A bagpipe-playing pig, a smiling vicar (finally) and a first time in the pulpit have all been helping a North-East church pull in the crowds

Like (say) sales executive or sex industry worker, the term "reader" - when applied to the Church of England - may be a pretty misleading job description.

A reader, dear reader, reads. Or so the uncomplicated title would suggest.

Readers first appeared in the reign of Good Queen Bess when, then as now very likely, there weren't enough priests to go round. Elizabeth instructed her Archbishop of Canterbury to find other learned men to read the lessons and the Prayer Book homilies, but nothing more.

"They weren't expected to think for themselves," explains Canon Richard Cooper, of whom more anon.

Reinstated in the 19th Century "lay readers" were finally allowed to preach and to perform other functions around the parish.

Since then, the Church has reinvented itself, its liturgy and its language so greatly and so frequently that people like poor Peter Mullen have periodically been thrown into paroxysm and the baby has several times seemed in danger of being thrown out with the bath water.

Still readers remain, and not necessarily an open book. Apart from dropping the term "lay" - though lay people they remain - no one has improved upon it. Perhaps they should hold a competition; bright star prizes.

Today's column, at any rate, is from the glorious parish church of St Mary the Virgin in Richmond, and though two-word populists would simple headline it "Readers' digest", there is much more to the story.

The principal characters are Sylvia Earl, "reader in training" in the Wensley deanery, and Richard Cooper, Richmond's rector - about whom a word of explanation before proceeding.

Richard is a Grade A egg, an affable, industrious and highly effective parish priest. On the last three or four occasions that his name has appeared in the paper, however, it has been accompanied by a photograph of this scowling, sad faced, barely recognisable cleric holding - worse yet - a copy of The Northern Echo.

So much for good news. As positive PR goes, it is the equivalent of suggesting that footballers throw games. It is to be hoped that Sunday's photographer managed a new one, and that Richard remembered to smile.

Early references to the church alongside the River Swale have been found as far back as 1137. Many of its features are Norman, the tower built and the font put in place in 1399.

Some of the once-monastic choir stalls have inscriptions said in the church guide to be "far from pious", including (for reasons we forgot to ask) a pig playing the bagpipes.

St Mary's was virtually rebuilt in 1858-60 under the eye of the renowned architect Sir Gilbert Scott; the Green Howards chapel was consecrated in 1932. Whilst other churches are diminishing, Richmond's vigorously flourishes.

Around 180 are present at Sunday's principal service - towering bells, coruscating choir, pomp, procession and Lenten purple.

The congregation includes Richmondshire District Council chief planning officer Patrick Earl, at once recognisable by his tweed jacket. All planning officers wear tweed jackets, a sort of municipal badge of office.

Sylvia is his wife. After two and a half years training to be a reader it is to be her first public sermon - "going public in a big way" Canon Cooper tells his congregation.

Whilst climbing the pulpit steps is "daunting", he adds, they will not be expected to hold up cards with marks for artistic impression and the like - nor has he considered it wise to inform her of the column's presence.

Sylvia is still seven months from her licensing. A bit like passing out Paratroops receive a red beret, readers get to wear a blue clerical scarf during services.

Readers - St Mary's already has four - assume an ever-wider role in teaching, preaching and taking some services. With the bishop's permission, they can even lead funerals. "An extensive and pretty essential ministry," says Canon Cooper.

Sylvia will work mainly around her home parish, of Preston-under-Scar in Wensleydale. "Increasingly I was finding myself at the heart of the church in the village," she says afterwards.

"People were turning to me. I needed more support and more of a structure I could work within. The final push was someone retiring. I thought that it was perhaps a niche I could fill."

The Wensley deanery presently has 11 stipendiary clergy. In five years there are expected to be nine.

The rector has allowed her 12 minutes. Her sermon - cogent, confident and with a strong last line - takes exactly ten.

"We are all unlikely messengers, but something that has touched us might just make others want to listen," she says.

Wisely, there are no first time jokes ("women don't tell them as well as men," says Sylvia) and no stories about herself. Over the next few days there would be a debriefing with the rector; at the back of the church the coffee cup congregation is universally encouraging.

The first big hurdle is over, and now she can read all about it.

Published: Saturday, March 9, 2002