Holy Week is special to me. It is what ritual studies calls a “liminal time.” Liminality is when we are no longer who we have been and not yet quite what we are becoming. It is the chrysalis moment for me and usually a week that I create some sort of heightened spiritual practices and make some of the most important decisions of my life.

I remember a phone call with a Jewish cantor just before Holy Week over 30 years ago when I had started the Foundation for Religion and the Arts in Kansas City while going to seminary. At the end of our call about an event, he said to me, “Many blessings on your High Holy Days.” It stopped me in my tracks. I had never considered that I, a progressive Protestant, had High Holy Days. It changed my relationship to that week immediately.

I seek out the dark. I light candles, I sit in empty sanctuaries, I get up earlier than usual to contemplate. I keep my schedule less busy, carving out time in ways that give me more space to listen to the Holy. And I remember my baptism (usually in long soaks in the hot tub).

The three resources I have for you in this section are experiences that can be corporate and individual. They can stand alone or be part of a series. Indeed, most of them were conceived originally as part of a Lent series. In fact, all my Lent series include Holy Week services as part of the downloads. But I wanted to make these three things free for anyone.

Poured Out: Elements of a Resurrection

This piece literally poured out of me on a plane ride in the middle of the night. I read through the events of Holy Week in the scriptures and then chose six characters that were with Jesus and wrote monologues from their perspectives. I have “staged” this in many places during Holy Week residencies, both in English and Spanish. The whole ritual weaving with scripture and dramatic monologues is powerful. I highly recommend putting it together (please note that I’ve never made any of the characters memorize lines!).

Stations of the Cross: Then and Now

I love the artwork for this experience. I collaborated with the folks at the Vanderbilt Lectionary Library to use some of the images available in their vast art library to depict the stations, as well as modern photography to depict analogous scenes from our modern times. The stations can be experienced during a service, as a “come and go” walkthrough experience, or simply as a video that I’ve provided.

Ritual of Three Anointings

This is a video meditation for Holy Week that can be experienced in a service or sent out for people to do at home or with small groups. It uses the element of oil in three different ways to commemorate the brokenness of the world and the hope for healing. I collaborated with two of my dearest friends, visual artist Ted Lyddon Hatten, and musician Chuck Bell. The result is provocative, dramatic, and moving.

Enjoy, friends. And if you have a congregation that doesn’t really come to Holy Week things, leaping right from Palm Sunday to Easter resurrection (I mean, we all like to avoid pain, but we actually can’t), I would recommend using my series “Entering the Passion of Jesus” Lent series so the incredible story of Holy Week can be treated over several weeks and unpacked for those who are missing out. There’s so much to gain.

Blessings, dear ones. Dr. Marcia

“Poured Out” Dramatic Monologues

This collection of dramatic monologues features six ritual elements and six biblical characters who share their witness of the events of Holy Week. The scripts weave ritual moments for congregants in between scripture reading and the monologues. Especially good for a combination Maundy Thursday and Good Friday experience.

Watch a dramatization of these monologues in a powerful Holy Week ritual experience from the 2023 worship planning retreat:

Palm/Passion Sunday Elements

If you choose to the full service on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, you may wish to offer your community a “preview” by introducing the characters in a dramatic tableau on Palm/Passion Sunday! The script below includes a call worship, prayer of confession, and palm procession liturgy, followed by a teaser of sorts for the rich experience you will offer later in the week.

Easter Vigil / Easter Sunrise Ritual

The following document contains some elements for an Easter sunrise service or vigil that feature a final encore performance of your dramatists, and a celebration of the resurrection that can easily be included in or lead up to your full-blown Easter service.

Download all scripts

Download the complete scripts for a single service experience of "Poured Out." We have two versions available in English and Spanish.

Download Here

When sharing, please note “Poured Out: Elements of a Resurrection” ©www.worshipdesignstudio.com. Used with permission.

Each Lent series in the Worship Design Studio includes a fully-scripted Holy Week experience as part of the theme. The rituals in this section can stand alone as part of a service or separately as a link that you send out for people to experience on their own during Holy Week.

This virtual Holy Week experience features a journey with Jesus from the table to the tomb. The tradition of the Stations of the Cross which developed in the early church became a way to make pilgrimage and walk the Way of Sorrow with Jesus in those last hours of his life. Pilgrims to Jerusalem around the 4th century would journey and stop where they believed the events happened. Eventually it became difficult for most people to make an actual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. These stations, then, in a sanctuary or on church grounds, became a way to make a pilgrimage to an “interior Jerusalem”–to journey to that place Augustine called “more inward than [our] most inward part.” Just as the disciples, and Jesus himself, searched their hearts in that moment of trauma and tragedy, we search our own hearts. Our stations will invite us not only to examine ourselves, but also to intercede on behalf of others. It is a journey of finding Jesus in all the moments of our lives and of our world.

Watch this short version of the full video that includes visuals of the Stations only [~5 minutes]

Watch the full-length experience below [~40 minutes] that comes from its parent worship series, “Listen”

Download all the materials needed to create your own stations experience for free

Download Here

Please use “Stations of the Cross” experience ©worshipdesignstudio.com. Used with permission.

Each Lent series in the Worship Design Studio includes a fully-scripted Holy Week experience as part of the theme. The rituals in this section can stand alone as part of a service or separately as a link that you send out for people to experience on their own during Holy Week.

I teamed up with my collaborators, visual artist Ted Lyddon Hatten and music artist Chuck Bell, to create this Holy Week Ritual of Three Anointings. It is timeless in its message and rich in its symbolism (especially around the brokenness of our world). Oil was used in the ancient world for many things, including healing. I wanted to create something that would recognize brokenness and the journey toward wholeness.

The full version is 12-minutes and can be used as a whole in worship or in six separate pieces inserted into your worship. Or you can simply share it with your folks as an individual meditation at some point in the week, inviting them to have a little bit of oil to use at each of the three moments of anointing.

Download all versions of the video and liturgy for free here

Download here

Contact us at marcia@marciamcfee.com if you have questions. Blessings!