What Is “Prayer Around the Cross?”
Note: this year we are using Prayer Around the Cross for our Lenten Worship Services.
Prayer Around the Cross is a meaningful devotional prayer service that was originally developed at Holden Village. Holden is an intergenerational retreat next to the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area in Washington State. It is a contemplative service filled with music, scripture and silence. It stems from the ancient and emerging worship movement with a Post-Modern component. It is sort of Holden’s response to Taize’ style worship. We will have a variation of this service here at Grace this Lent.
As we will practice it here at Grace this Lent we will have a large cross lying longitudinally in the sanctuary as the center focus of our worship. Rather than sit in pews the whole service, we will encourage those gathered to move from station to station in the worship area. There will be several interactive stations around the cross. Some will have a worship assistant to aid the worshippers at that station. Others will be areas that are more or less devotional areas of solitude with devotional aides. Some stations will remain the same each week, such as the opportunity to light a candle and place it at the cross and the station for healing prayer. Others will change, for instance the station for ashes will only be available on Ash Wednesday, the station with icons will have a different icon each week.
During the worship time we will have times of music, times of scripture readings, and times of silence. The times of music will have not only congregational singing, but also solos and ensembles. The scripture readings will be both silent by the worshippers and aloud by a lector. Some of the times of silence will have suggestions for devotion and others will be left to the thoughts and concerns of the worshippers.
We hope those who come will find these Lenten services meaningful and engaging. We will design this worship to have a variety of opportunities for all ages. There will be stations that are designed just with children in mind. At the same time, there will be stations that adults will find spiritually and intellectually stimulating. Our focus throughout Lent will be on the cross of Christ and God’s redeeming love for the world.