Easter celebrations should go ahead
In my new Easter rig-out of white ankle socks, summer sandals, frock and bonnet, I dothered in the cold like thousands of other bairns under their Sunday School banner for the annual Good Friday Parade.
The best bit was the orange we got at the end.
For more than 200 years it's been one of Sunderland's warmest held traditions but now it is all played out, priced out of the market by health and safety red tape to the tune of 2,000.
And that's a hill too far to climb for the handful of churches who have faithfully witnessed to the Easter message.
The end of an era indeed as Pastor Martin Bolt says who, after organising it for over 20 years, is now looking to a fresh challenge.
While many will mourn the passing of the parade, I see it as a wonderful opportunity for the churches to take the joyous Christian message to the people right where they are – in the Market Square and Mowbray Park.
While up Tunstall Hill the faithful gather in ever-increasing numbers, for years those turning out in Burdon Road to sing hymns outside the Civic Centre have been falling off so dramatically there were just about 400 there last year. It's the same story for congregations everywhere.
Good Friday is just another day for the majority who worship at the shopping temple of the Metrocentre. And is it any wonder if the church is failing in being relevant to people and their lives?
It's a challenge to be seized and that's what Martin Bolt hopes to do –
getting churches of all denominations on board to take the church into the heart of Sunderland next Easter.
As pastor of the Bethel Fellowship at Thorney Close, his vision is to make Easter Saturday next year a real Christian carnival event – with singing, bands playing, young people from church music groups as well
as the Salvation Army, drama in the Market Square and the park.
He sees the newly-recruited street pastors – men and women who will be hitting the city centre streets to help those the worse of drink – on our streets ready to pray with any passersby in need.
He says: "I am just hoping that all the churches would take ownership so this not just one person organising it but lots of people doing their own thing and get everyone involved in the joy of the Easter message."
This Good Friday hundreds will be climbing Tunstall Hill for a service by the cross – a new one after the felling last year of the Christian symbol by vandals.
And over at Silksworth their march of witness will be on as usual.
That's because the procession keeps to the pavement, whereas Sunderland's Good Friday parade had to march on the road so the Salvation Army band could march four abreast.
Single file is not their style and if it were the full stirring power of their playing would be lost, whether blowing their own trumpets or beating the drum.
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Weather for Sunderland
Friday 10 February 2012
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Temperature: -3 C to 2 C
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