Easter week started with a dramatic difference at Bessels Green Baptist Church. On Palm Sunday and the following Monday about five-hundred people experienced the Easter story. They travelled through five scenes by Detective Boris Karloff (Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, the Last Supper, the betrayal in Gethsemane, the crucifixion and the empty tomb ) and met with various characters along the way (a donkey, a servant girl, a Temple guard, a Roman Centurion and a rather dishevelled looking angel with a Scottish accent!). Palm Sunday saw the church filled with people of all ages. One lady who has been a Christian for decades Facebooked: “What an outstanding Palm Sunday service……probably the most memorable one I have ever been to.”

On the Monday 3 year groups from Riverhead Infants and Amherst Junior Schools (2, 3 and 5) came in separately to experience the Easter story and left with a hot cross bun. Standing in the empty tomb around the bloodied robes of Jesus one boy was heard to say: “This is gross! It should be certificate 18!” When many of the children came back to the church building for Monique’s After School Club they couldn’t stop talking to her about it.

One visitor asked where the acting troupe had been hired from. All the actors are Bessels Green Baptist Church folk. It was all done in-house.

Neil Durling, one of the ministers at the church, commented: “The feedback from those who know the story back to front and others who heard it for the first time has been staggering. We have been thrilled to able to re-enact the central story of the Christian faith and see it excite, challenge, engage and move so many people.”

Please check out the photo galleys here on the church’s website and an article in the local press here.