When I first came to the parish in 2003, I was blessed to start a youth program from scratch.  Coming from a very small parish back home I knew the one thing that the youth did was a Living Stations of the Cross.  Everyone gets dressed, one guy is asked to be Jesus, and you carry the cross down the aisle of the church.  I looked online and it is very hard to find a script with good explanation.

Now we do have a Living Stations script in our members section that is ready to go and will be developed more and more as I use it, but this will help you learn how to start from scratch or tweak the content you did find.  I will start with what I did.

1) Set up the structure

The congregation will appreciate a structure.  After the first two stations they should have a good idea of what is expected of them.  It will also make it more comfortable for them to delve in to what is happening.  Our basic structure that we used is scripture, a voice (prayer by us), and Jesus’ response.  So just about every station includes that.

2) Scripture

I knew I wanted our script to be enriched with scripture.  So I went to the Vatican website and found what they used that year for scripture.  If you dig deep, you will find that each year they switch it up a bit.  So you can go back and look at what they have used for several years and use that.  You earn some brownie points when you join in prayer with the Vatican anyways!  Or just grab your stations of the cross pamphlets that you use in church and see what they use for scripture.

2) Meditations

For the meditations in our living stations script I used writings from my favorite saint, St. Alphonsus Liguori.  There is already a stations of the cross manual that came from his meditations so that made it easy.  These were what I used for the voice of the person.    I changes a few of the words to make it more youth friendly, but did not want to take away from the richness of his writings.

3) Jesus’ Response

It was important for me to have a part in the script where the youth would hear some things that may have been going through Christ’s head.  I wrote my own words for Jesus (bold I know).  They were very simple and spoke entirely of love.  Our main audience is the youth and I just wanted the youth to know that Christ loved them, so much they might get sick of hearing it.  I had three priests look it over and went with it.

4) Music

I was a music major in college and also do worship often for youth events so I knew what I wanted for music.  If you want suggestions here are a few songs that I use:

Love Song – Third Day
Via Dolorosa – Sandi Patty
Were You There

We also use the short worship song “Come Into My Heart” in between each station.  There are several different verses of it.

I would just recommend using a good mix of music that they know, that they can meditate on, and that truly brings out the meaning of lent.

5) Costumes

To be blunt, I do not know much about costumes.  When I arrived, a lady had already made the costumes and they were amazing, so we have used those every year.  I would recommend leaving this to a pro.  There are not too many ladies who know how to sew that wouldn’t do this for the parish if the materials were paid for.

So that is how I wrote up our script.  There are so many ways that it can be done.  If you need a quick fix, I have seen someone just do the regular pamphlet for a script.  Then they would have stills of a scene for people to look at.  They used a spotlight.  Turned off the spotlight during the transition song and then the next scene was up when they announced the station.

Have other ideas?  Please comment below and let us know what you do.

This youth ministry prayer option is a great way to begin or end small groups with prayer.  You have a stack of cards that have different prayer options on them.  Have one of the youth randomly pick a card and that is how you will begin or end in prayer.  This sample gives you five options. Have more ideas?  Through them in the comment box below.

Download R.A.P. – Random Acts of Prayer – Small Group Prayer Option

Want more?

Members Only
Become a member

FULL - Download R.A.P. – Random Acts of Prayer – Small Group Prayer Option (.pdf)

We have added our Living Stations of the Cross Script and several other items to our members only section.   For the month of March you can use the coupon code E9CC to get 50% off of any membership.  Get your lifetime membership now for dirt cheap and get all our member resources we have in there now and all that we put in there in the future.

Coupon Code = E9CC

To play this youth ministry game you don’t need a four square and you do not need to be outside.  Grab some painters tape and map out a larger four square area on the floor.  Try to make it about 2-3 times as big as a regular four square and you can make it a rectangle shape (like a gym) if you need to.  Doing so will actually make the game a little more interesting.

The game is played just like 4-square except with teams.  Each area should have room to allow about 3-4 people to comfortably move around.  Number the four squares in order and make teams.  You need at least four teams.  If you have more than four teams have the extras line up outside of square number four.

Square number one will serve the ball by bouncing it on their side and slapping it to another square.  Whatever square it lands in has to hit it into another square before it bounces a second time.  When someone misses or hit the ball out of bounds, they go to square four and everyone else moves up towards square one.  (square three moves to two, two moves to three, etc.)

You can make up your own rules as things comes up such as can teams hit it twice, can you play off the wall, etc.

Ask any questions in the comments section below!

Enjoy!

Materials Needed
- Sweatpants and shirt or loose clothing for each group
- Lots of Balloons

Directions
Start this youth ministry game by telling each group (typically 3-5 in a group is good) that one person will need to put on the loose clothing over their clothes. When you say go, each group must blow up and put as many balloons in the clothes of the person in the group as they can until you say stop. Be sure put size minimums on the balloons, so that are big enough. When the time is up, tell them that the first person to pop all of their balloons wins. They have two rules. They can not use their hands or the help of anyone else in the room.

The trick to this game is acting like the most balloons in the sweats wins and then twisting the game at the end (That’s why we called it balloon SHOCK!)

Say go and sit back and watch the hilarious ways that they come up with to pop the balloons.