Pickering Methodist Church got into the spirit of an annual jazz festival by staging a toe-tapping service.

JAZIZ was King David's chief herdsman. It's possible that after his job interview the king took the new man, his collie and his bait box up unto a high place, cast an expansive arm over the shepherd's new patch and said "All that, Jaziz."

That apart, the closest the Bible comes to foot tapping is in the familiar words of the final Psalm: "Praise him with the sound of the trumpet, praise him with the psaltery and the harp...."

No mention of the tenor sax, though.

Rhythm and religion came together still more memorably at Pickering Methodist Church last Sunday, a scintillating, syncopating service in which the Rev Tony Buglass and Delia Glaister and the Quayside Hot Stompers happily shared top billing and which celebrated that North Yorkshire town's 16th annual jazz festival.

Brian Carrick's Heritage Hall Stompers were in town this week, too, and the Rae Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band and Matt Rodger's Manchester Jazz. The festival ends tonight.

Pickering is a part of the patch which these days the column seldom penetrates, and was thus obliged to seek directions to the Methodist church from a lady outside the Anglican.

"It's the other side of town," she said, cheerfully. The town, happily, is a small one.

Built in 1885 and originally Primitive Methodist, the imposing, galleried chapel is on Potter Hill, near the much-filmed North Yorkshire Moors Railway Station, and had been handsomely redecorated the week previously.

"I'm sure that this is what it's like for the Queen, she thinks all wood smells of fresh paint," Mr Buglass tells his congregation, impishly adding that they're treated like royalty, anyway.

Originally from North Shields, he is also an enthusiastic member of the church's own music group, his guitar playing apparently modelled on that other Tyneside strummer, Hank B Marvin.

(Parents of teenage children will know that the Shadows lead guitarist is now perpetuated in rhyming slang, as in "What's for tea, mum, I'm Hank." Unless asleep, teenagers are Hank approximately every 30 minutes.)

It's a glorious morning, the congregation casually dressed - trad rags, as it were - save for the minister and a chap in waistcoat and bow tie. If his ice cream van's outside, he's going to make a fortune.

Mr Buglass removes his jacket, wonders aloud what the appropriate liturgical dress might be, produces a blue denim waistcoat to which badges of all the music festivals he's attended are affixed by the chestful.

The only problem is that it makes him look like a member of the Campaign for Real Ale (of which Methodism might not entirely approve) or worse, a train spotter overcome by shed codes.

Closer inspection reveals that one of the badges says "Blessed nuisance" - "I made him that one," says Mrs Buglass, affectionately.

The service begins with an instrumental version of In The Sweet By and By and with the applauded announcement that the Rev Kim Farrage, the circuit's other minister, has become engaged.

"We're well chuffed," says her colleague, accent unmistakably intact.

She supports Sunderland, Tony Buglass is a Newcastle United fan. They get along famously - "the reconciling power of the Gospel," he says.

His prayers are lucid, carefully considered and powerful, his sermon better still - leading from the parable of the man sick of the palsy to Louis Armstrong by a carefully constructed route which includes the only time we've heard the word "effing" - as opposed to the F-word - used from the pulpit.

The great Louis, he also recalls, was once asked by a society grand dame what "swing" was.

"Lady," said old Satchmo, "if you don't know it, you aint got it."

The minister never misses a note, his sermon - as a musician might say - perfectly pitched. "Christians dance to a different music from anyone else. They don't understand us because they don't hear the music but this is an invitation to dance and anyone can join in.

"It's music that picks you up and helps you to dance, no matter what you are carrying."

Across the Pennines from Lancaster, the Stompers play This Little Light of Mine, Walking With the King and Down by the Riverside, the congregation giving it joyous what fettle - as doubtless they say in North Shields but may never have done in Pickering.

The place is jumping, whatever sheet they sing from. The chap alongside plays keyboard on his trouser leg.

Delia adds a haunting, trembling solo of Were You There When They Crucified My Lord; the service ends with When the Saints.

A bit like Bing Crosby always having a cameo in Bob Hope films, or possibly the other way around, the column has a theory that traditional jazz bands always play When the Saints Go Marching In as some sort of contractual obligation.

It was a wonderful service from which we marched out rejoicing. Thank you for the music, yeah.