Contemplative Prayer Stations

Purpose: To encourage participants to meditate on the reality of Romans 6 - walking with Christ into his death, and emerging with him into his life. Thanx to crosspointings.org for this one!
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Materials Needed:
Images symbolizing death (tombstones, etc.)
Scriptures about dying with Christ (Phil 1.21, Rom 6:3, etc…)
Many Candles
“Path Markers” (see pictures below for what we used)
A “closet”
A chair

Set Up:
-Set up two paths, by use of mats or carpet or paper. One path leads to the “closet,” the other leads away from it and ends at a communion table.
-In the middle of the “V” set up the table with the images symbolizing death, the Scripture passages, and the title of the prayer station.
Mark the two paths with appropriate symbols (our path to death had tomb-stones, candles, and bricks with the names of sins painted on them - our path of life was lined with candles and bricks with virtues painted on them).
-Make sure the closet door can shut.
-It is great to have communion at the end of this station if possible!

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Dirrections:
(Post at the begining)
Spend time meditating on the images at the table in the center of the “V.”
When ready, walk slowly down the “path to death.” As you walk focus on your need to die with Christ.

(Post on the closet Door) Enter into the closet and sit, with the door shut. While in the darkness, ask God to help you learn to die to yourself. When ready leave the closet.

(Post at the exit of closet)Walk down the “path of life,” and while you do so meditate on the images and scripture concerning new life.

Using juice to represent the “fruit of the spirit", people actively do something (drink) as they pray for the spirit to grow fruit in their lives.
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Directions for Leadership:
Set up: In the back of the room set up 2 long tables with tablecloths. Go to your local “cheep food” store and get 9 different flavors of juice. Suggestions, Apple, orange, lemonade, grape, pear, cranberry, fruit punch (love!) and a few other mixes or random one (like Papaya!). Label the 9 pitchers with the Fruits and pour one juice in each. Keep the bottles of juice under the table in case you need to refill one of the fruits. Make sure you know what goes with what too! Set cups out on the table and several copies of the directions scattered along the table.

Table directions below….
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“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” – Galatians 5:22

Have you ever thought about why Paul called it fruit? Possibly it is because fruit grows. Some of you have developed only the tiniest first buds, barely noticeable in your life. For others, those buds have opened into the beautiful, fragrant–and fragile blossoms. Those blossoms give way to the hard unripe fruit, and, over time, grow and develop to full maturity. The process takes time. That’s important. These things aren’t gifts; you don’t wake up one morning with the gift of gentleness or the gift of self-control. They grow slowly over a lifetime.

Around this area are several pitchers of fruit juice labeled with the fruits of the spirit. Consider which one you have least of in you life and the go and poor some of that juice into a cup. Pray that God would fill you with that fruit and grow it in you. Then drink. Let the symbol of you drinking that cup be a symbol of your openness to God changing you and filling you.

If you would like, you may drink more than one “Fruit”.

This contemplative prayer station allows people to think about what God is already doing in this world, in their community, and in their lives. It ends up as a huge brainstorming session in a lot of ways; as the end you have a large piece of paper with a with some pretty amazing stuff on it.

Photo from Live Oak Vineyard, Arcadia, CA
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Directions for Leadership:
Tape a large piece of butcher paper onto a table and place chairs around it along with some witting utensils and the directions below.

In the middle of the paper write this: What in the world is God doing… through us, his people?

It might be prudent to write down a few examples to get people going. IE: “God is saving my marriage!” “God is using our church to feed the homeless!” “God helped me be kind today!”
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Directions:

There is a large sheet of paper on the table. Take time to brainstorm the question written on it. Write as many things as you can think of.

When done think about these questions for a while….
If we, the people at this worship gathering, are part of the body of Christ, what are some ways we are being Christ to others already?
What more could we be doing?
What are you going to do about it?
(you don’t need to write anything down here, just think about it, and then do it!)

Using situation that have actually happened, people are asked to think what their response would have been.
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Directions for leadership:
This particular station is to make people think. Post each situation around a room or closed off area where people can walk around and read all the different one. Post the directions periodically around the room as well. Or you can set it up linearly, one long row with the directions at the beginning. Along with each situation look for a picture that can go along with it in some way, this helps make it a little less abstract .
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Directions:
Around the area are various situations. As you read through the situation, think about how you would respond if it were you. Does it match up with what Jesus would want you to do?
By the way, all situations actually happened…

I was driving along and saw a road side stand with strawberries. Of course, I immediately pulled over to get some, seeing how strawberries are a gift from heaven, especially with ice cream. But when I walked up I remembered a comment my father had made once about how we shouldn’t support illegal immigrants by buying their produce. It was obvious it was a Latino family running the stand and only the teenager could speak English.
A few weeks ago I was walking in downtown Grass Valley, and I stopped to look in a window. There was a Black man standing by his car next to me. As I turned, a white man was walking past us and I heard him say to the Black man: “You are in the way, Boy.” And continued walking. (Boy is used as a derogatory term left over from when we viewed Blacks as less than human, an opinion obviously still around.)

Last winter, while taking the exit off of Highway 20 to come to church, I saw a homeless man standing with a sign. As we came up to the stop, I was better able to read his sign. “Homeless: need shoes.” We were already 5 min late and our lateness would be noticed as we had responsibilities in the service.

After a nice dinner with some friends, I was walking down Main St. and there was a man passed out on the side walk, up against the building. The guy was obviously drunk. I paused, and shivered a bit (it was cold that night) and looked around.

I was out shopping the other day and I saw an Arab woman and her husband, both dressed in traditional Muslim clothes, walking by. I turned to go the opposite way and realized there was a group of young guys following the two, making crass jokes about Muslims and terrorists.

I was walking down the street in the middle of the day and all of the sudden I hear this guy yelp and a gunshot. I turn and see this guy ducking back and forth behind a tree as another man fires his gun over and over at him.

One night I was talking with some friends, one of which was a woman who was very overweight and always fluctuated in clothing size. It was raining out and as I looked around I realized she had no coat, and probably couldn’t afford one.

I was eating dinner on the porch of my apartment and the neighbor guy, who is always high on some drug or another, came over to me. He said he didn’t have enough cash to go grocery shopping till tomorrow (yet some how has enough cash to get some pot ten minutes earlier) and wonder if he could have some of my dinner left-overs.

This contemplative prayer station uses hole punches to help worshipers visualize our holey-ness and Gods saving grace.

This contemplative prayer station was found at www.crosspointings.org
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Directions for Leadership:

You will need to cut out paper people, enough for 2 per person. On a table place the half the paper people in one basket with a label marked “me” and the rest in another basket with a label marked “Jesus". Also place a bunch of hole-punchers with various sins taped to the handles in the middle of the table along with some glue sticks and markers.
Print out the Directions and the verses from Roman (below) to put on the table too.

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Directions:

Before beginning, take a moment to quiet yourself and invite God into this time and into your thoughts.

Take a paper cut out from the basket labeled “me” and take time to draw yourself onto it.

Look around the table at all the hole-punchers. Notice they are named with specific sins. For every sin the has affected you or that they’ve visited upon another, punch a hole in your paper self

Read Romans 7:24-25.

Now, take a paper “Jesus” and past it onto the back of yours and as you do so pray that God will repair the real brokenness in you and fill you with more of himself.

When done, place your paper-self under the cross.

Romans 7:24 - 25

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!