Dear friends

This comes with my best wishes for Easter tide! I am so thankful to everyone who helped to make our Holy Week and Easter services some of the best we have had. 12 services between Palm Sunday and Easter Day were quite an achievement, and we had large numbers of people worshipping and gathering through a variety of expressions of worship. We sang together, prayed together, ate together, were still and reflective together, and celebrated together. The church looked beautiful in the solemnity and emptiness, and in the joy-fullness. Thank you to all those who contributed.

I heard it said that in many ways Christmas is the festival more recognised by the secular community, where there are likely to be more visitors to church, whereas Easter is the festival for those who regularly go to church. I don't know if that was true for St Martin's, where no one is really a visitor - we do try to encourage a radical welcome where everyone is invited to be part of the church, even if it's their first or only time attending. However it is true I think that for Christians, Easter can feel more important than Christmas - this is the moment of triumph over darkness and death, the division or separation between God and humanity is for ever torn down, God's power is greater than anything or anyone, even more powerful than death.

Over the coming weeks we will hear of those moments that the resurrected Jesus appears to his followers - not as a ghost, or spirit, but as a body that can be touched, a person that wants to be fed. Jesus meets with those who have fears and doubts about what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen next. We will follow the story, pilgriming with these disciples, and you are invited to be part of the journey.

This week we meet at 8.30am where Steve is preaching, then we will go deeper at 10.30am with Cafe church, our informal interactive gathering where over food and drink we talk more about the message of the day, with activities to enable our young people to join in as well.

Do please come and be part of the story - you're invited.

With best wishes

Becky