Adam Walker Cleaveland

Illustrated Ministry

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Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy

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We’re excited to share with you a FREE Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy! We know going back to school this fall will be such a big deal after a long stretch of being apart, and we want to provide you with resources to celebrate and mark this occasion.

Our worship liturgy includes a Call to Worship, Opening Prayer, Blessing of the Backpacks Liturgy, Prayers of the People, Closing Prayer, and a Benediction.

To download our FREE Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy, click here. You can read more information below about our backpack tags and why we wanted to create this resource for you this year. And if you want to share this resource with others, click the share button below. Thanks!

For the past four years, Illustrated Ministry has created illustrated tags for the Blessing of the Backpacks. Many churches participate in something like this as part of their back-to-school traditions. This year, for our fifth backpack tag design, we are excited to share our “Be Loved. Be Kind. Be You.” Backpack Tags.

Be Loved Backpack Tag

These backpack tags have been extremely popular, and we’ve seen customers use them in incredibly creative ways.

  • Some churches printed out the tags in color and laminated them to make luggage tags for backpacks, suitcases, briefcases, purses, and more!
  • Others used the design to make shrinky-dinks that they turned into keychains for folx in their congregations.
  • Some even used the illustration and made buttons for their community.

Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy

Each year, we also receive many requests from folx for a written liturgy for their blessing of the backpacks. This year, we’ve created one! But with all that you are planning for the academic year, we wanted to gift you with more than just a blessing of the backpacks liturgy; we included additional elements that you may wish to include in a back-to-school worship service.

We’ve all had to deal with disruptions that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to all areas of our lives, but especially to our education system. And many have had to deal with virtual learning and other pandemic precautions that made last year unlike any other school year. Going back to school this year is going to be a big deal.

There will be teachers meeting kids in person they’ve only seen over Zoom. Students will be seeing friends and classmates they’ve only known over Zoom and through online discussion boards. We’ll all have to figure out what it’s like to get back to some of our regular activities. And many will have questions: Am I ready for this? Will I be safe? What’s it going to be like to be around so many people again?

As you plan your Blessing of the Backpacks this year, we hope these additional components from this free resource will ease your planning and help you find ways to name and reflect on this huge adjustment throughout the worship service. Whether it’s in the Call to Worship, the Prayers of the People, or the Benediction, this free resource provides you with options that are ready to be used in your service.

If you’re ready to download our Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy, click here!

BACKPACK TAG DESIGNS:

If you’d like to see the various backpack tags we have (in English and Spanish), you can check them out below.

Back-to-School Worship Liturgy

Prayers for Marking a Year of COVID-19: Free Coloring Pages

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Prayers to Mark COVID-19

Prayers to Mark COVID-19

As churches and communities begin to look for ways to mark the passing of time during COVID-19, we thought we’d put together a set of prayers and coloring pages to help with that process.

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since COVID-19 changed the world as we knew it. As we brought our kids home from school and college and tried to figure out what Zoom worship looked like (it will only be for a few weeks, right?), we had no idea the amount of time we’d be staying home, the number of people who would die, and the toll the pandemic would take on our bodies: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve started seeing Facebook posts and memes about “Where were you this time last year?” when COVID-19 first started to change our lives drastically.

It’s been over a year since we’ve been together, seen our friends, shared hugs, and experienced the joy of community. And we know that churches, schools, and other community groups are trying to find ways to help people mark this passing of time.

We asked our team of writers to come up with some prayers to help communities mark this year of COVID-19, and we created a set of three coloring pages that go along with these prayers.

This is a free resource, so please feel free to share it widely. Unlike our purchased materials, you can post these free coloring pages on your website and make them available publicly.

FREE DOWNLOAD: Click here to download your free set of coloring pages to help mark a year of COVID-19.

Creating a Virtual Stations of the Cross Worship Experience

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The Stations of the Cross are a popular and meaningful way to journey through Lent and Holy Week, and we have created tools that you can use to create a virtual Stations of the Cross experience for your community. Learn more and order here.

Learn More: If you’d like to learn more about our Stations of the Cross Worship Videos, how you could use them in your community, and see a sample of the Liturgical Script and Reflection Booklet, click here to receive a FREE PDF with all the details.

We are now in our second Lent and Easter season amid a global pandemic. Pastors and church leaders now have a year’s worth of experience doing digital ministry. And yet, there’s still a challenge to walk through Christmas, Lent, and Easter when people in faith communities have such strong connections with the liturgical seasons.

Last year we asked the Illustrated Ministry Community Facebook Group what they most needed from us for Lent. The most popular request was for family devotional resources for Lent (which we already create, so that worked out well!). The second most popular request was for a “virtual Stations of the Cross.”

Illustrated Ministry has a variety of resources for the Stations of the Cross. Over the years, thousands of churches, schools, and communities have used our Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters, Coloring Pages, and Devotional Guide. You can check out those three products below:

We try to listen to our customers and provide them what they’re looking for, so we started dreaming up what a virtual Stations of the Cross might look like.

Virtual Stations of the Cross

Our Stations of the Cross Worship Videos provide you with everything you need to create a meaningful Stations of the Cross prayer and worship experience. You can create a virtual Stations of the Cross experience this year, but you can also use it in the future for in-person worship gatherings, Good Friday services, or retreats focused on the Stations of the Cross.

These Stations of the Cross are based on the 14 Scriptural Stations of the Cross, which Pope John Paul II introduced on Good Friday in 1991. They are presented as an alternative to the traditional stations and as a way of reflecting more deeply on the Scriptural accounts of Christ’s passion. We have added a fifteenth Station, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which you may want to save for Easter or omit altogether.

When you order our Stations of the Cross Worship Videos, you’ll receive the following:

  • Liturgical Script: This script guides participants through this virtual experience and accompanies the videos. You can read the script while showing the videos in a live (in-person or virtual) worship service. You can also use the script to create a voice-over (read by one person or many different voices) to add to the videos.
  • Worship Videos: These 15 videos feature the full-color Illustrated Ministry Stations of the Cross illustrations with music, sound effects, on-screen scripture, and prompts that directly tie in with the provided liturgical script. We include 15 videos for the fifteen Stations (with background music and sound effects), and two additional videos that include only the sound effects (in case you wanted to add your own background music in, but still wanted the sound effects). If you use the videos for all 15 Stations, your service will run for about 45 minutes.
  • Stations of the Cross Reflection Booklet: This booklet is designed as an add-on to accompany the virtual experience. It includes a modified version of the script, with additional space to write notes and reflect. You can give the booklet to participants to enrich their experience of the virtual Stations of the Cross. However, you don’t need to use the booklet for your virtual Stations of the Cross to be a meaningful experience.
  • Media Kit: We have included graphics to help you advertise your virtual Stations of the Cross experience on social media, in emails, and on your website and newsletter.

Liturgical Script and Reflection Booklet

How to use this resource

There are a variety of ways you could use these worship videos. Here are a few ideas we had in mind as we created the Stations of the Cross Worship Videos. We know, from experience, pastors in our community are amazingly creative, and we can’t wait to see all of the additional ways they end up using this resource to create Lenten experiences for their communities.

Zoom Good Friday Service

We imagine many will decide to use these videos during a live worship service, most likely on Good Friday. To give you an idea of what that might look like, our team recorded Station 3 on Zoom, and you can watch it below:

This option allows for the most amount of participation from people in your community. You can have multiple people read the different scripture passages from each Station and potentially have different people read the scripts that go along with each Station. If you run through all fifteen (or 14 Stations, saving the fifteenth Station for Easter morning), this service would run around 45 minutes. In addition to having people go through a guided experience of the Stations of the Cross, you can also provide them with the Reflection Booklet, which they could use during the service, and have for additional reflection after the service is done.

Individual Prayer Experience

Another option for using these worship videos is to take the videos, import them all into your video editing software of choice, and create a custom prayer experience for your community that could be shared on Facebook, used during a Zoom worship service, or premiered on YouTube/Vimeo for your community.

You could also invite people from your community to submit audio recordings of the scripture readings or narrations of the script for different Stations. You could import those voice-overs and use them to create your prayer experience.

This allows you the most flexibility. Whether you want one person or multiple people to read the scripts for each Station, you have the option to go either route. You can also choose to use the background music we provide, or just cut out the audio tracks from the videos, and add in your own background music (perhaps music from your own context and congregation members).

Making a virtual Stations of the Cross worship experience available online for your community allows people to go through the experience whenever it is convenient for them. You could also plan a time to gather together to reflect on their experience with the Stations of the Cross.

Outdoor Prayer Walk with QR Codes

Over the years, we’ve seen churches set up outdoor prayer walks using our Stations of the Cross illustrations. That opportunity is an excellent option right now, as it allows you to create a safe, socially-distanced worship opportunity for people in your community. Below is a photo from one church that has chosen to offer this to their community this year.

One option would be to create voice-overs for each of the Stations of the Cross videos, upload them to YouTube or Vimeo, and then create QR codes that would direct participants to each of the videos and guided reflections. Whether or not you use the full-color poster illustrations (as seen in the above photos), you could create a walking prayer experience for people to experience throughout Lent, especially during Holy Week, as they remember Jesus’ death and prepare for his resurrection.

Why you should use this resource to create a Virtual Stations of the Cross

Engage with your community in a new way

Perhaps you’ve never used the Stations of the Cross with your community. This would be a great opportunity to try something new with your congregation.

One of our editors who reviewed this product wrote the following after reading through the script:

“You all have redeemed the Stations of the Cross for me. Thank you for the solid theology, the beginning with beloved-ness, the beauty of the writing (seriously gorgeous), and the overall pastoral sensitivity the team exercised in the creation of this resource. It’s lovely, and I would totally use it whereas I have been turned off by other presentations of the Stations of the Cross in the past.”

We obviously can’t use this as an official testimonial for the product since it came from someone on our team. But we still wanted to share it with you because their comments meant so much to us and to how we attempted to translate the Stations of the Cross for our community.

Recruit volunteers from your community

Because there are so many opportunities to help lead this Stations of the Cross experience, it provides a wonderful opportunity to involve many different people in creating this meaningful prayer and worship experience. You could invite multiple people to read portions of the scripture passages or even the narrated scripts for the Stations. This could also be a great youth group project for Lent. Invite your youth group to work on putting this service together and allow it to be a gift to the entire church.

Provide multiple experiences with one program

Depending on how you end up creating and sharing your service, this resource could provide you with many different touchpoints for your community during Lent. If you end up creating a 45-minute video/service, you could use it for a Good Friday service and share it live over Zoom. However, you can then make the link available for folx in your community who could not watch it live, and they can watch it on-demand.

You could also create the videos as standalone Stations and release them daily on Facebook or Instagram (using IGTV), leading up to Easter morning.

Learn More: If you’d like to learn more about our Stations of the Cross Worship Videos, how you could use them in your community, and see a sample of the Liturgical Script and Reflection Booklet, click here to receive a FREE PDF with all the details.

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