last night jonathon and i put together a prayer stations worship for some fellow youth workers. i'll try and give a synopsis of what we did. much of what we did we took inspiration from various worship settings on the smallfire collection.
opening: we started off with a little chat on the worship. kicked in with the breathe episode of nooma videos. then followed with some liturgical prayers & response. jonathon played some brian eno ambient music.
postcards2God: this was pretty simple and straightforward. this group had spent a year together in learning, small groups, mentorship, and fellowship. not to mention the year they spent doing their youth ministry work. we equated that to a "road trip" type spiritual pilgrimage. so we asked them to write God a postcard chronicling their experience. if i had to do this one again i'd probably make some postcards with various pictures.
steps: this wasn't as fabulous as we imagined. in a functional sense. the concept is that we all walk a journey and our steps weave together. the idea is that they step in the pans of dirt, get some good dirt on the shoes and then tread it across the pathway. well, the dirt didn't really stick, even when we watered it down a bit and the paper didn't show too much tread. i'd probably use some fabric next time and some peat-moss or something that sticks more next time. i like the concept though, so i'm sure we'll try it again.
the shredder: this one we took a slant of claiming how in ministry you can get over run with expectations. expectations from every single congregation member, staff, and the greater church. we took a little bit of my paper recycle (something us youth mins get a ton of) mixed in with some actual job descriptions and then topped with an exaggerated job description we embellished of this list. i'll update this post with the document later (on the church server).
how many?: this one was pretty simple. just give the ym's a chance to reflect on how they use their time (something we've done a couple of different ways before). each block represents a unit of time. you stack blocks, in no particular way, according to how many units of time you take up in; time with God, family time, in meetings, planning, etc.
the wall of importance: this one, i don't seem to have a picture of. oh, i know why. i had to go to the bathroom when i was taking pictures so i handed the camera off to jonathon and this is what he did.
the wall was pretty simple, some large paper taped to a folding table that we leaned against the wall. the meditation was about answering questions of what is important to you in your life & what you want to commit to giving more importance too.
updated: for a listing of prayer station ideas within this blog. click here for our prayer stations index page.
