Our community has a history of sponsoring a community Good Friday service. It is one of the last in a series of services sponsored by the clergy association in town. It takes place at midday. Our church has supported this service, and the whole series for several years, so we have avoided adding anything of our own to Good Friday that might take away from the population for the community service. I offered a sacred concert of organ music for a couple of years, feeling that this was different enough from a worship service that it would not detract from the community service, and that it was also not going to even attempt to draw the same crowd that would attend a "regular" worship service. I have also had our choir offer choral music on Good Friday in recent years, with the same thinking in mind.
This stations event would build on that concept: it would target persons who might not normally go to the community service, and it would not be a "service" in the typical sense. We were hopeful a good cross-section of our congregation's demographic would attend, especially families with children. And we felt the "art" aspect would really separate it in the minds of our community.
Planning with our artists was very gratifying. They had plenty of ideas of creative ways to explore Bible passages for Good Friday. Ultimately we decided to expand and somewhat superficially cover all of Holy Week beginning with Palm Sunday, but avoid any hint at Easter, all without it being a "gloomy" event. We settled on 6 stations with 8 "projects. It was a very dynamic exchange with lots of adjustments as I offered possible Bible passages, to which the artists offered possible art projects. We wanted everything to be attainable by even young children, but yet wanted the whole evening to provide enough theological heft to appeal to older adults.
By this point we knew we wanted to offer food at the event and settled on a specific time-frame during which food would be available, with folks coming and going at will from the other aspects of the evening. We also wanted to have our sanctuary available as a quiet place for prayer. These really became two additional stations, the dining hall being a chance to reflect on the last supper Jesus shared with his followers, and the sanctuary emblematic of Jesus praying in the garden prior to his arrest.
Next post I'll go into detail with the specific stations and the art projects.
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