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The lights were on and the doors were open at the Thurmont Church of the Brethren on a cold Monday evening, as the first installment of the Thurmont Ministerium's rotating Lent service got under way.

The messages coming from the dual pulpits – one for the Rev. Linda Lambert and one for worship leader Steve Lowe – were clear.

"May it be a season of sorrow and remorse," Lowe said in his invocation.

"Lent's a time to carry stuff out and dump it," Lambert said in her sermon.

The Thurmont Ministerium is a group of 16 allied Thurmont churches, two Rocky Ridge churches and two Sabillasville churches. All but one of them is Protestant. (Thurmont's Our Lady of Mount Carmel is a Catholic parish).

The ministerium's Lent tradition has Thurmont-area parishioners taking in services by a different pastor each week.

"They've done this for years and years," said Joanne Gaver, 75, of Waynesboro, Pa. Gaver, one of several women at the service wearing formal clothing, including a gauzy white hat, has been coming to the Thurmont Church of the Brethren since she was 5 years old, she said. The church itself is 146 years old.

This year is the first in several in which the churches have held the service in a different church each Monday. For a period of about four years, the services were held in the same church, with different pastors speaking each week, according to Lambert.

"It gets people into different houses of worship," said Lambert, 62, of Keymar. Lambert has been pastor at the church for 21 years.

The pews were nearly full Monday. Organist/pianist Nancy Wiles and vocalist Debbie Williams-Barnes sang crisply, and the congregation-participation hymns, like the rest of the service, were designed to provoke introspection ["I left for earthly night, for wand'rings sad and lone…"].

The congregation faced a small silver cross and a big painting of Jesus with a flock of sheep in the field, carrying a lamb in his arms, a halo surrounding his head.

Between the two pulpits stood an altar that Lambert said is typically only used for the church's monthly recovery-oriented service. A trio of candles and a dish of frankincense and myrrh stood atop a white cloth with the word "Hope" stitched into it.

Lent, Lambert told the congregation, is a time to get out of ruts, through prayer, fasting and giving.

"Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks," Lambert said, citing scripture in her sermon, titled "Cleaning the temple." "Lent's a time to listen to what's coming out."

Lent is not entirely meant to resemble the period of trial that Jesus is said to have spent in the desert, dueling with temptation. Sundays, not counted in the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, are celebrated as smaller Easters in themselves.

Helping others less fortunate is also strongly encouraged.

Following the service, the congregation and the clergy got together for coffee and snacks in the basement.

E-mail Jeremy Hauck at jhauck@gazette.net.

All services are at 7 p.m.

-March 9: Thurmont United Methodist Church, 13880 Long Road

-March 16: Catoctin Episcopal Parish, 12625 Catoctin Furnace Road

-March 23: Evangelical Bible Church, 14698 Albert Staub Road

-March 30: Lewistown United Methodist Church, 11032 Hessong Bridge Road