Mission Impossible is our most loved & longest running production, although many of the Year 4-6 pupils who visit would describe it as more of an ‘experience’! In the last three weeks of term, leading up to Easter, we annually transform Scarisbrick New Road Baptist Church into a mock secret agent headquarters. We draw together a large team of volunteers who act as secret agent leaders who greet pupils and enlist them as secret agents for the day, where they are led on a mission of discovery by Agent T (True) and Agent F (False).

In four squads the pupils move around different mission zones in the building where they look at aspects of the Easter story in order to reach their own personal verdict on the events and whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. The production is a fully immersive challenge lasting 90 minutes in total.

Zone 1 starts around a communion table with some investigative role-play looking at the account of the Last Supper and then follows into the Garden of Gethsemane.

Zone 2 joins an animated Agent Lawesome in the court room with a large touchscreen of evidence from Jesus’ arrest where we ask the children the question “Was the trial fair?”

In Zone 3’s ‘holographic suite’ we have a very moving ‘eye witness’ account from Mary Magdalene. The passcode to trigger playback is found from clues, escape room style. After the video we take the opportunity to have a discussion about “Why did Jesus have to die?”

Zone 4 is at the doctor’s surgery learning about the biology of the crucifixion and how they would have known that Jesus had really died.

Finally, Agents T and F receive a video transmission from their boss telling them of new evidence that Jesus came back to life. Agents T and F invite the children to turn to the back of their passports, where they find ‘Zone 5’ written, with the question “Did Jesus come back to life?”

Each year we draw in around 400 Year 5 or Year 6 children from their local schools. By the end of each session, we tend to find over 80% of them leave having come to the conclusion that they personally consider Jesus to have risen from the dead almost 2000 years ago.