Yesterday in church we had a bit of an experiment. Well, actually the experiment happened on Good Friday and the results were seen in church on Easter morning.

For years we have done a 3 hours at the foot of the cross event on Good Friday. This year we went for something different and different people ran different workshops on the Friday for people to take part in knowing that what they ‘produced’ would be used on Sunday morning.

We had art groups, drama groups, dance group, cooking, people responsibe for decorating the church and so on. This was a real family event with everything brought as a kind of offering on Sunday morning.

Myself, Sarah and Andrew took on the task of developing the porch. We wanted to achieve a ‘cold’ tomb feel for people to walk through before they entered the joyful interior of the worship space. We were trying to achieve a death to new life feel.

We use cold drapes to lower the roof. Covered the floor in rubble (thanks to the builder working on my extension!). WE covered a few chairs in deep blue cloth to give an appearance of a tomb with blood stained bandages hanging from it. Behind the scenes we burned some incense and played a quiet chill track. Our final piece to add was two great young ladies, Amber and Deborah, dressed as angels asking people why they were looking lost/worried/here in the tomb for Jesus because … He had risen!!!

WE enjoyed working together and the finished product seemed to work – not necessarily because it was good, but because it was a different use of the space and so it gave opportunity for people literally to stop, take it all in and think before they started to worship God.

This really was a family service as the whole family had a part in the event.