Taking the traditional trappings out of religion seems to be working very well indeed for a thriving North-East church.

THOSE who say the last rites over the Church of England, who lament its age-bound inertia and self-serving sanctimony, who predict that soon it will vanish into a sort of ironic infinity, should heed the parish church of All Saints, Eaglescliffe.

It is not, admittedly, the CofE as most would know or recognise it, not the Church of Giles cartoon or Dibley vicarage. All Saints isn't on its knees at all.

For one thing it is vibrant with young people, for another it adds new families every month and for several more it is thriving, welcoming, vigorous, dynamic, confident, caring, community conscious and utterly upwardly mobile.

All Saints also rejects the traditional Anglican trappings of vestments, pomp and procession, allows children as young as five to share Holy Communion, has hymns - "songs" - which with one exception we'd never hitherto heard and regarded Palm Sunday almost as an eccleiastical afterthought.

Perhaps it is because the column's lifelong churchmanship is middle of the road, and because the "new" churches tend to equate white line with yellow streak, that we felt so wholly out of place there.

Officially the parish is Preston-on-Tees, near Stockton, to all intents Eaglescliffe. We'd written about it previously, a visit on New Year's Day 1995 ("spiritual Alka Seltzer") when the Rev David Osman was Vicar and the congregation already fast growing.

The building, we'd said, was "a parish hall with a tower stuck on", the worship "evangelical but not happy clappy, progressive without being profane, prayerful without being precious."

Since it was January 1, Mr Osman had also asked the congregation their highlights of 1994.

"Darlington won," said a little lad called Peter, aged nine.

"That's not a highlight, it's a miracle," said Mr Osman.

Now it's the church's centenary, celebrated two weeks previously by the Bishop of Jarrow and by a series of events throughout the year.

Usually there are three Sunday services - 9am "more traditional", 10.30am upbeat family service, 6.30pm aimed principally at young people and said to be "liberal".

The parish - get this - not only has priest-in-charge and curate but children's worker, pastoral worker and office manager and is about to appoint a full-time youth worker. A new church funded community centre is expected shortly.

The church's growth has been so steady and so solid that they considered relocating, the answer instead to increase the number of services if attendance continues to grow.

It is self-styled "charismatic evangelical", which broadly means Spirit-led and Bible-based, but does it sit any more comfortably within the established Church of England than this column does at morning service?

"Some of our worship is very firmly rooted in the Anglican tradition. We seek to remain faithful to the biblical Gospel and to the creed," says the Rev Norman Shave, the curate.

"We actually deal very carefully with those in authority. The Bishop of Durham has supported us very much."

Dr Shave is a former Chester-le-Street GP serving his first curacy, the change of career a major financial sacrifice. "The long-term benefits are better," he says.

We attend the 10.30am service, welcomed on the pew sheet and by many in the congregation. Dr Shave celebrates communion in clerical shirt sleeves, the leader of the music group wears shorts, jacket and tie seems almost overdressed.

What, the thought incorrigibly occurs, would the Rev Dr Peter Mullen have made of it all?

Under 21s make up perhaps half of the 200 congregation. Though many youngsters depart for their own instruction, five take communion for the first time. Two take their dolls as well.

Rob Bailey, a layman and member of the ministerial development team, leads the service in a style which doesn't so much petition God as assure what God will do.

"The more observant may have noticed that it is Palm Sunday," he says, though afterwards everyone receives the traditional palm cross. The one familiar hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, is sung to an unfamiliar tune.

Dr Shave begins his 25-minute sermon with a joke about the pearly gates and studs the rest with scriptural references in good evangelical manner.

An elderly chap one along whispers that he's already been to Paradise, a place in Australia.

"Hell's in Norway," we reply. "You can catch a train there."

Afterwards, as ever, we ask who's been attending for donkeys' years and talk to Anne Wildsmith, who first attended All Saints in 1984 and is now a pastoral worker and Church of England lay reader.

She first went, she says, because the children wanted to go to Sunday School, attracted by the friendship and fellowship but not in the last by the Gospel message. Today things are much different.

"David had established a very good team and a very caring fellowship. I think we've just built on it," he says.

Duncan McAuley, 16, is already a member of the ministry development team. "If you live a Christian life, your friends respect you for it," he says.

Afterwards there's coffee and conviviality and immediate preparation for the space travel themed children's holiday club running this week until yesterday.

Back home, we recount All Saints success and our own misgivings, adding that the bottom line appears to be that it manifestly works.

"So," says the lady of the house probably unkindly, "does McDonald's".

* All Saints Church, Dunottar Avenue, Eaglescliffe. Sunday services 9am, 10.30am and 6.30pm. Church office (01642) 783814.