordham
Do you consume God's blessings, or do you share them? Most Christians are consumers. We are obsessed with knowing the right theology and following the right set of rules in hopes that God will bless us. Yet, no matter how much God blesses us, we are still looking for more. Our belief that God created us in God’s own image and likeness demands us to see all human beings as those to whom we owe honor and service. James says our faith without works is dead and the Book of James helps us understand how faith frees us for service. Being the hands and feet of Jesus is a response to the grace offered, a “yes” to being created in God’s image. In such light faith, says James, says their faith is alive. Trinitarian Dr. April Love-Fordham is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the author of numerous books, one of which is “James in The Suburbs.” Join April for an exploration of the Book of James and how it leads us from grace to service.
During the course of this study, you can purchase the Kindle version of James in the Suburbs for $3 on Amazon. Click here.
Parents in Conversation
Sundays 9:30 - 10:30
Every week, we gather informally in the Clark Room for casual conversation about life and parenting. All are welcome (whether actively parenting or not!). Sometimes our conversations are guided by current local or world events, the daily appointed Scripture readings, or our own family joys and struggles. Occasionally, we choose a book to read and discuss together over several weeks. (Parents in Conversation will NOT meet on March 29 or April 5)
Wednesdays in Lent
February 25, March 4, 11, 18, & 25
Daytime Offering:
The Holy Eucharist with Guest Reflections · 11:30 in the church
Come into the church at 11:30 for a brief and contemplative celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Each week, we invite a special guest to speak to us. After the service, all are welcome to lunch in Tuton Hall—no pre-registration is required. A $6 donation is suggested.
February 25
Speaker: Tim Owings
A native of Miami, FL, Tim Owings is a retired Baptist minister and financial advisor. He holds the M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. Having served five churches over 25 years, he now enjoys teaching the Bible at Trinity and offering in worship piano arrangements of beloved hymns.
He and Kathie have been married 50 years, are the proud parents of three children who with their spouses have blessed them with seven grandchildren. They make their home in east Asheville near Warren Wilson College.
Lunch: Poppyseed Chicken Casserole & Salad
March 4
Speaker: Christy Randall
Christy Randall began her career in Colorado’s corporate technology sector, using her undergraduate psychology and religion studies to carve out a meaningful missional perspective. She moved to Michigan and Spring Arbor University in 2004, flourishing as a manager and educator within IT, A/V, and change management. She earned her master’s in Spiritual Formation and Leadership from SAU in 2010, deepening her own commitment to contemplative practice and weaving the principles of compassion and justice into her leadership style.
Chronic health challenges and the needs of her growing, neurodivergent family eventually led her to step away from full-time work. She transitioned to teaching part-time while continuing to study the mystics and began imagining a fiction story at the intersection of her psychology, spirituality and leadership passions. In 2022, she was certified as a spiritual director and founded Integrating Journey as an avenue to companion with others. Now living in Asheville, NC, she seeks to live ever deeper into the Source of love, embrace opportunities to empower the Kingdom come, and finally finish her first novel.
Lunch: Baked Potato Bar & Spinach Salad
March 11
Speaker: Beth Chestnut
Beth counts Trinity as home for the past 36 years, having spent 23 of those years as the Director of Children and Family Ministries. She has served on the Board of Church of the Advocate for many years and though stepping away from that role, she continues to volunteer at COA , a ministry close to her heart. Since retiring in July of 2025 she additionally volunteers at ABCCM"s Costello House and the after school program at Deaverview. She and her husband, Dave, who retired after 39 years with WLOS are looking forward to traveling and of course ways to serve Trinity and the broader community.
Lunch: Vegetarian Dish
March 18
Speaker: John Kramp
Before retiring the end of December 2025, John worked in the Christian publishing industry, most recently as SVP and Group Publisher for HarperCollins Christian Publishing. In that role, he led the Thomas Nelson Bible and Zondervan Bible teams which publish award winning Bibles in top translations. John and his wife, Lynn Marie, moved to Asheville from Nashville, TN in July 2022 and love being part of Trinity. They have two daughters and six grandchildren.
Lunch: Soup & Salad
March 25
Speaker: Ragan Sutterfield
Ragan Sutterfield, a graduate of Virginia Theological Seminary, is associate rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. A naturalist and an avid birder, he’s the author of many books, including his brand new Watch and Wonder: Birding as a Spiritual Practice. (He’s also known our Amy Peterson since junior high.) Ragan will preach at our 11:30 eucharist and stay for Q&A over lunch, where you will also have the chance to buy his latest book.
Lunch: Salmon, Rice, & Veggie
Evening Offering:
For the Living of These Days:
Learning from the saints of history how to be faithful today
with Scott & Amy · Wednesday Evenings, in Tuton Hall
Each Wednesday of Lent, you’re invited to join us for a simple dinner at 5:30 in Tuton Hall. As we share a meal, we’ll hear from Scott or Amy about a saint whose life speaks to a contemporary issue we’re facing. Then your table will be given a few questions to guide discussion as to how this saint helps us think Christianly about the problems of our own moment.
We continue to receive many questions about a range of concerns that arise whenever we open our news feeds. From the climate, to Artificial Intelligence, to the overwhelming rise in poverty and of course, how to think like Jesus about immigration and religious nationalism. The clergy don’t have all the answers you seek. We wish we did. Yet, there are clues all around us. Together, we look to the church's saints to see how they followed Jesus when faced with similar challenges. Scott+
February 25
Dorothy Sayers
English writer, scholar, and one of the first women to graduate from Oxford - may be best known for her detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. We celebrate her annually on December 17th in the Episcopal Church. In her 1941 book The Mind of the Maker, Sayers discusses the psychology of the creative mind at work in producing a novel or sculpture or other work as an aid to understanding the theological doctrine of the Trinity. We’ll consider how her insights inform the way we think about artificial intelligence, humanity, and creativity.
March 4
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins (celebrated on May 19 every year) was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. She was confirmed in the Episcopal church as a young adult in 1905, and after witnessing the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, devoted her life to working for safe and fair labor conditions. How do her life and testimony help us think about economic inequality in our own day?
March 11
Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen (remembered September 17), abbess and visionary of the 1100s, wrote explicitly about the natural world as God's creation, charged through and through with His beauty and His energy; entrusted to our care, to be used by us for our benefit, but not to be mangled or destroyed. Viriditas, from the Latin for “green” — was her word for a greening life-force pervading the world, and she saw human beings as “co-creators with God” in the operations of nature. These mystic revelations from the 12th century speak to our contemporary ecological situation, as well.
March 18
Saint Joseph
Warned by a dream, Saint Joseph (whom we remember every year on March 19) led Mary and Jesus to leave home to escape King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Or, even more foundationally: God crossed the borders of heaven to come to earth. How do these stories of migration help us think about migration today?
March 25
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (April 9) is remembered for his resistance to the Nazi movement, as well as his books Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship. His opposition to religious nationalism helps us understand what it means to make Christian identity more central for us than national identity in our own moment.
Amy's Occasional Bookclub
Thursday, February 26, 6:30-8:00 · Clark Room
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Refugia Faith: a Trinity Women's Retreat
March 20-22 · Lake Logan
Music for Lent
Ash Wednesday
February 18 · 5:30
The anthem for the 5:30 service will be “Nolo Mortem Peccatoris” by the great English composer Thomas Morley. The text is presented from the point of view of Jesus speaking to God the Father and imploring God for forgiveness for all people:
Nolo mortem peccatoris:
Haec sunt verba Salvatoris.
Father, I am thine only son,
Sent down from heaven mankind to save!
Father, all things fulfilled and done
According to thy will I have;
Father, now all my will is this:
Nolo mortem peccatoris.
Father, behold my pains most smart,
Taken for man on every side,
E'en from my birth to death most tart;
No kind of pain I have denied,
But suffered all for love of this:
Nolo mortem peccatoris.
- John Redford
Choral Evensong for the First Sunday of Lent
February 22 | 5:30
Our Chancel Choir will lead us in a Choral Evensong service on the First Sunday of Lent. Music to be performed includes Thomas Tallis’ Magnificat in Dorian Mode, a contemporary setting of the Nunc Dimittis by Paul Smith, originally written for Voces8, and one of Henry Purcell’s best anthems, the sublimely beautiful “Hear My Prayer, O Lord.”
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Music at Trinity Concert Series: Two Trumpets and an Organ
Saturday, March 28 · 7:00 pm
This promises to be a joyful evening of music featuring trumpeters Brad Ulrich (Western Carolina University), Paul Merkelo (principal trumpet of the Montreal Symphony), and our own Dr. Kevin Seal on organ.
Admission is free.
Palm Sunday | Asheville Vocal Ensemble
March 29 · 5:30
Members of the Asheville Vocal Ensemble, AVE (formerly Pastyme), will join us on Palm Sunday at the Celtic service and offer an exquisite selection of sacred music for this holy day.
Now a beloved tradition at Trinity, the ensemble will provide the music for our evening worship. Selections including Orlando Gibbons’ “Hosanna to the Son of David” and a setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Mexican colonial composer Manuel de Sumaya.
Palm Sunday Walk
March 29 | 9:30 am
Church Street Churches gather before Worship
This is our annual gathering with families from First Presbyterian and Central Methodist during our formation hour on Palm Sunday. This event is open to anyone, but is specifically for families of children and youth. We will gather in Tuton Hall at 9:30 and walk to Central Methodist to gather with the other churches. A donkey will lead us while we wave palms to Pritchard Park, where we will gather briefly for a short liturgy. We finish at 10:30 and have enough time to return to Trinity for our 10:45 service for those who wish to do so.
Holy Week
Holy Week and Easter are the heart of our Christian year — a journey from the joy of Palm Sunday to the deep stillness of Good Friday, and finally to the radiant hope of Easter morning.
Palm Sunday
Holy Week begins with the story of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. Our services begin in praise and end with the stark reality of betrayal. At each of our services, we will hear a dramatic reading of Jesus’s last hours. Look for details and instructions for our young people who will join in a neighborhood “walk” in coordination with our partner churches on Church Street. The 10:45 service will include a solemn procession.
Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday of Holy Week
Each day we hold a simple service of the Holy Eucharist at 11:30 with readings that help us focus on Jesus’s final walk on earth. These services will include a hymn.
Maundy Thursday
Our evening service focuses on Jesus’s final meeting with his disciples in the upper room. There, he shares his last supper with them, demands that he let them wash their feet, and commands them to do likewise. Our service will include an optional foot-washing and conclude with the stripping of the altar. Once the church is stripped bare of all adornment, the crosses are veiled in black, and we leave in silence.
Good Friday | The Seven Last Words of Jesus
We’re trying something different this year. There is a venerable tradition of hearing meditations on the seven last words of Jesus from the cross, interspersed with music and prayer, lasting over three hours. The service is often called “The Great Three Hours.” Choir members, soloists, and musicians will be present at different points in the service. The service is designed for people to come and go as they can. Come for an hour, half hour, twenty minutes, or stay for all three hours. This will be our only service of the day, and you will be invited to light a candle at the foot of the cross.
Easter
Candlelight Sunrise Easter Vigil
Our vigil service begins in the dark. We start gathering in the memorial garden as a witness to our belief that death will never have the last word. There, we light the new fire and the Paschal Candle for the first time. We process together with individual candles into a darkened church, where we hear the story of our faith. The service is supported by a vocal quartet from the choir. By the time we get to the great proclamation of the Resurrection, the sun is beginning to shine through the windows and sing some of the day's great hymns. Incense is used at this service.
9:00 and 11:00
Our main services of the day are nearly identical. Together, we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord. Our Chancel choir supports both services and includes Brass.
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Below you will find detailed information about the services and other offerings for Holy Week and Easter, including dates, times, and locations.
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