Walking the Stations
14 Way Stations on a Christian Pilgrimage
- Discipleship & Christian Education
- Christian Living
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
In a time when Catholic piety is often fixed on the Good Friday "stations of the cross," and evangelical piety is associated with an imaginary "what would Jesus do," and much of Protestant religion has slimmed Jesus down from the fully dimensioned Christology of the Gospels, and contemporary Christianity misses a Christ who has "moved into the neighborhood" (John 1:14) and fully engaged the world and its peoples, and touring liberals tout how little a Christian actually needs to believe, this book chooses fourteen episodes from Jesus' entire life and makes them "way stations" on a pilgrimage on which we gather to meet Jesus in person, share him in community, and follow him to a fully realized discipleship. Such way stations may recall the medieval imitation of Christ or the notion of a Christian pilgrimage during which we "make the way by walking." Historically, pilgrimage is meant to evoke "I want to be in that number." Yet identifying these stations is fully congruent with contemporary New Testament scholarship, whether liberal or historically orthodox. The significance of this book is that it sets forth a process of adult Christian education today that is rich with all the dimensions of Jesus' life, from birth to death and resurrection, with all the happenings in between. And most important, it turns adult Christian education into a compelling Bible study in community, and one that attracts participation like walking a labyrinth. Through such engagement it recovers for lively practice today the mostly forgotten medieval imitatio Christi and inserts this into the nearly forgotten but once vividly realized practice of pilgrimage, overdue today as a way of imprinting the Christian walk onto the culture and onto individual believers and their communities. Finally, it follows contemporary Gospel scholarship back to the historical Jesus, through visionary Holy Land tours or a modern walking the way stations that constitute Jesus' own life and our immersion in it that would constitute true discipleship.
Endorsements (5)
“Walking the Stations offers an innovative, but also a challenging way of delving more deeply into what it means to be a follower of Christ. While many study guides encourage applying Christ’s life to our own, our contemporary culture too often focuses that effort on our private personal growth. For those of us who hope to make a difference in the world, this book’s message should be one that we incorporate into our practice.”
“Heinz invites us not only to read about but to create a meaning-filled, twenty-first-century-Christianity by encountering the surprising Jesus of the Gospels. Historical and contemporary, informed and informing, the book asks us to rethink “our” Jesus on a pilgrimage with scripture and tradition and in a grand company that includes Francis, Hildegard, Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Anne Lamott. As the book and familiar song remind us--we want to be in that number.”
“So many are asking the question famously posed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Who is Christ, actually?” In such times Spirit draws us to hear the testimony of the Gospels anew as it brings life and meaning to our contemporary lives. Donald Heinz offers us in Walking the Stations a practical and transformative way of entering the first century to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and contemplate the relevance of his life and ministry for our own.”
“If Don Heinz’s Mathew 25 Christianity was a rich appetizer, Walking the Stations is the four-star feast that follows. Heinz invites Christians (and seekers) to walk with the Gospel Jesus through fourteen “stages” of his life, listening, observing, following, and exemplifying the full incarnation of God in human experience. On this pilgrimage we, too, can hear God proclaim that we, like Jesus at his baptism, are “sons and daughters in God’s family, beloved, and well-pleasing.” We, too, see our own great life challenges in the three temptations of Christ. And so on through the whole adventure to the cross and empty tomb. Walking the Stations is an exhilarating and profoundly true account of Jesus’ life that offers an authentic Christian faith from the center: Jesus himself. It is the powerful, and perhaps only, antidote to both anemic and toxic representations of Christianity in our culture—and in many of our churches as well.”
“Many question whether following Jesus is possible, given current failures. So, Don Heinz invites us into communal participation in the life of Jesus by encountering him in the Gospels. He draws from Christian streams of sacramental, textual, experiential, social, and communal engagement, leading us to participation and formation that are neither passive nor activist, but follow Jesus to intimacy with God and engagement with the world God loves and sent Jesus—and us—into to restore. This book and this way are for anyone wanting a way to follow Jesus that is intimate, transformative, and hopeful.”
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