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- Each Lent fellow ELCA pastors and Lego enthusiasts JJ Dygert and Bob Albing assemble a Lego set over 40 days. When he retired, Albing’s congregation gifted him a Lego likeness of himself. Photo: Bob Albing
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- Dygert, pastor of First Lutheran Church in Kennewick, Wash., obtains a Lego set (such as this Ford Mustang), divides the number of assembly steps by 40 and puts them together as a Lenten discipline. The congregation also gets in on the action. Photo: JJ Dygert
JJ Dygert had always been something of a Lenten laggard until he began building his pre-Easter discipline around a lifelong love of Legos.
“I tried to give up French fries, chocolate, ice cream—and I never completed any of those,” said Dygert, pastor of First Lutheran Church in Kennewick, Wash.
This is Dygert’s fifth year of working his way through Lent via a limited daily dose of Legos, the interlocking bricks launched by Danish toymaker Ole Kirk Kristiansen. He obtains a Lego set—this year’s is a Darth Vader helmet—then divides the number of assembly steps by 40.
For Lego lifers like Dygert, limiting themselves in that way is akin to a child opening a Christmas present at the rate of one ribbon, bow or piece of tape per hour.
“You really stretch it out,” he said. “You do one part, and you see where it’s going, but then you have to stop and discipline yourself. It’s hard, but it’s good.”
Dygert, who during other times of the year might complete a Lego build in two hours or less, pairs his Lenten Lego time with some type of reading. Past years’ material has included the books of Psalms and Isaiah, and this year’s choice is Life Renewed: Devotions for Lent 2025 (Augsburg Fortress).
“It’s a great little devotional, short and to the point,” he said. “I get it done quickly, early in the day, and go on from there.”
This is Dygert’s fifth year of working his way through Lent via a limited daily dose of Legos. He obtains a Lego set, then divides the number of assembly steps by 40.
The origin of the Legos for Lent idea was a chance conversation between Dygert and Bob Albing, then pastor of Lutheran Church of the Master in Couer d’Alene, Idaho. Albing, now retired, and Dygert were serving on a Northwest Intermountain Synod panel when they learned that neither had outgrown his childhood affinity for Legos.
Albing suggested to Dygert that he use a recently obtained set as his Lenten discipline.
“I thought, that sounds fun and interesting,” Dygert said. “I used it in children’s sermons, and it kind of spread throughout the congregation, and this year we have a couple of adults doing Lenten Legos.
“That first one was a smaller set, so it could be frustrating. Sometimes I was only adding one Lego a day.”
Not wanting quite that level of deprivation, Dygert has made sure his subsequent Lenten creations are bigger. The Darth Vader helmet, the latest in a line of Star Wars-themed projects, features 834 pieces.
That sounds like a lot, until Dygert shares that he recently placed the last of the 7,541 pieces on an ultimate collector’s edition Millennium Falcon, resulting in a spaceship measuring 3 feet by 2 feet by 11 inches high.
You might say the ship has carried Dygert full circle—his first brush with Legos, as a 6- or 7-year-old, was a space set—but his Lego journey is far from over.
A discipline of rhythm
“I have almost all the Legos from my life,” Dygert said. “My kids had Legos, and then when they left, they reverted back to me. I’ve just had a long fascination with them, the imagination, the things you can do with red, yellow, white and blue bricks.”
If you’re part of the adult Lego community, you can likely relate.
“I remember when I was 5, receiving a suitcase from some cousins that had old toys in it,” Albing said. “My twin brother and I opened the suitcase and saw these multicolored bricks. They weren’t like blocks that fell off when you tried to stack them—you clicked them together! I was fascinated.”
Six decades later, inspired by Dygert, Albing is crafting a 1,023-piece Harley-Davidson Fat Boy motorcycle for Lent, while reading a chapter a day of Joan Chittister’s A Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully (BlueBridge, 2008).
“It has 40 chapters, so that worked out great,” he said. “Most people who do Legos think we’re nuts, because when you start doing a set, you just want to keep building and building.”
“I correlate it to fasting. The Lego discipline forces you to stop and not be so compulsive about finishing.”
“I correlate it to fasting,” said Albing, now on his third Lenten Lego project. “Eating is something you do automatically, you put something in your mouth, and fasting makes you pay attention. The Lego discipline forces you to stop and not be so compulsive about finishing.”
In January, Alice Allison, a 46-year member of First, would treat herself to an hour of Legos daily.
“Now it’s maybe 10 or 15 minutes, usually more like five, depending on how the pieces go together,” said Allison, whose Lenten project is three insects with a total piece count of 1,111. She completes seven assembly steps each morning, pairing her work with the same devotional Dygert is reading.
“It’s a Lenten discipline that fits my personality,” the former kindergarten and preschool teacher said. “I had tried to do these things, give up this or that, but it always became, ‘Nah, I can’t do that.’ But I can do this.”
