By Julia Stuart
Making the most of the Holy Spirit’s “ comforting” characteristics was the way into the Cashmere Hills Pentecost service last year. “ As far as I know, it’s a new approach,” says the Rev David Coster. “ As Pentecost drew near, I was thinking of the different names for the Holy Spirit, and one of them is Comforter,” he says.
“When they were babies, our own children found comfort in their baby lambskins. They relaxed them and helped them go to sleep. So I thought about other things that comforted people, and teddy bears came to mind.”
At the well-attended Pentecost service, teddy bears belonging to all ages, from newborns to 90-year-olds, were gathered in front of the church. “A good range of people attended," says David, “including regular congregation members and those we see only sometimes”.
Cashmere Hills makes a practice of reaching out to the 33 families on their roll, many of whom have such time pressures that they attend church only occasionally. At the beginning of each year, they are sent a list of all the services the worship team thinks might appeal to them. Then they are notified by post when each is coming up, and telephoned not long before to remind them again.
“The verse for the day was “I will send you my Comforter”’, David says. “At the service I asked the children what they called their teddy bears and why. They were very willing to talk. It was a short service – 45 minutes or so – and I didn’t use the pulpit, so there was a real picnic atmosphere.
“Everybody entered into the spirit of the theme. One man who didn’t have a teddy bear collects elephants, so he brought along one of those. He said they were his comforter.”
David thinks the Cashmere Hills Teddy Bear’s picnic is a new way of celebrating the Pentecost season. “I didn’t get the idea from anywhere else,” he says. “But it was so successful we’d do it again this year – and maybe in years to come.”