I had the pleasure this Easter season, to be a part of the creation of a 12-station Holy Week prayer walk at my home church. The idea came out of COVID-19’s effect on our church – our inability to meet weekly and mostly, frustration. Time for lemonade from these lemons! What sweet lemonade indeed!
The Children, Middle School, and High School ministers put their heads together and came up with the idea of inviting members to write, build, install, and illustrate. For each of the 12 stations, a text was chosen depicting an important part of Jesus’ experience from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Day, a Resurrection Egg item was identified, Family Reflection, Going Deeper, and a Prayer were written. For each of the 12 stations, someone painted or drew a picture, illustrating the focused action of that station. For each of the 12 stations, posts and number signs were built and installed.
A booklet was produced with the devotional for each station, including a photograph of each piece of artwork. The booklet contents were also made into a webpage so, if they chose to, walkers could use their phone instead to read the devotional. (I had the pleasure of making what our Middle School minister put together “look pretty” by formatting it into a booklet using MS Word, taking photographs of the artwork and adding it to the booklet, and putting the booklet contents on a webpage. Oh! AND painting for Station 7.)
In addition, the opening day was reserved for families with children, who were invited to reserve their time via sign-up Genius. Each family received a Walk-Kit that contained a carton filled with colorful, Easter “Resurrection Eggs”, a booklet, and a Zip-Lock bag with random items that would be identified to place into the “Resurrection Egg” at each station. Families could go as deep as they chose to in reading each station’s devotional and prayer.
The reserved time ended at 1:00 pm. At that point, all were welcome to come and experience the walk as they chose. Left-over Walk-Kits were available to any who requested one. Booklets were available to any who wanted one – we even had a QR code to link to the online booklet.
The Holy Week Prayer Walk was initially intended for our church attenders. But we couldn’t help but invite our friends who attended elsewhere to join us. Anyone I talked to who did the walk, LOVED it! It was a sweet thing to witness as families with their children read the Family Reflections and prayed the prayers. We plan to repeat this event next year and invite the community.
Not Quite Contrary Mary 