In today's fast-paced culture of impatience and instant gratification, it was only a matter of time before religious worship joined the ranks of express delivery, instant meals and live streaming TV, by becoming a drive-thru experience.

Worshipers who want to observe today's Ash Wednesday no longer need to go to a church to participate: A growing number of churches are bringing their Ash Wednesday services to the streets, as well as to train stations, libraries and coffee shops.

Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent, a roughly 40-day period of penitence that concludes with the celebration of Easter. This holy day is traditionally celebrated with a Mass where a priest administers ashes as a visible sign of penance.

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But a growing number of New Jersey commuters in recent years have observed Ash Wednesday in an express service with priests who mark their foreheads with ashes at busy intersections, bus stations and parking lots.

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The "Ashes to Go" initiative was launched over a decade ago by an Episcopal Church in St. Louis and the concept was subsequently adopted by churches around the country.

The goal is to pull religion from the pews and bring the holy spirit into the mundane places where the time-crunched faithful scurry each day.

The Rev. Emily Mellott, the pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church in Moorestown, who is credited with expanding the idea into a national movement, said that after she started conducting "Ashes to Go" services in 2010, she was bombarded with inquiries from people wanting to participate. She launched a website listing places around the nation doing "Ashes To Go."

By 2012, there were more than 80 churches in 21 states involved, she said.

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Now, the practice has become too widespread to track. "It's much more likely to be near you than it was five years ago," said Mellott. "Most people stumble on it and that's one of the nice opportunities about it is that it's a surprise encounter for many people who didn't know the church was on the streets."

Some churches, like Christ Church in Ridgewood, are offering a "drive-thru" for those who can't make it to a full service. "We do a one-paragraph prayer and impose the ashes on people as they come through," said Rector Thomas Mathews, the head priest. "Last year we had more people come through that than to our three traditional services."

There's a lot more interest in the drive-through, especially for families with young children, he said. "They can hear the one prayer, get their ashes and be on their way."

He and other church leaders admit they would prefer worshipers to attend the full service, rather than the scaled down version. "In the service, we talk about the re-orientation and turning things around," he said. But the drive-thru, which contains a kernel of the day's liturgy, is a start.

"I'm trying to meet people where they are," Mathews said.

The trend has caught on among some Catholic churches, including St. Matthias in Somerset, which is running drive-thru ashes for the second year in a row after 500 cars rolled through ast year. "We had scheduled it for just an hour last year but people began coming and waiting at around 3:30 p.m. and it was nonstop so we decided to extend it this year," said Ana Kelly, the pastoral associate for marketing at St. Matthias.

Many of the worshipers who came said they would not have otherwise been able to receive ashes. Others were just driving by and decided to stop, Kelly said.

Not everyone is pleased by the notion of turning the sacred rite into a "take it to go" experience. Critics assert that worshipers who skip the full religious service in favor of a quicksmudge of ashes end up missing the essence of the holy day, which urges worshipers to reflect and repent.

Msgr. Richard Arnhols, the pastor of the St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Bergenfield, said the ashes should be received within the context of a meaningful prayer service.

"There's nothing magic about the ashes, that's just a symbol of renewal that is brought out more clearly by the prayers so you will be disposed to trying harder to do what you are supposed to do," he said.

"It seems more fitting to be done in a religious context," Arnhols said. "It's supposed to be part of a whole spiritual experience that doesn't suggest itself to be instantaneous."

But Nina Nicholson, communications director for the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, said the response to the trend has been overwhelming. 'We are taking the church outside the doors of the church building and meeting people where they are," she said.

Nicholson, who estimates that a third of the Episcopal Church's 98 congregations will participate in the Ashes to Go effort this year, added that when she helps the bishop with the effort at Newark Penn Station, people eagerly line up for prayers and ashes.

They receive them "respectfully and prayerfully," and they often return with their co-workers. "They are so grateful," she said. "There we are standing in the middle of Newark Penn Station during rush hour and all of that just disappears – they have a moment when they are touched by the holy spirit."