Easter is early in 2027. Ash Wednesday falls on February 10, Palm Sunday on March 21, and Easter Sunday on March 28. That leaves only about five weeks between the end of the Christmas season and the start of Lent, and most of the groups you lead will meet every week from Ash Wednesday to Easter.
So we made twenty-two free lessons for that stretch with DiviNav AI, the lesson-planning tool our family built, and put them online. There’s at least one for most kinds of groups, and three are sermon outlines. Each group lesson has an opening, the teaching, discussion questions, an activity, and notes for the leader. Open the one that matches your group and see if it fits.
Not every church observes Lent, and that’s fine. Most of these lessons don’t depend on it. They’re about repentance, the cross, and Jesus’ last week, and they fit any church in the weeks before Easter. The ones about Lent itself explain it simply and keep any practice optional.
See all the Lent and Easter lessons →
Free Lent Lesson Plans
For youth group
– Return to Me: what Ash Wednesday and Lent are about, from Joel 2. Grades 7 to 12, a good first week of Lent.
For kids and Sunday school
– Jesus in the Wilderness: Jesus says no to temptation with God’s Word (Matthew 4). Ages 5 to 10, 45 minutes, with a game and a craft. It doesn’t ask kids to fast.
For small groups
– The Fast God Chooses: Isaiah 58, and why God cares more about justice and mercy than an empty stomach. It offers non-food fasts too, with the same health cautions.
– I Am the Resurrection: Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb, John 11. A good one for the week before Palm Sunday.
For women’s and men’s studies
– Create in Me a Clean Heart: confession and being made new, from Psalm 51.
– Wrestling With God: Jacob at the river, honesty with God, and a new name (Genesis 32).
For young adults, new believers, and couples
– In Secret: prayer, fasting, and giving that isn’t for show (Matthew 6). The lesson says plainly that anyone who is pregnant, has diabetes or another health condition, or has ever had an eating disorder shouldn’t fast from food without a doctor’s okay. It offers non-food fasts that count just as much, and an eating-disorder helpline.
– Why the Cross?: what Jesus’ death did for us, for people new to faith.
– The Mind of Christ in Your Marriage: humility and servant love from Philippians 2.
For support and recovery groups
– Out of the Depths: Psalm 130 for people who are still struggling. It’s spiritual support, not treatment, so have a counselor or program you can point people to. SAMHSA’s free helpline is 1-800-662-4357, and anyone thinking about suicide can call or text 988.
For Palm Sunday
– The King on a Donkey: what kind of king Jesus is (Luke 19). Written for middle schoolers.
– Hosanna!: Jesus rides into Jerusalem. Ages 5 to 10, with a follow-the-leader game and a palm-branch craft and parade.
For pastors
– Remember That You Are Dust: a 20-minute Ash Wednesday sermon outline, written for a service where ashes are offered. Anyone who’d rather not receive them can stay seated and pray.
Holy Week and Easter Lessons
- Maundy Thursday, small group: He Washed Their Feet, on John 13. Foot washing is optional, and hand washing or simply watching is welcome too.
- Good Friday, youth: It Is Finished, for grades 7 to 12
- Good Friday, sermon: He Was Pierced for Our Transgressions, a 25-minute outline on Isaiah 53
- Kids: He Is Risen!, the women find the empty tomb (Luke 24). It tells the cross gently for ages 5 to 10 and spends most of its time on the resurrection.
- Youth: The Road to Emmaus, for high schoolers with doubts. It also works the Sunday after Easter
- Women: He Called Her by Name, Mary Magdalene at the tomb (John 20)
- Men: Do You Love Me?, Peter restored after failure (John 21)
- New believers: If Christ Has Not Been Raised, why the resurrection matters (1 Corinthians 15)
- Pastors: He Is Not Here, He Has Risen, a 30-minute Easter Sunday outline on Matthew 28
Use the sermon outlines as a starting point for your own study, not a finished sermon.
If your church is reading through the Bible this year, we also have a free printable Bible reading plan.
How These Were Made
These lessons were written with DiviNav AI, the lesson-planning tool our family built for ministry leaders. Each plan was written to a specific church tradition (Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, non-denominational, or broadly evangelical), and you’ll see which one at the top of each lesson. Then it went through an automatic check for theology, sensitive topics, and borrowed writing, and we ran a second AI review of the whole set and fixed what it found before publishing. Each lesson page says plainly how it was made.
We haven’t read every lesson line by line ourselves, and those checks are a help, not a guarantee. Read a lesson all the way through before you teach it, and change whatever doesn’t fit your group and your church’s practice.
Need a Different Lesson?
Maybe you want a six-week Lent series for one group instead of one-offs. Maybe you need a 20-minute Good Friday sermon instead of 25, or your church’s statement of faith is more specific than the ones above.
You can build your own lesson in about a minute. Pick your group, your topic or passage, how long you meet, and your tradition, or paste your church’s own statement of faith. Your first three lessons are free, and you don’t need a credit card.
We’re praying for you and the people you’ll lead toward Easter.