Life-Changing 40-Day Experiences in Your Church

We’ve launched 40-day challenges in hundreds of churches around the world and seen God move mightily—are you ready? Join one of the popular Launch Seasons to see your people begin to take practical daily steps toward Jesus. 

Grace-Based, Jesus-Centered

Church Growth Catalyst

Proven Results

Want 692 hours of FREE staff time done for you?​

Running a church, though rewarding, is tiring. Maybe even exhausting. Church staffs love our materials because we’ve got everything turnkey and ready-to-go. We certainly don’t mind when churches add their unique contributions to our challenges, but nobody on your church staff should ever have to start from scratch.

How it Works

Hundreds of churches have successfully launched Challenges across all denominations.

Choose Your Challenge

If this is your first 40-Day Challenge, we suggest starting with the original Red Letter Challenge. Then, Being Challenge and Forgiving Challenge.

Pick Your Launch Season

New Year Kickoff – 1/7/24
Lent Kickoff – 2/11/24
Post Easter Kickoff – 4/7/24
Summer Kickoff – 6/2/24
Fall Kickoff – 9/8/24

Transform Your Church

Focus on Jesus and not the little details. Sharing this journey will energize, unify, and transform both you and your church.

Why Launch a 40-day challenge in the Next Season?

Create a 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. Our Challenges are simple in concept, but Challenging in practice and can be used to examine where we are in light of Jesus and come out stronger.

Churchwide Unity

You’ll be joining with tens of thousands of others across the nation, and even some internationally. The power of that many people living out their faith will be what gives Christianity the spark it needs for the future. Watch momentum, energy, and excitement build 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 Church Pack that will will work for your church size. Plus, check out the exclusive offer below!

The Red Letter Challenge 40-day Challenge for small group bible study.

The Challenges

Comprehensive Church Packs designed to guide churches or small groups of all sizes through a life-changing 40-day journey.  You can choose any 40-day challenge to start. However, if this is your first time launching a 40-day challenge with your congregation or small group, we suggest starting with Red Letter Challenge. Then, move on to Being Challenge and Forgiving Challenge after that.

Red Letter Challenge Church Bundle

Red Letter Challenge & Red Letter Challenge Kids

Being Challenge &
Being Challenge Kids

Forgiving Challenge Bundle

Forgiving Challenge &
Forgiving Challenge Kids

Serving Challenge &
Serving Challenge Kids

Discount Church Packs!

Find the Church Pack that fits best and save 10-40% off! 

The Free Resources

Red Letter Living has dynamic, turnkey resources that make it easy for you to challenge every person in your church to become a greater follower of Jesus Christ.

Resource Library

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Along with our challenges come professional, pre-made graphics, small group Bible study resources, sermon resources, and kid curriculums that help create a complete sermon series.

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. 

Grow your small church group in 40 days.

40% growth in small groups in 40 days.​

250000+ completed challenges

250,000+ people have completed a 40-Day Challenge

100% of pastors highly recommend!​

What Church Leaders are Saying​

Red Letter Challenge | Your Trusted Source for Bible Studies & Books

“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

“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​

Our congregation has used RLC resources in congregation-wide efforts three times over the last two years, from RLC itself in Lent and in Fall, as well as kids’ materials. We are convinced that these have allowed us to not only stay vibrant during the last 20 months of craziness, but we’ve seen folks more engaged in serving others as well as in generosity for God’s work. We love “sitting at the feet of Jesus!” And then getting out and living out His love!

Rev. Jonathan M. Dinger

Pastor, Grace Lutheran Church

9 Challenge Books Stacked

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.

Hours We Save You

6 sermon manuscripts: 20 hours/per sermon = 120 hours
6 sermon videos: 3 hours/per video = 18 hours
6 weeks of kid’s curriculum: 15 hours/per week = 90 hours
6 weeks of small group study guides: 3 hours/per week = 18 hours
6 weeks of teen small group study guides: 3 hours/per week = 18 hours
6 weeks of small group video writing, filming, and editing: 20 hours/per video = 120 hours
100+ graphics: .5 hours/graphic = 50 hours
12 How-to-Videos for how to launch a 40-day challenge: 1/hour per video = 12 hours
41 daily devotionals: 3 hours/per daily devotional = 123 hours (for first drafts)
41 daily kid’s devotionals: 3 hours/per daily devotional = 123 hours (for first drafts)

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.

  1. Beginning of Year: You can promote heavily in December and at Christmas and build some serious momentum in the new year.
  2. 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!
  3. 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.
  4. 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!
  5. 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.

We suggest at least a 4-week lead-in time with the books at your site. We always offer a FREE promotional video you can use, as well as a host of graphics like flyers, posters, slides, etc. in our FREE graphics package on our Free Resources pages. To learn more about promotion and distribution, check out this video.

Thank you!!

Congrats! Listen to this special message for you and join Zach live on Thursday

Session: The Disciple Making Playbook: Elevating the Quality and Quantity of Disciples at Your Church

Day: Thursday, March 7th
Time: 8:45-9:45an ET
Location: Kids 2- Room 120

Special offer to attendees and free book recipients.