Community
5 April, 2024
Churches follow in Jesus’ footsteps
GOOD Friday saw a group of the faithful, led by reverends of the three churches in Camperdown, walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ to mark the Easter period.
Churchgoers from the Uniting, St Patrick’s and St Paul’s Anglican churches came together at the Post Office last Friday to participate in the walk, giving them an opportunity to express their faith in a public setting.
The walk, referred to as the Stations of the Cross, led attendees through the elms of Manifold Street before walking down Leura Street to reach the Uniting Church.
St Patrick’s Church reverend Neville Stanislaus said Good Friday was an very important day for the churches.
“All the churches in town just wanted to unite under the name of Christ,” he said
“By bringing all our people together to walk around the town, we give witness to our belief and our faith and our values.
“We normally gather around the church; this has brought us in a bigger picture to the outside world on the street to witness Christ.
“People you pass may not be of faith, but they would have taken some thought.”
Attendees prayed and sang hymns as they moved between stations, each one marking a significant event in the Christian Easter period.
Once the walk finished at the Uniting Church hall, attendees were invited to have a hot drink and a hot cross bun while enjoying the company of fellow churchgoers.
Uniting Church reverend Suzie Castle said it was a good day, with all attendees also coming from Easter services as well.
“Over the year, we meet and we try to work on bits and pieces we can do together, and there’s no greater day than Good Friday to do something together,” she said.
“It says something not just to us, and not just to the people who are gathering here for a cuppa, but it says something to the community that can actually see what we’re doing.
“It’s a traditional thing on either Palm Sunday or Good Friday; that’s my experience coming from Brisbane.
“We call it a Peace Walk on Palm Sunday, and Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, where we can remember what Christ did and went through and where we sit with God now because of that.”
St Paul’s Anglican Church reverend Matthew Jones said churchgoers responded “very well” to the Stations of the Cross walk.
“The thing that struck me as we were moving around was we are commemorating Jesus dying, and the reason he died was to take away the sins of the world and to give us eternal life,” he said.
“What occurred to me as we were making this very visible statement was that the world was just going on around as though it doesn’t notice.
“I thought ‘I wonder what impact this visual walk, with the cross and a crowd, will have on some people to just think.
“I think, if nothing else comes out of today, it says to people something really significant happened 2000 years ago that is still relevant today, and while we might think the world doesn’t care, I think it does.”
Rev Jones said the walk brought the churches into the forefront of the community’s minds, encouraging people to think.
“You just never know the impact something subtle like this, from the Post Office, up the main street and up to the church, can have, with all the people going past,” he said.
“People walking dogs, people on their way to coffee, driving, going to visit friends who may or may not have a faith, but I think it will have some little thought of a seed sown.”
The Stations of the Cross was one of many events and activities held by the churches to engage with the community.
“One of the other things we’ve been doing is sharing through Lent the Lenten studies,” Rev Jones said.
“From Ash Wednesday through to Easter, that period of Lent, we’ve been doing Lenten studies. We also started the day before Ash Wednesday with the pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and people from the wider community came to that.
“What we’re trying to do, in a very small way, is to say, ‘we want to do things for the whole community, not just for our little church groups’.”
Rev Jones said the approach to community involvement was working for them.
“You can hear a lot of joviality happening; people who may not know each other in the beginning, know each other at the end, at it’s another part of the community coming together,” he said.
“It works better in a smaller community than in big cities.
“There’s a lot of anonymity there. But here, a lot of these people are in Rotary together, or bowls club or they went to school together.
“There’s a whole lot of connections already there; we don’t want church to be a division, we want it to be a symbol of uniting the community together.”
Rev Castle said she hoped the walk encouraged the community to seek connection with one another.
“Here’s hoping it’s a big blessing not just to those who engaged with it, but all those who witnessed it as well,” she said.
Read More: Camperdown