Faded Flowers

Preparing for the Lenten season in 2009, pastor Jason Coker carefully crafted a sermon series on the Christian response to pain. When a beloved young man from his congregation died by suicide shortly after Lent began, Coker, his church, and their community were suddenly sharing a very real journey through overwhelming pain and grief.

Using the lens of Coker’s 2009 Lenten sermon series, Faded Flowers navigates the intersection of their church-wide trauma and the theology surrounding such pain. Coker also pairs the sermons with current reflections informed by a decade of recovery and growth, and the result is a moving story of how a pastor and a church loved, suffered, and moved toward healing.


The Rev. Dr. K. Jason Coker is the national director of Together for Hope, the rural development coalition of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. He is also the Field Coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Mississippi. After nearly two decades of life and ministry in Connecticut, Coker returned to his home state of Mississippi to work for peace and justice in areas of persistent rural poverty. The lessons of human compassion and equality he learned as a minister guide his work in poverty relief.