‘Garden to the Grave’ returns for third year

For those looking for something a bit different this Easter, the Christian Center Church may have the solution.

“Garden to the Grave: Live Stations of the Cross” is returning this year and will have four services in the church, located at 571 Adams Blvd. On April 2, 3 and 4, it will be held at 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. on April 5.

While donations are gladly accepted, the event is free to the public. Money raised will go to the church’s building fund.

“We are well underway for this year’s production,” said Deborah Downs, the church’s lead pastor. “This will be our third year performing the Stations of the Cross. We begin preparing for it at the end of January. That’s when we begin to collect sponsors.

“There are 19 actors in the performance. They vary from year to year. They do not all come from our church and have participated from other churches. Our actor for Jesus this year is actually one of our parents from the daycare.”

Downs said the vision she had of this event in the beginning was to offer a way by which both churched and unchurched individuals would become familiar with the tradition of the Stations of the Cross.

“It is not taught or emphasized in many evangelical churches today and is mostly a liturgical practice in Catholic and Anglican churches,” she said. “If one has not been raised in those traditions, the concept of the stations can be quite foreign and intimidating.”

What are they? The Stations of the Cross are a contemplative practice of walking the way of suffering with Jesus, she explained. If one were to visit the city of Jerusalem, they would discover all 14 stations on what is called the Via Dolorosa - The Sorrowful Way - a path from Pilate’s court to Golgotha to the tomb.

“In most presentations within churches, the individual will walk from one station to the next and simply meditate on a picture or sculpture depicting the station,” Downs said. “It is up to one’s own imagination to conjure the scene and how they would enter into the story. What we have done is simply supply the story and visual representations of the stations with live people and narration. We take you on a journey.”

Now with two years in their back pocket, the production continues to grow. Attendance has yet to hit the church’s capacity of 200 at any one service but Downs is hopeful it soon will.

“If it does grow to that size, I had envisioned one day moving the performance to the Boulder City Theatre for a larger audience,” she said. “All we know is that is has grown over the last two years and we expect a large audience this year.”