Freak out the Trustees with this Ash Wednesday Prayer Station

I am looking for some pictures of this prayer station in our sanctuary, but until then, a photo from the set up in our youth room will have to do.

Ash Wednesday is that cool worship service that comes at the beginning of Lent and the congregation gets to have ashes smeared onto their foreheads by the pastors. How cool is that! So right off the bat the worship service takes on a different level of experiential nature. So why not take this opportunity to squeeze in a prayer station to begin a process of getting the church used to experiential worship? It’s a perfect time!!

Here is one prayer station that I’ve done in the past that I just love, but my trustees & facilities people hate! I just call this ‘Enter the Desert.’

Enter the Desert

Simple purpose of this is to have some replicated ‘desert’ scene people can choose to ‘go into the desert’ after the imposition of ashes as Jesus went into the desert for 40 days. For us, this was/is an extension of the altar rail. From the direction of the pastor, both the altar rail and the our ‘desert’ are open for times of prayer and reflection as they begin the season of Lent within the Ash Wednesday service.

Items (for one prayer station)

• Black Plastic (full sheets)
• Random Fabrics
• Kneeling Mats
• Candle or Two (the battery operated kind make trustees happier)
• Two Bags of Toy Sand (can get at a wal-mart or home improvement store usually)
• Tape, preferably gaffers tape, painters next best thing
• 8 gallon Storage container

Set Up

1. Choose an area that is next to/close to the altar rail, but does not immediately get into the way of traffic.
2. Throw down the black plastic onto the ground. Best practice is to have large enough sheets that you can stack two sheets on top of each other.
3. Tape bottom plastic flush to the floor. Tape top sheet of plastic with a little roll in to the center of the plastic (makes a pool time effect, don’t worry about perfection).
4. Dump all the sand on top of the top sheet of plastic.
5. Spread the sand out so it is even, but not perfectly flat. You want some texture.
6. Cover the edges with some fabrics and kneeling carpets.
7. Place a candle in the area of sand.
8. If you want you can etch a word into the sand. It is pretty crude looking, but play with it, you might like it.

Now just let it go. We’ve consistently had youth, parents and little children use this prayer station during services and many times they stay at this station much longer than they would at the altar rail (which could be a logistic problem).

The idea of dumping a bunch of sand on the sanctuary floor is freaky to the powers that be, but when you can successfully clean it up and they’ve seen how the prayer station gets used all sins are forgiven.

Cleaning Up

• This is pretty self-explanatory. Reverse the process to the point of cleaning up the sand.
• You can use a dust pan to get large amounts of the sand and put into the storage container.
• When you have most of the sand out place the storage container on the bottom layer of plastic. Then you can use the top layer of plastic to dump more into the storage container with the bottom layer catching some spills.
• Then dump the bottom layer with its sand content.
• Something will get on the floor. It is sand, you find it in your clothes months after a beach vacation. So be prepared with a vacuum for that very last bit.
• Get some youth who has a better back then you to haul the storage container of sand to wherever you want it. That thing is heavy!!

Not terribly complicated. It does take some muscle power moving that sand around. But we’ve seen some really need scenes of children, families, older adults, and youth alike using the prayer station. It is also a good time to experiment with the church as well. Rarely are there sacred cows for an Ash Wednesday service to come back and bite you.

PS: look for more photos. I know I have them somewhere on my various hard drives and cloud storage systems.