Unify Your People in Just 40 Days!
We’ve launched 40-day challenges in over 1000+ churches and groups Pefrfrom around the world and seen God move mightily—are you ready? Join the Lent Launch 2023 for the largest Lutheran 40-day challenge of all-time!
Take Practical, Daily Next Steps
Learn Clear Discipleship Targets
Experience Life Change in 40 Days
With a proven discipleship strategy and simple goal, everyone will be unified and grow closer to Jesus together.
While there are countless books and Bible studies on following Jesus, few are both practical and proven. Jesus not only modeled a complete way of life, but He also clearly told us how to follow Him through His own words—the red letters found in many Bibles. The best way to follow Jesus is to live out His words.
The Red Letter Challenge cuts through the noise and has guided thousands to grow closer to God in just 40 days. This Lent, dive deeper into faith with a straightforward approach to living out Jesus’ teachings.

Why Launch A 40-Day Challenge in Lent?

Lent is the Time to Self-Examine
Our 40-Day Challenges offer daily, practical, clear, yet challenging next steps for people to not only examine where they are in their faith today, but to push them, by grace, through faith, to become even greater followers of Jesus. Lent is the time to examine where we are in light of Jesus and come out stronger.

Denomination-wide Unity
You’ll be joining with tens of thousands of other Lutherans across the nation, and even some internationally. The power of that many Lutherans living out their faith will be what gives our denomination the spark it needs for the future. Rather than teaching people to “give up” something for Lent, we encourage people to “pick up” the habit of reading and doing the words of Jesus in their lives. Watch momentum, energy, and excitement build in your church as the entire church encourages and supports one another in their pursuit to follow Jesus.

Done-For-You Church Campaign Kits
Your time is best spent shepherding and guiding your members through the journey. Rather than being buried in the logistics of running a 40-Day all-in church sermon series, we’ve done our best to take care of every logistical detail from promotion to completion. Included in our FREE library of resources for each 40-Day Challenge are small group materials, kids weekly curriculum, social media graphics, sermon manuscripts, a daily school curriculum and more.

Church Packs
From 10 books to over 1500 books we have a pre-discounted bundle that will will work for your church size. Plus, check out the exclusive offer for our Lutheran churches below!

Proven & Practical Discipleship
As pastors and church leaders, we have experience guiding all church sizes through 40-Day Challenges. We’ve designed our 40-Day Challenges to be practical and simple to implement. After helping hundreds of churches launch challenges, we’re confident our resources will be a fit for your church, no matter the context. From kids to senior adults, it’s the perfect all-in churchwide campaign.

40% growth in small groups in 40 days.

185,000+ people have completed a 40-Day Challenge

100% of pastors highly recommend!
What Church Leaders are Saying

“In an era where people are struggling with discipleship, diving into the words of Jesus is one of the best things you can do. I love how Red Letter Challenge makes it easy to get an entire church diving deeper into the teachings of Christ.”
Carey Nieuwhof
Founding Pastor of Connexus Church, Author and Speaker
“Leading churches are using campaigns to increase engagement in their community. Red Letter Challenge is not only a plug and play campaign to help your church gain a better insight into the teaching of Jesus but it will also help your church grow because of deeper engagement!”
Rich Birch
Founder of unSeminary, Author, Speaker


“If you feel like you were made for something more or if you are tired of checking religious boxes, the Red Letter Challenge is for you! By challenging people to go back to the good news message of Jesus, I truly believe this will help you find the life you were made for.”
Mike Foster
Secondchance.org

Free Book for Pastors!
Pastors, our team would be honored to send you a free 40-day challenge book!
Just fill out this quick form and we’ll ship it out to you.
How it works

Buy the Book
As an individual or congregation, commit to reading and doing the words of Jesus for 40-days! Take on the life-changing experience.

Join Jesus on the Journey
RLC guides you through 40 days of practical and memorable challenges organized around 5 discipleship targets. Through these targets you can take steps toward Jesus every day!

Live with Renewed Purpose & Intention
After the challenge is complete, you’ll have a greater understanding of what it takes to follow Jesus. You will be more attuned to connecting with Jesus every day through reading and doing His word
FAQ
As many of the answers as we have!
Yes. We love letting pastors see our 40-Day Challenge books. Simply fill out this quick form so we know where to send it and we will mail you one.
We’re glad you asked. There’s a ton of them! Pastor and Author, Zach Zehnder, gives you 5 reasons why a 40-day church challenge could be right for your church in this short video. This is the first video of a FREE 10-part video series to help you determine if a 40-day church challenge is right for your church. Find the other videos on our get started page.
Great news! We have a FREE 10-part video series to help you launch a 40-day Church Challenge. We’ve had the privilege to work with hundreds of churches and have many best practices to share. For those churches that order 100 or more copies, you can schedule a FREE 30-minute Zoom with Pastor and Author Zach Zehnder. Additionally, you can ask further questions by contacting us.
These are the 5 best times of the calendar year to launch a 40-Day Church Challenge.
- Beginning of Year: You can promote heavily in December and at Christmas and build some serious momentum in the new year.
- Lent: 40 Days prior to Easter: Many churches will encourage people to give up something for the 40 days of Lent. We love this practice, but also, we’ve seen many churches encourage their people not just to give up something, but to start something new as well. There is nothing better to start than putting the words and habits of Jesus into practice!
- 40 Days after Easter: After the big celebratory Easter Sunday, it’s important you follow it up with great momentum. Usually a church will have an 8-week window open after Easter while families are still in school. A 40-Day Church Challenge can provide some turnkey resources that will keep momentum strong going into the summer months.
- Summer: While most churches decrease in attendance in summer months, a 40-Day Church Challenge is a great opportunity to start the summer with a jump, not a slump!
- Fall: Weekly worship attendance is normally at its strongest in the Fall. Launching a 40-Day Church Challenge in the Fall will provide momentum and energy for your church to sustain this high attended season. We encourage a start time any time after the school session (Ideally the Sunday after Labor Day) is back and encourage churches to wrap up by Thanksgiving.
Yes, please contact us and we will be happy to give you a comparable quote depending on whatever size you need
Zach does offer a limited number of Sundays to speak at churches. Additionally, he is a sought-after conference/event speaker. His topics that he excels in are discipleship, church growth, spiritual keystone habits, forgiveness, and anything related to his works. Fill out the Speaker Request Form with some needed information on our end and our team will get back to you.
All of the free resources are located in our resource library.