Six hundred and seventy-five people came to see the Easter Icons in the Royals Shopping Centre in Southend-on-Sea.

The icons linked the Easter story to aspects of modern life. For instance the first station was entitled the “Red Carpet Treatment”. Next to the front page of a gossip magazine, it stated: “Jesus arrives in Jerusalem on a donkey, a symbol of humility. Yet he is treated like a celebrity.
“How many of these celebrities will people still be talking about in 2000 years?”

The town centre presence was the result of Baptist and Methodist collaboration: Baptist minister the Revd Andy Goodliff has curated a contemporary stations of the cross over the past decade, first in Bunyan Baptist Church, Stevenage, where he was the youth worker and more recently at Belle Vue Baptist Church, Southend, where he is the minister.  He explained, ‘One of my deacons said to me two years ago, you need to get this out of the church and into a more public place. I wasn't sure how to do that.

‘So when I was contacted, along with Steven Tinning from Leigh Road Baptist Church, by Hannah Bucke, the local Methodist town centre minister that she had got use of an empty shop and wanted to tell the Easter story, I jumped at the chance to be involved.’

He added, ‘We were really pleased to have so many people visit.’

See http://eastericons.files.wordpress.com