Baildon Hot Cross Buns

I know that Good Friday perhaps seem a while ago now and in Baildon, as many places, we looked at how we could mark Good Friday in a way that was meaningful, yet kept ourselves and the public safe.

In "normal" times, whatever they were, we would gather round a large cross in the centre of Baildon with members of the other Churches to hold a short reflective service of prayer and readings together with a couple of appropriate hymns. There might have been thirty people there on a good day. I have had the privilege of leading this service for the past few years and I have been surprised how comfortable I felt making a public act of witness. What effect this has had on the general public is very hard to determine and I have always felt that this reluctant little group did not reflect the extent of the work and activities provided by four denominations of Christian people.

This was in normal times, but this year had to be different: no close contact, no singing, no groups gathering. So… at the Methodist Church, we decided to be very different - we would be proactive in our witness and distribute hot cross buns to people who were in the centre of Baildon. How many would we be able to distribute? We decided on 100 and see what happened.

The buns were bought, buttered and packed in individual paper bags, sealed with a message of hope on a sticky label. At 10:30am 8 of us met. Off we went in different directions and in less than 10 minutes all the buns had gone!

Everyone who accepted a bun did so positively, thanked us and said what a great idea. In less than 10 minutes we touched one hundred lives!

This picture shows the label that went with each bun. In normal times (next Easter) we will might nee 500 hundred buns!

Peter J, Baildon

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