Fourteen into one does go - but only just - as they proved in East Cowton on All Saints Day.

THINGS two weeks ago had been left in the middle of a field, or strictly in the church of St Lawrence, Hutton Bonville, which stands in the middle of a field with only two houses, several hundred cattle and the clamorous London to Edinburgh railway as near neighbours.

The echoing congregation, we'd reported, had comprised the team rector, a lay reader and her two young grandchildren, and me.

Wherever two or three are gathered together, there shall hard questions be asked also and the question which seemed inescapable was how in 2005 the expense and effort of sustaining such little used churches could be justified.

St Lawrence's is one of 14 church buildings in the East Richmond team ministry, a vast area of 5,500 people and four licensed clergy, three of them full time.

Where, we'd asked, might the other side of the rural Church of England be witnessed? At All Saints, East Cowton, they said - Sunday, October 30, 11am.

East Cowton, once also known as Long Cowton for no better reason than that it went on a bit, is roughly between Darlington and Northallerton and three miles north of Hutton Bonville. The railway station is long closed but still in first class order, the Beeswing pub is named after a Derby winner. The village, says the local authority website, is "charming".

An 1890 history also notes that there was a reading room and library, though without a single member. "A love of literature," it adds with Victorian censoriousness, "does not appear to be a characteristic of the village".

There was also a church, originally 13th century, said in one history to be dedicated to St James, in another to St Mary and in a third to be "of doubtful dedication".

The new one replaced it in 1910. Perhaps the All Saints dedication was a compromise, its predecessor having been dedicated to most of them, anyway.

Last Sunday's service marked All Saints Day, officially November 1, the only service that day for all 14 churches and their names duly gazetteered on the front of the order of service: Barton and Birkby, Croft and the Cowtons, Manfield and Middleton Tyas, Eryholme, Great Smeaton and so on through the cartographic small print of North Yorkshire.

The photographer, unusually, was to snap away during the service. We'd just like a shot of a nice full church, it's suggested.

"So would I," says Alan Glasby, the team rector. "I hope for it passionately."

All four clergy are present, dispersed to each corner of the chancel. Alan Glasby, 59, has spent most of his ministry in rural areas around Harrogate and Ripon, Dave Lewis was an Anglican chaplain in Norway, Graham Smith was ordained a few years ago after a career in teaching and in the prison service.

Andy Nicholson, the recently ordained curate, is a short, slightly pugnacious looking chap with a shaven head and an earring, the look of a British light middleweight boxing champion and a clerical scarf worn as jauntily as others might wear a Lonsdale belt.

"We did a double take when first we saw him, but he's an absolute sweetie," says one of the East Cowton ladies.

The clocks have gone back - "Try telling that to the animals," says a disgruntled countryman - but by the eleventh hour, 12 in olden times, All Saints is full to overflowing.

Perhaps there's been a three-line whip: perhaps those good country folk have simply lain back and thought of the Church of England.

Mr Glasby tells them that he didn't for a minute suppose there'd only be five or six present but is delighted to see the church so full. The Hutton Bonville report, he adds gratifyingly, had been "very gentle".

"We're here to celebrate what we can do together, that's the important thing. We have to look across parishes and across villages to see what strength there can be today when the Christian community stands alongside one another."

His arms are outstretched, as if to embrace all 14 churches and all 200 worshippers simultaneously. If they don't want to be in the photograph, he adds, they should stick the order of service in front of their faces.

What follows is a service so vibrant, so rich and so carefully and compellingly considered that the temptation is to abandon the normal practice of writing the At Your Service column on a Thursday and put pen to paper forthwith, lest a single high note or nuance be forgotten.

The temptation, it should be added, is shamelessly resisted.

There's familiar liturgy and inspired intercessions, old hymns like For All the Saints and more recent ones like Our God Reigns. There's a jazz band, a young people's drama group to play out something of the story of the murdered Brother Roger of Taize, Taize chants, coruscating choir, an admission by Graham Smith of one of the other benefits of a full church.

"You can't hear me singing," he says.

Dave Lewis delivers an absolutely cracking sermon on Brother Roger, on saints all or nothing, on breaking down boundaries. "At times we haven't even broken down the boundaries between East Cowton and West Cowton, let alone anywhere else," he says.

Folk just seem happy to be there. At appropriate moments, it's possible to recall a line from the Blaydon Races: all the lads and lasses there, all wi' smiling faces...

Amid it all, however, another Exocet question self-starts, straightens and speeds ineluctably towards the poor team rector: if worship in a full church where maximum resources are concentrated is so joyous and so wonderfully uplifting, why sustain so many churches at such expense, however faithful the few?

As across the arable flatlands of Hutton Bonville, Mr Glasby has seen it coming a mile away and acknowledges its accuracy. "We can't just pretend we are self-contained communities but we aren't at the stage yet where we are ready to abandon local work and do things exclusively together.

"We're gradually seeing what can happen, and I think we're coming to believe in the possibility of something bigger and more corporate. How it works out is a mystery yet to be discovered."

A splendoured service ends after 75 minutes to some soulful sax and When the Saints Go Marching In. The rest of us step out much encouraged.