BEST of both worlds, some would say, the service upon which today's column reports had been preceded a few days earlier by lunch - working lunch, understand - with the Vicar and his new lieutenant.

Richard Wallace is priest of St Mary's, in Cockerton, Darlington, a "monster" parish which a century ago had 1,000 people and which now has getting on 20 times as many.

There are huge post-war housing estates on Branksome and Mowden Park, another eagerly under construction at West Park on the town's northern edge. Fifty years ago, says Richard, each would have had a church of its own; today there's still just St Mary's.

In danger of becoming a sort of clerical Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, he and his church folk looked at the problem and decided that they'd better do something. Contemplated over pie and chips, we were talking of the feeding of the twenty thousand.

Though the church building remains half hidden on Cockerton Green, its people are going boldly into the parish with a £10m plan that embraces two new community centres and a Church of England aided school.

"There was a question about what it meant to be 'church' in a huge area where you can't know everyone as the vicar used to do," says Richard over a Diet Coke.

"We're trying to live out the Gospel and bring the church to the people, rather than ring the bells on a Sunday and say 'Why don't you come'?

"Jesus didn't go around telling people to go to the synagogues, or wherever, he went to meet them where they were and made their lives better. I believe one of the great evils is failing to relate to people."

As Vicar, he insists, he's not bothered if the radical initiative doesn't put a single Cockerton bottom on a single St Mary's seat. "More than 70 per cent of people in Darlington claim to be Christian, and I just hope they can see that what we're trying to do is right.

"I don't really care what people think about the church, as long as they think something about it. The thing that does bother me is the people who think the church is only there on Sundays."

The new man is Rodger Sansom, officially the project development officer on a three-year contract to oversee the building and growth of the community centres on West Park and in Cockerton itself, where the existing hall and school will be replaced.

"It's really about building a community, not just community centres," says the former Royal Signals man and diocesan stewardship officer, sipping a single half of lager.

"We shouldn't be worrying so much about the church roof but how we can show people there's a different way of life, without necessarily coming to church.

"People here may not want to be in St Mary's, but I hope they will want to be in the community centres."

We lunch at The George and Dragon in Heighington, a village towards which Darlington expands so inexorably that one day they may meet in the middle.

The conversation is also of the joys (or otherwise) of Norfolk, of the wonders of walking and of the Durham diocesan clergy cricket team, a motley collection of under-achievers with whom Richard Wallace usually finds himself encumbered.

It is suggested that they form a diocesan tiddlywinks team instead, and get the Church Times to put up a trophy.

ABOUT 80 of the 20,000 are at St Mary's for last Sunday's 9.30am service, the Archdeacon of Auckland there through the blizzard to commission Rodger in his new role - "a public statement of where the Church is going," says Richard.

"I can't spend all day every day chasing this dream, but perhaps I have primed the pump."

Though it's his first Sunday visit to St Mary's, the Vicar points out that the Ven Ian Jagger has been there a couple of times in midweek "to inspect the drains and things".

Archdeacons, poor chaps, perform countless valuable functions but do rather have the image of an ecclesiastical Dynorod.

Richard also tells his congregation that Mirfield College, where he trained for the ministry, always considered Sundays to be excluded from Lent - feast days after all - and that temporary alcohol abstainers were still welcome to a glass of wine afterwards.

It's true, of course - Lent including Sundays would be 46 days, not 40 - though there are still those who, with great respect to the Mirfield brethren, who regard a six-day Lenten week as a cop out.

Archdeacon Jagger tells them that the eyes of the diocese will be on their remarkable initiative, says that the day isn't about commissioning Rodger and letting him go, and that he will create "structured opportunities for the mingling of communities".

The promises he makes seem pretty formidable for a couple of community centres, but this is a 21st century response to a 21st century challenge.

There is much more to it than promises, promises, and the vision is wholly to be commended.

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