Russell United Methodist Church will host a Good Friday Experience, something in which Pastor Bay Allen brought into the church, where it has been held over the past five years.

One of several stations that are set up for Good Friday at Russell United Methodist Church are pictured.

The church is located at 17 North Main St., Russell.

A contemporary take on the events leading up to Good Friday, Pastor Bay Allen began to incorporate the experience about six years ago. The stations have grown in number throughout the years, with each of them representing the symbolism and reality of Holy Week.

“This is an experience, not a service,” Allen said.

Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus, ahead of what’s a central tenet of faith for believers — his resurrection two days later on Easter Sunday, according to the Gospels. Across Christian denominations, Good Friday services are unlike those on most other days.

They often include centuries-old, once-a-year traditions both during the liturgy and out in the streets, where elaborate processions and other rituals of fervent popular piety are held. Life-sized statues of Jesus crucified, the weeping Virgin Mary, and representations of scenes from the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ torture and death on a cross are carried in large processions in different parts of the world. Some of the oldest and most awe-inspiring are in southern Spain’s Seville, where tens of thousands of people watch much-venerated images of Jesus and Mary being carried in hourslong processions throughout Holy Week.

Solemn and popular rituals on Good Friday vary from the pope’s traditional “way of the cross” in Rome to a trek to the adobe sanctuary of Chimayo in New Mexico to self-flagellation and even crucifixion in the Philippines.

For many priests, they are all opportunities to take faith out of church and into streets to evangelize — and to point out that the gruesome death on the cross isn’t the end of the story.

“Our procession is a cry to the world — ‘get out, look at what is the way, the truth, the life,'” said the Rev. José Luis Menéndez.

– The Associated Press contributed to this report