YOU don't get to be named Preacher of the Year by The Times, as the Rev Paul Walker once was, without knowing how to grab a congregation by the coat collar of its consciousness.

There can nonetheless have been no more dramatic nor more emotional pronouncements than last Sunday's - and he wasn't even in the pulpit.

It was St Chad's day, the 10.30am congregation at St Chad's on the Roseworth estate in Stockton much swollen by their friends from the neighbouring parish of St Mary's, Norton.

The service ended. Paul, who'd been sitting in sports jacket at the back, came forward to give out some notices, the first that the column was artfully in attendance.

"He asked if he could come, I told him no, but he's here anyway," he insisted, mischievously.

The others were altogether more serious, the best and worst moments of his 15 year ministry time capsuled, he said, within a week.

Previously a curate at Shildon and at Barnard Castle, his last parish appointment before Norton had been setting up a "church plant" - a seed which grew - on the Moorside estate in Sunderland.

Last week, he revealed, his successor - the Rev Kevin Conway, 37-year-old former curate of Peterlee - had been charged with a series of sexual offences against a girl under the age of 16.

The Archdeacon of Sunderland had asked Paul to offer pastoral care to the people of Moorside. He might, he said, be spending more time on Wearside than on Teesside in the next two weeks.

"It is the worst thing," he repeated, "that has ever happened in my ministry."

And the high spot? Well that was in Beryl Harrison's death. "She died gloriously", said Paul - and died, it would appear, quite happy.

Beryl was 70. Last month she was diagnosed with cancer of the liver, told that she had between two weeks and two months to live and expressed a wish to be confirmed - a sacrament which can only usually be administered by a bishop.

A date had been arranged, 5pm last Tuesday, for the Bishop of Jarrow to attend her bedside. At the previous Sunday's service Paul had publicly and prayerfully expressed the hope that she would live to see it. She didn't.

When it became clear the previous day that, were Beryl still to be alive she would not be conscious, the Vicar of Norton administered confirmation himself.

"I'm not sure that technically I can do that, but I'm sure God would understand," he said.

Unable to eat for two days, Beryl nodded in response to the promises and swallowed the bread and wine when placed on her tongue. "Food for the journey," said Paul.

Her family, around her, also received communion.

Paul also told her that she'd died with Sunderland in the Premiership and that if he ever became a bishop ("which is highly improbable") she'd be the first person he ever confirmed.

"It was a glorious death in the way that you hear the Victorians talking about death," he said.

"It was just very lovely to see someone who had found faith die without fear in that way. It's hard to put into words, but it was a good death, just something lovely which happened."

Soon after being confirmed, Beryl finally slipped into a coma. Her last word, whether referring to Sunderland's impending position in the football structure or to Paul Walker's confirmation, was "first". She died peacefully the following day.

As the tail end Charlie in the preacher of the year contest might have said, how do you follow that?

St Chad's in Stockton was built in 1956 on a housing estate which little preceded it, was extended shortly afterwards in order to fit everyone in and just ten years ago attracted 100 or more every Sunday morning.

Now the average is 25. Welcoming the folk of St Mary's to Roseworth, Joanne Thorns, the curate, says that their presence offers St Chad's the chance of a "proper" patronal festival - "a chance for loud singing and getting excited."

The gloria, reworded to fit the tune of Beethoven's Ninth, seems particularly joyful.

Joanne's sermon recounts the life of Chad, a seventh century Northumbrian saint particularly revered in the Midlands, recalls that his four brothers were also priests.

"In those days being a priest was regarded as honourable," she says. "Today most families would think their sons were mad."

She herself had been a well paid pharmacist until sufficiently moved by a sermon at St Mary's in Springwell, Sunderland - her home church - to apply for ordination training.

"It was when I realised my faith was only part time," she says. Ironically, St Mary's in Springwell didn't endorse woman priests.

So did her own parents consider her mad? "They were very supportive but they probably did," she says. "They probably thought that it was just Joanne, and that she'd come round eventually."

Elizabeth Walker, the other robed priest, was a latecomer to the ministry. Now 61, she's been involved with St Chad's for 30 years but wasn't ordained deacon until 1994.

"It was a calling from the congregation, really," says the former social work manager who fulfils an unpaid role.

Others - Lena Routh, Millie Littlefair, Mary Clarke, Kath Williams - have attended St Chad's since it was consecrated and remain wholly faithful to it.

All agree that Roseworth is still a good place to live, save for the problem of what Joanna Thorns calls "disaffected" youths.

"You see some estates which have gone down but this one has kept its appearance, is clean and the people are lovely," says Elizabeth Walker.

"The church has started to flourish again since Joanne came here."

After the service there's a splendid spread and a convivial gathering. Paul Walker's off straight away to baptise babies at Norton - but he's made his mark already.

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