Every six years (starting now), churches are required to make a new 'electoral roll', which is the official list of everyone who is a member of a particular church. This means that all of us (however long we have been regular worshippers at St Nicholas's) are asked to fill in a new enrolment form. Being on the electoral roll is really a form of both witness and stewardship, meaning that we are prepared to be counted as members of St Nicholas's and to play a part in its governance. The 'More Info' link will take you to a site which contains all the relevant notices and forms.

Enrolment forms will be available in church from this Sunday onwards, and a Word version of the form is attached below, which you can if you prefer print and complete at home.

The new roll must be finished two weeks before our Annual Parochial Church Meeting on 25 May, i.e. by 11 May. The task of drawing up the complete roll will be quite demanding, so please return your form as soon as you can. Only those on the roll by 11 May will be able to vote at the APCM - you can't join on the day, or in the two weeks preceding!

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The G46 Scouts meet on Friday evenings, in their HQ behind the Church Hall. For further details, please see the attachment below.

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Our main Sunday service takes place at 10.00, and all are welcome. We follow a modern and accessible Common Worship order of service, with Junior Church for children and young people roughly every other week: for details, please see the individual listings on the 'Services and Events' page.

Holy Communion for Palm Sunday: celebrant the Revd Tola Badejo. Junior Church takes place at the same time in the hall.

First reading: Isaiah 43. 16 – 21
Gospel: Luke 23 (complete)

The Church of England lectionary gives alternative readings for Palm Sunday: one set is focused on the events of Palm Sunday itself, with Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and the other on the Passion narrative, which otherwise would not appear in a Sunday communion service. This year, we are following the latter, and the Gospel is Luke's complete account of the Crucifixion and the events leading up to it.

In this Gospel, Christ lays himself open to human experiences we must all hope to avoid: not only a lingering and agonising death, but one that comes as a result of false accusation, biased evidence, fickle public opinion, and the brutal actions of a weak governor attempting to appear strong. The painting above - the outer panels of the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grunewald - was made for the chapel of a monastic hospital, where it was intended the reassure the afflicted that Christ fully shared their suffering.

The Cub and Beaver sections of our G46 Scout Group meet on Tuesday evenings: for details, please see the attachment below. The Group's HQ is behind the Church Hall.

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The Agape meal is a celebration of Holy Communion (celebrant Tola Badejo) in the context of a simple communal meal. After the Agape, the church is prepared for Good Friday by the 'stripping of the sanctuary', in which all decoration is removed from the sanctuary; in churches where the Holy Sacrament is reserved, that too is taken away, leaving only a simple wooden cross;. We then keep silent vigil in semi-darkness for as long as people individually wish, up to about 10 p.m.

The Agape is our most literal commemoration of the Last Supper, the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting. This painting is not an attempt to illustrate what might actually have happened at a Passover meal in Jerusalem in Biblical times. but a reimagination set in the social and cultural context of Renaissance Italy, with an Italian landscape visible in the background: we can't tell what was in Leonardo's mind, but such 'unhistorical' religious paintings remind us that the Eucharist reflects each successive generation's living relationship with Christ. He is present, not past; wherever we are, and not just in Jerusalem, and criticism that the painting is 'historically wrong' misses the point completely.

Leonardo's material technique, however, was very much open to criticism: his masterpiece was painted directly onto dry plaster, and deteriorated rapidly. Fortunately, his assistant Giampietrino made a full-size copy in oil on canvas, which we can see (without charge!) in the permanent collection at the Royal Academy in London; this copy (in the image above) was used as the basis for recent restoration of the original, but still gives a better impression of Leonardo's intention.

The 'Stations of the Cross' are a series of pictures or sculptures which depict the events of Good Friday from Jesus's appearance before Pilate to his entombment. On Good Friday we gather as a church and stand before each of the fourteen stations in turn for a brief reading, prayers and reflection.

More often than not, we follow the Stations on Good Friday with the springtime sun shining through the church windows and birds singing in the garden; inevitably, we understand the Crucifixion in the light of the Resurrection that we know will follow. The very dark image above, part of a painting by Nicolas Poussin, responds to an important detail of the Gospel accounts: 'From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land' (Matthew 27. 45); it imagines a present reality in which there is no certain future, to be contrasted, when the time comes, with the joy of the Resurrection.

After the Stations of the Cross, children are invited to help make an Easter Garden with some real plants and a rock tomb, which will then be placed at the back of the church for Easter Sunday.

Family Communion for Easter Day: celebrant the Revd Tola Badejo
First reading: Acts 10.34-43
Gospel: Mark 16.1-8

Easter is of course a time of great celebration. and we might wonder why so many paintings of the Resurrection reflect more complex emotions. Perhaps the difference between Easter and Christmas is that whereas we can all understand the birth of a child, and the joy and responsibility that brings, Easter confronts us with something beyond our understanding.