For 18 years, the Methodist church in Darlington couldn't even get lay preachers. Now everyone's standing up to be counted.

THE Methodists work to a plan, or possibly a Plan, which either way is more than can be said for most of us. The grand plan is a quarterly document, listing preachers and preaching appointments in a circuit - what goes around, comes around - and is characterised by arcane abbreviations.

CA is church anniversary, O is open air service - there's one in Barton on December 14, another in North Cowton the following Sunday - and X marks only the spot of a sectional united service, whatever one of those may be.

There are no adverts, though the Co-op or someone would doubtless be happy to pay for half a page.

The column confessed to finding the plans fascinating. "You must lead a very sad life, then," said the Rev Graham Evans, Darlington's superintendent Methodist minister, but there is much to be gained from a bit of planning perusal.

With their year of appointment, each master plan lists both ordained ministers and local preachers - lay people - plus local preachers "on note" and local preachers "on trial".

"Note" is the first part of their training. "Trial", supervised preaching, is more or less what it appears. After the trial they are charged - that is to say sent out, boldly.

From the plan for the last three months of 2003, therefore, we can report that Mr Maurice Metcalfe has been a local preacher since 1952 and will again hold forth at Bondgate Methodist Church tomorrow evening, that four of the local preachers are married to one another and the remarkable fact that between 1970 and 1988, the Darlington circuit appears not to have recruited a single local preacher.

Yet more extraordinary, there are now seven on trial and four on note - "coming out of the woodwork," said Mr Evans - whereas a couple of years ago, they couldn't even cover every service. "I think God must be doing something," added the superintendent, with no discernible note of surprise.

Two more local preachers were admitted on Tuesday evening at a service at Elm Ridge Methodist Church in Darlington's west end. Andrew Henderson is a GP in Spennymoor, Anne Sanderson a photographer in Darlington.

"Make sure you give them bread, not stones," said the welcoming letter from the Rev Neil Richardson, president of the Methodist Conference.

Andrew had been a Christian, he reckoned, since attending a Scripture Union holiday camp as a nine-year-old. His father Harold, more than 50 years a local preacher in the Hexham area, was at the service to welcome his son to the preachers' band and simply radiated paternal pride.

Anne, from Hurworth, hadn't been a Christian at all until an Alpha course in the late 1990s.

"If someone had said six years ago that I would be here tonight, I'd have thought they were off their trolley," she told the congregation.

"I spent a lot of my time not propping up pulpits but propping up bars in clubs in Darlington and buying lots of clothes I didn't really need."

She still enjoyed the occasional drink, she said afterwards. "The main difference is that I no longer feel it's the way to happiness."

Rather resembling the library in a country manor house, the church was well filled - notably with couples, as if attendance at Elm Ridge is a joint exercise.

Proceedings began with the rousing hymn And Can It Be, sung with the fervour of a Welsh male voice choir.

The column, so carried away with having hold of a plan, had completely forgotten to get hold of an order of service and stood there like a great dollop, mouthing half forgotten snatches.

Once they were called recognition services, now it's "admission". Mr Evans said he preferred to recognise the "politically incorrect" original.

Finally, the happy couple stood before him, for all the world - well, almost all the world - as if to enter into wedlock.

Mr Evans told them that they would preach to many but be heard by some, that the congregation wasn't the enemy - "though it sometimes feels like that when you walk into church" - and that there were times when they would fail.

"It's not about cleverness," he said. "If it were, only the clever would need to apply."

They made their promises quietly, as if bride and groom indeed, and were applauded altogether more roundly. "You don't have to do that every time they preach," said the superintendent.

Both have young families. Both admitted that they had neglected them to study and were grateful for their support.

"I felt God was calling me to be a preacher; he was quite insistent," said Anne, though she still finds it pretty terrifying.

"I started to lose sleep over it, wondering if He really wanted me to be a preacher," said Andrew, and had finally told God one Saturday night that he'd be looking for a sign next day.

God obliged. The reading at church had been the bit about the road to Damascus, the hymn the hugely popular I The Lord of the Sea and Sky - with the chorus about "Whom shall I send?"

Here they were now. Anne's first appointment is at Gainford tomorrow evening, Andrew's at Pierremont Methodist church on December 7.

Soon they will be joined by many others, locals made good. In Darlington at least, those who can, preach.