HUNDREDS of people from churches across the York area were challenged at York Minster to make a decision about who should rule their lives.

They were attending the York Council of Churches united service for Good Friday at which the preacher was the Right Rev Martin Wallace, Bishop of Selby.

He spoke of the balcony scene when Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Palestine, asked the crowd to choose who should be freed - Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews, or Barrabas, a common murderer.

But the Bishop asked the congregation at the Minster to make a decision as to who should be their ruler - Jesus, the Son of God, or society as represented by Pilate.

Later, after a blessing by the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, the chairman of the council of churches, the Rev Paul Wordsworth, invited the congregation to make a simple act of devotion to confirm their choice by lighting a candle and placing it on a wooden cross laid on the floor, before leaving the Minster in silence to take the "Light Of The World into the city".

Earlier, many of the people in the congregation had processed through the city centre in an act of witness behind a wooden cross.

Updated: 09:26 Saturday, April 10, 2004