Wednesday night for our youth service I decided to do something that focussed attention on the last days and hours in the earthly life of Jesus in a special and memorable way. I used a Youth Specialties resource called Journey to the Cross. I've been wanting to do it for years, and I almost passed on it again this year because it is designed as a prayer station experience. I absolutely love prayer station experiences, but our meeting room is not conducive to such a setup. However, I decided to adapt the presentation for our room. I created a beautiful slide show with the Scriptures, thoughts, and pictures of the scenes that would have been created at the stations. As each person entered the room they were given a bag with the items they would have normally gathered at individual stations. (Note: My one mistake (I'm sure there were more, but this one was really obvious): I used paper bags. I failed to consider that every time they went to get an item out it was like a hail storm in the midst of a quiet and reflective night. Oops! They did well at getting past it though, so I was proud of them for handling it with some maturity. If you do it this way, definitely go with plastic baggies.) I also had candles lining the stage which they had to come forward and extinguish at one point, as well as a table with communion elements on it which they also came forward to partake of during the journey. I then led them through the experience by just clicking through the slides. For added affect I played some background music (used a good movie soundtrack (ex. Braveheart)) and read the Scripture portions that were projected on the screen (other than that, I just let them read the slides and respond accordingly). After the experience I closed in prayer and invited students to further digest it and post comments on our blog, which I was glad to see a few of them did. It was different than our usual structure, but it was by far one of our best services of the year! I mean that! It was totally awesome! If you want to try the Journey to the Cross yourself, you can download it here.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Journey to the Cross
Wednesday night for our youth service I decided to do something that focussed attention on the last days and hours in the earthly life of Jesus in a special and memorable way. I used a Youth Specialties resource called Journey to the Cross. I've been wanting to do it for years, and I almost passed on it again this year because it is designed as a prayer station experience. I absolutely love prayer station experiences, but our meeting room is not conducive to such a setup. However, I decided to adapt the presentation for our room. I created a beautiful slide show with the Scriptures, thoughts, and pictures of the scenes that would have been created at the stations. As each person entered the room they were given a bag with the items they would have normally gathered at individual stations. (Note: My one mistake (I'm sure there were more, but this one was really obvious): I used paper bags. I failed to consider that every time they went to get an item out it was like a hail storm in the midst of a quiet and reflective night. Oops! They did well at getting past it though, so I was proud of them for handling it with some maturity. If you do it this way, definitely go with plastic baggies.) I also had candles lining the stage which they had to come forward and extinguish at one point, as well as a table with communion elements on it which they also came forward to partake of during the journey. I then led them through the experience by just clicking through the slides. For added affect I played some background music (used a good movie soundtrack (ex. Braveheart)) and read the Scripture portions that were projected on the screen (other than that, I just let them read the slides and respond accordingly). After the experience I closed in prayer and invited students to further digest it and post comments on our blog, which I was glad to see a few of them did. It was different than our usual structure, but it was by far one of our best services of the year! I mean that! It was totally awesome! If you want to try the Journey to the Cross yourself, you can download it here.
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