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Stations of the Cross

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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Community Spotlight: St. Gregory the Great Catholic School (Oxford, England)

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St. Gregory's Stations of the Cross Posters
I love seeing the joy on the faces of the St. Gregory the Great students as they display their Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters.

Today we are starting a new series of blog posts where we will highlight some members of our community and sharing with you how they used some of our resources and products. We’ve written before about how creativity breeds creativity, and we love seeing how communities use our products. While our coloring posters are typically used in church congregations, we saw many schools who found creative uses for using coloring posters at school – especially our Stations of the Cross posters during Lent. Special thanks to Fran Walsh and all of the students and staff at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School in Oxford for providing the great photos.

FREE DOWNLOADABLE PDF: Do you want to see all of the photos from St. Gregory the Great? We’ve included the content of this blog post, plus the rest of St. Gregory’s photos, as well as photos from some other schools who used our Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters in this FREE downloadable PDF you can get and share with others. Click here to gain access to the free PDF.

We asked Fran Walsh, the Chaplaincy Youth Worker at St. Gregory the Great, to tell us a bit about the school and how they used our Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters. She shared about their experience about using coloring posters at school below.

St. Gregory the Great Catholic Secondary School in Oxford is part of a Multi Academy Company with seven other Catholic Primary Schools in the area; together we make up the Dominic Barberi MAC. We have been looking for ways to work together to develop the faith and spiritual life of our schools, and the Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters offered us a perfect joint project to work on together.

Each school had two stations to colour in over Lent; some offered the opportunity to a particular class, other passed the station around to multiple classes, and others left the colouring in one place and let the students come during break and lunch times to colour. Towards the end of Lent each school sent the coloured stations back to St Greg’s school where we framed them and then made them available to all the DBMAC schools to use. Some schools used them in classrooms, while others used them throughout their whole school, local community acts of worship, and Mass and Reconciliation Services.

Using Coloring Posters at School

We put the Stations up in the Reception of St Greg’s as a permanent visual reminder that as staff and students walk into the school, they are walking on holy ground.

Unexpected Joys While Using Coloring Posters at School

I would like to share with you some of the unexpected joys that I experienced that came from colouring the stations with the secondary school students.

It was one of the first warm days we had in spring and I sought out the sunny outside areas of the school to set up my colouring tables. Lugging the big tables out on my own, I feared this may all be in vain if the students took one look at my offering and thought it was babyish. But something in me made me persist.

I taped down the huge colouring sheet so the wind would not blow them away and placed the new felt tip pens in baskets on each table. The bell rang, I sat at one of the tables and waited to see if anyone wanted to colour. To my delight, a large group of y11 girls (16 year olds) were thrilled at the sight of a colouring table after they had experienced a stressful exam. They sat happily for 20 minutes colouring and chatting and winding down from the stress. I smiled to myself as I heard them say, “this is so nice, I feel so relaxed” and “I can’t remember the last time I did this” and “Miss, you will be back here at lunch won’t you?”

Jesus Poster

Using Coloring Posters at School is Great for Boys As Well

A small group of boys (also y11) joined me at the colouring table and they were the most unlikely group to want to do this! We chatted and got to know each other, and I am convinced they shared more about themselves because the focus was not solely on them. We were working together on something rather than them feeling pressured to answer questions. These boys were new to the country and their English was not yet very good; colouring needed no great discussions to make it work, and we got on perfectly well with our unique form of broken language!

Others looked on and a group of younger y7 students (11 years old) came to investigate, teachers on duty looked over longingly, people looked out of windows from above and everyone seemed to wonder what we were up to!

Students came back day after day to colour a bit more, and watch their contribution grow.

In tutor time each day, for fourteen days, the students read the scripture of one of the stations. As the month went by, students made the connection between what they were colouring and the scripture they had heard in the classroom. As the colouring grew, the pictures became clearer, but also the message behind the images became illuminated in their minds. The tutor time, scripture, Gospel Assemblies and colouring all worked together to build connection points in their minds about the message behind the Stations of the Cross and the seasons of Lent and Easter.

Using Coloring Posters at School

If you want to print out a copy of this for your friends or colleagues, as you think about how you might use coloring posters at school, don’t forget to download your FREE PDF here.

Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters

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We are excited about our Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters, and we hope this post has helpful information for you as you begin your Lenten planning.

Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters

DOWNLOADABLE PDF: Don’t have time to read this blog post right now, but want to print it out? Would you like a PDF handout that you can take to your next staff or committee meeting to tell them about these Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters? Click here to download an Infoguide about the Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters.

If you aren’t familiar with the Stations of the Cross, or would like to learn more, you can find out some details about the history of them at Wikipedia here. One of the earliest versions of the Stations of the Cross may have begun around 1217 by St. Francis, who started the Custody of the Holy Land, a group that guarded and promoted the devotion to certain holy places. But it was around 1200-1500 when it was noticed that travelers to the Holy Lands followed a certain sacred route to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

The Stations of the Cross allow us to follow Christ through his last few days, stopping to ponder and reflect along the way.

There is a rich visual history of the Stations of the Cross, and the stations have been painted, sketched, illustrated and drawn in some beautiful and creative ways. However, if you do a google images search for Stations of the Cross coloring sheets, you’ll see artwork that all looks very similar. There is not a child-friendly portrayal of the stations that we have been able to find. Additionally, because many of the versions we found online use the traditional form of the stations of the cross, many of the coloring sheets look very similar. In the traditional form, you have Jesus falling three times, Jesus meeting his mother, the women of Jerusalem, and Veronica wiping Jesus’ face, and these all end up producing almost visually-identical images.

We thought we could create something more creative and meaningful to both children and adults, and so we are excited about our launch of the Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters for Lent 2017.

In addition to the coloring posters, we have also created 8.5×11 coloring sheets of the illustration and a devotional guide – links are below:

  • Coloring Posters: Purchase a set of our physical coloring posters. We also have B&W and color digital versions available.
  • 8.5×11 Coloring Pages: Our 8.5×11 coloring pages also include a more simplified version of the illustrations for the youngest colorers.
  • Devotional Guide: Our devotional guide provides reflections and discussion questions for both children AND adults, as they work through the Stations of the Cross.

Below you can find some specific information about how we’ve decided to approach these coloring posters.

Stations of the Cross: Scriptural Form

The Illustrated Ministry community comes from over 45 different denominations, some of whom may not be familiar with the Stations of the Cross. We also felt more drawn to the scriptural form of the Stations of the Cross, which Pope John Paul II introduced as the Scriptural Way of the Cross on Good Friday 1991. The stations are listed below, along with their accompanying scripture reference:

  • Station 1: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-41)
  • Station 2: Jesus, Betrayed by Judas, is Arrested (Mark 14:43-46)
  • Station 3: Jesus is Condemned by the Sanhedrin (Luke 22:66-71)
  • Station 4: Jesus is Denied by Peter (Matthew 26:69-75)
  • Station 5: Jesus is Judged by Pilate (Mark 15:1-5, 15)
  • Station 6: Jesus is Scourged and Crowned with Thorns (John 19:1-3)
  • Station 7: Jesus Bears the Cross (John 19:6, 15-17)
  • Station 8: Jesus is Helped by Simon the Cyrenian to Carry the Cross (Mark 15:21)
  • Station 9: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem (Luke 23:27-31)
  • Station 10: Jesus is Crucified (Luke 23:33-34)
  • Station 11: Jesus Promises His Kingdom to the Good Thief (Luke 23:39-43)
  • Station 12: Jesus Speaks to His Mother and the Disciples (John 19:25-27)
  • Station 13: Jesus Dies on the Cross (Luke 23:44-46)
  • Station 14: Jesus is Placed in the Tomb (Matthew 27:57-60)

We are also going to include a fifteenth station: the Resurrection of Jesus (Mark 16:1-6).

While the traditional form of the stations depict some stories that are taken from tradition, rather than from scripture, the scriptural form of the stations presents a version of this devotion that more closely aligned with the biblical accounts.

Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters

Our Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters are available as posters, and also as 8.5×11 coloring pages (and will be able to be purchased separately). For each of the fourteen stations, we have taken one word that highlights what is happening in the station, and used that word to focus our illustration and questions. In addition to our posters, our Stations of the Cross Devotional Guide will provide you with a quality resource that you can use to put together a creative and meaningful intergenerational program for Lent.

Since we knew that having 14 posters to color during Lent would be too much, we decided to put two stations on each poster, and they look like an open Bible to remind folks that these events and stations come out of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ last few days.

Details about posters: We will have seven 3′ x 2′ posters which will display the fourteen Stations of the Cross based off the scriptural form of the stations, and then we will have an eighth 3′ x 2′ poster for the 15th station, Resurrection, that can be incorporated into Holy Week or Easter Sunday.

Below you can see the poster designs included in this poster series (click on the image to see a larger version of the poster design):

Ideas for Using our Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters

We love seeing how churches, schools, and other communities decide to use our coloring posters. Below are just a few ideas for how you might be able to incorporate our Stations of the Cross coloring posters into your programs or communities:

  • Children’s Ministry: Find ways to incorporate the posters into your Sunday morning programs for children (whether that’s during Sunday School or during another time)
  • During Worship: Dedicate a section in your worship space to allow young people (and those who are young at heart) to color during worship. We’ve heard this is a great way to allow children to engage with worship in a fun and creative way
  • Youth Ministry: Children aren’t the only ones who like to color. We’ve had hundreds of youth programs around the world use our coloring posters.
  • Intergenerational ministry opportunities: By far, one of the most popular uses for our coloring posters is to create intergenerational worship and fellowship opportunities during Advent and Lent. Many churches do a Wednesday night Lenten supper program, or have weekly opportunities for gathering, and our coloring posters work great in those settings. Whether you just have the posters out on tables for people who are waiting to eat, or you create an entire program around the Stations of the Cross for an intergenerational group, you’ll be amazed at the conversations that can be had while multiple generations get together and color.
  • College/campus ministries: We’ve also had many campus ministries use our coloring posters and this would be a fun opportunity for a campus ministry to do during Lent.
  • Private/Parochial Schools: Some private Christian schools have purchased our posters and found ways to engage multiple classrooms in creating a collaborative art project. Many schools could use these Stations of the Cross coloring posters to create a really unique educational opportunity by creating art together.

We’ve found that some of the most creative ideas for how to use our products actually come from the churches and communities who use our materials. So, what are YOUR ideas?

How can I find out more information about our Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters?

Here are some places you can connect with us and get more info:

  • The best place to find out more about these products, as well as all the other resources and freebies we offer, is to get on our email list. You get a free sample pack of our products when you sign up here.
  • If you want a PDF Infoguide about our Stations of the Cross Coloring Posters to show you parish leadership or colleagues and friends, you can get that by clicking here.
  • We often offer promotions and discounts to our Facebook Group, and it’s a great place to learn more about how people are using our resources. We also get a lot of great ideas from our friends there. If you’d like to join our Facebook Group, you can do so here.