The Way of the Cross

Last year, my wife's grandparents took the two of us to Italy. One of the most striking memories for me is the cathedral in Milan. It is the fourth largest cathedral in Europe and done in the gothic style. Inside, there are stain glass windows that I am fairly confident tell every story of Scripture. My wife and I looked at many of them and were able to recall the story from Scripture that the little window pointed to. We were struck with the way that even the illiterate people of the day could "read" and know Scripture.
The Way of the Cross is a devotional guide for Good Friday cut from the same cloth. The Way of the Cross is a Good Friday liturgy which is centuries old and started to be a teaching guide for the illiterate. Stations would be set up to remember the path which Jesus traveled from the garden of Gethsemene to the hill of Golgotha. Such stations as Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry the cross as Jesus stumbles, Jesus speaking to Mary and John from the cross, and Pilate condemning Jesus to the cross. This devotional guide offers Scripture, artwork and very short devotional thoughts for each station.
This guide can help you or your church have a Good Friday experience which focuses on Jesus and what he has done for us. In this guide there are 14 stations, which could be done in one hour, or over the span of two weeks. The author of the devotional is a pastor of a Christian & Missionary Alliance church and does well to let the Scripture have the focus in each station, not his devotion. He also offers suggestions for incorporating the Way of the Cross into public worship.
I don't know about you, but I am all for different ways to freshly experience Jesus. Some may think that Way of the Cross stations are too liturgical, too catholic, too something, and that is fine. But I also think that sometimes we have lost some of our heritage, some of our tradition (even further back than Wesley's hymns & King James), and some of our soul. I have found that I am too often very cerebral in my faith & need tools like this to draw me out and experience Jesus, to deepen relationship with him and to simply meditate on who Jesus is.