This year's Good Friday event is now well on the way to being sorted... or at least my bit is!  Other people seem to need incredibly detailed instructions and I am more than a tad apprehensive that the person setting up the 'Communion' station has not grasped that what we want is a big loaf, a jug of grape juice and something a bit rugged - the fear is we get the Meths communion kit including frilly white cloths to cover it all up - I pray not!

'Experience Easter' is a multisensory event for all ages, spread over three rooms, with different foci (i.e. they are plural, as an aside, I am getting fed up with people round here saying 'foci' when they mean 'focus' but that's another story!).

I have two installations to produce - 'water' and 'oil'

Water will include various extracts from John (woman at well, foot washing) and Matthew (Baptism, Great Commission) as well as water for drinking and water for washing.  The essential nature of water for life will be flagged - from amniotic fluid, to seas, to rain, to blood - as well as its refreshing and restorative properties.  Touch, taste, sight and possibly sound will feature in this installation.

Oil will draw on accounts of Jesus being anointed (John, Matthew, Luke) and explore anointing for healing, commissioning and dying.  Scented aromatherapy oil, olive oil and baby oil will be on offer for people to anoint themselves (or each other).  So smell and touch very much at the heart of this one.

One of our challenges is to take people to Calvary and leave them sufficiently disturbed without being distraught.  Even our children's song will leave Jesus at Calvary in 'pain and agony' (although the activites will inevitably pre-empt Sunday)

I think I will need to provide guidance notes for all the installations, as I doubt they will be self explanatory or that folk will do them, but overall it is proving a positive experience to prepare for this and is allowing me to enter into the ideas a little more deeply.

I wonder how many people will choose to Experience Easter with us?  We will have sent out 1500 leaflets or thereabouts and had it announced in local radio.  I'd love to see 100 people come through the doors which would be more than twice what we get to a traditional Good Friday service - we shall see!