Running the Daniel Fast With Your Church
The food half of 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting: what to hand your congregation, and the questions that will reach you in week one.
If your church is keeping 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting, the spiritual half is yours and the food half is the part people will ask about. This page gathers what you can hand out: the full Daniel Fast food list, a plan for the three weeks, and plain answers to the questions that reach a pastor's inbox in the first week.
Many congregations that keep a corporate fast in January keep the Daniel Fast: twenty-one days of whole, plant-based food and water, drawn from Daniel 1:12 and Daniel 10:2-3. It asks almost nothing of the church calendar and a great deal of the grocery list, which is why the questions that come back are nearly always about food.
January is the whole season
In the United States, searches for the Daniel Fast run about 33,100 a month in September, 90,500 in December and 368,000 in January, more than ten times the autumn level (Google Ads keyword planner data for the United States, measured September 2026). The phrase congregations themselves search is "21 days of prayer and fasting", which runs 2,400 a month and 14,800 in January.
Practically that means two things. People decide in the last week of December, so material that appears on 2 January is late. And the questions come early rather than spread out, nearly all of them variations on one question: can I eat this?
Ready to pass on
What to Hand Your Congregation
Start here
The food list
Everything the fast includes and everything it sets aside, in one table: grains, protein, dairy, sweeteners, bread, fats and drinks. A food list is what church fasting pages most often send people to, because it answers the question they actually have.
For the week-one questions
Can I eat this?
A searchable list of 131 foods people stop and wonder about, from vinegar and decaf to nutritional yeast and eating out. Three answers rather than two: where a food honestly depends on the label or on conscience, it says so.
Printable
A four-week meal plan
A free PDF of simple, whole-food meals with a shopping list, sent by email. Print it for the welcome table, or put the link in the church newsletter.
For the cooks
Recipes for the fast
Lentil and vegetable soup, stuffed peppers, overnight oats, three-bean salad and more, all within the fast and all with the Scripture behind the dish.
How the three weeks usually run
There is no official rulebook, and churches differ. The pattern most congregations follow is twenty-one consecutive days, taken from the three weeks of mourning in Daniel 10:2-3, beginning on the first Sunday or the first Monday of January and running to the third week.
A shorter ten-day version, drawn from Daniel 1:12, is a common entry point and worth offering openly. A finished ten days is worth more than a twenty-one that was abandoned in week one.
Two practical notes that save a lot of questions later. Say clearly at the start whether your church counts coffee out, because that single question will take up more of week one than anything else. And say what someone should do if they miss a day, because they will, and without an answer they quietly stop.
For the person who cannot fast food
For some people a change in diet is a question for a doctor rather than for the church: anyone managing a medical condition, anyone pregnant or nursing, anyone in recovery from an eating disorder, and anyone whose medication depends on food. Say from the front that they should speak with their doctor first, and make it easy to sit this one out without explaining themselves.
Many churches offer a second track for exactly this reason: fasting from media, from one meal a day, or from something else the person will genuinely miss. It keeps the whole congregation in the same three weeks without asking anyone to take a risk with their health.
Week one
The Questions You Will Get
Can we drink coffee on the Daniel Fast?
No. The fast limits drinks to water, so coffee, tea, juice, soda and alcohol are all set aside. Warn people in advance that the first few days without caffeine take some adjusting, and that it passes.
Is honey allowed?
No. Most versions of the fast exclude every sweetener, honey included. Whole fruit such as dates and figs carries the sweetness instead.
Can we eat bread?
Only unleavened, whole-grain bread made without yeast or sugar. Ordinary bread, sourdough and anything raised with baking powder or baking soda are set aside, because the fast is unleavened.
What do we do about a church potluck?
Keep it, and make it plain. A pot of lentil soup, roasted vegetables, a large salad with oil and lemon on the side, brown rice and fruit will feed a hall and stay inside the fast. Ask people to label what they bring, which removes every awkward conversation at the table.
Someone asked about vinegar, or yeast extract, or decaf. What do I say?
Say that some things honestly depend on the label or on conscience, and point them at the food checker rather than ruling from the front. A wrong yes costs more on a fast than an honest "I am not sure", and a congregation that can look things up stops asking you.
Is the Daniel Fast the same as being vegan?
No, it is stricter. Like a vegan diet it excludes all animal products, but it also removes added sugar, leavened bread, refined and processed food, deep-fried food and caffeine, and it limits drinks to water.
Using this with your church
Everything linked from this page is free and public. You are welcome to point your congregation straight at the food list, put the link in a newsletter or a bulletin, or print the meal plan for a welcome table. Nothing here needs an account. The food list, the checker and the recipes ask for nothing at all; only the meal plan asks for an email address, because it is sent by email.
If it helps to have the whole fast on a phone, day by day with the reading and a check-in, there is an app for that as well. It is a single purchase, no subscription, and it is not needed to keep the fast.