One of the stations we were most excited about was the Passover Meal. What happened at this important meal was huge. Too often, the topic of the last supper is cut short. Sure, it’s important because that is where Jesus did the first communion and it is where the story gets really interesting when Jesus rats out Judas with his plan to betray him. These are important parts of the overall plot, but there is so much more to this meal than those things and we wanted to capture that in this station. On several occasions, we referred to this station as a seder meal, but there were several who cautioned us against using that term in particular. This meal is very significant to the Jewish faith and we wanted to make sure we didn’t dishonor it. Instead, this station was simply about teaching what happened at the Passover Meal.

With the number of kids coming through this event, we considered many options on how to create a meaningful experience. I wanted to do whatever was possible to get the actual food on the table in front of these kids. I wanted to engage their sight, touch, smell and taste. It was a big hit as both parents and their kids walked out knowing so much.

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We had fun with this breakout. We decorated the room to look like a 1st century dinner. We got 8 foot tables and put two of them side to side so that we could comfortably seat 12 people at each table. We covered with table clothes and burlap accents. We put the LED candles on every table and adjusted the room’s stage lights to light up each table with a soft glow. The room was incredibly inviting. At the front, we set up a cooking station where Chris, our Student Pastor would lead the station. We made it to look and feel like a cooking show. Chris wore what a chef would wear, he had stainless steel tables, food processors and even a cutting board with a “cutting cam.” We literally took one of our video cameras, hung it above the cooking area and displayed the image on the screen to the right of the stage. Chris could show the entire room what he was preparing just by holding it over the cutting board. It was so much fun, everyone LOVED it!

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The point of the station was to provide some context for what actually happened at the last supper. We explained some of the foods that they would have eaten at a Passover meal and explained the reason why they ate that food, the symbolic nature of that particular item. We had 4-6 different foods that people were able to taste and smell for themselves. Every table had a host/server, so as Chris was talking about a certain item, the hosts came to the front and got the item and came back to their table to distribute to every person.

The final point was to show how Jesus was connecting to the past like the Passover meal is supposed to do, but then he linked what he was about to do through the bread and the wine. The disciples didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but now when we celebrate communion, we do so in a very similar fashion as the purpose of the Passover meal.

Here is a PDF of the notes Chris used to teach this station.