It may have been long in coming, but like all the best weddings, the union of Crook's Methodist and United Reformed churches went without a hitch.

AT the end of A Christmas Carol, it will be recalled, old Scrooge becomes quite excited by the fact that the spirits did it all in one night.

In Crook, County Durham, the Methodist and United Reformed churches completed negotiations effectively to amalgamate in a little under 12 months. It is a fact no less incredible.

Church unity is something which encourages much talk and rather less action. Church niceties weigh more ponderously than Jacob Marley's chain.

Last Sunday, the congregations of the Central Methodist Church in Dawson Street and of St Andrew's United Reformed Church - usually known as the church behind Presto's - worshipped formally together for the first time. The service was at the former Methodists.

"A mathematical formula," said Jean Cowing, one of the Methodist stewards, "one plus one equals one."

Graeme Fancourt, Baptist minister and chairman of Crook Churches Together, was there, too. When his new baby cried, symbolically and strenuously, all sorts rushed to soothe the little lad. Ecumenism in action.

Henceforth the church will be called St Andrew's, Dawson Street, properly known as a Local Ecumenical Partnership, or LEP for short, and particularly appropriate for Tom Wilkinson, Crook's superintendent Methodist minister.

Mr Wilkinson is a Scot. "St Andrew is my favourite saint," he said, adding that Methodists usually called their churches after streets or railway stations.

They will worship together, work together, have fun together and (as several times they were reminded) almost certainly fall out when they're together.

Though there are Anglican/Methodist partnerships in Newton Hall, Durham, on the Woodhouse Close estate in Bishop Auckland and at Rookhope, in Weardale, it is the first in County Durham between Methodist and URC. One giant LEP for mankind.

The service was also attended by the Rev Graham Carter, chair of the Darlington Methodist District, and by the Rev Peter Poulter, moderator of the URC's North-East synod. Everyone received a bulb in a pot - a semper vivum, apparently - as a sign of new life.

"What a splendid occasion, a free gift and two preachers for the price of one," said Mr Carter.

"If you want a sermon, look around you," said Mr Poulter, echoing Christopher Wren's memorial in St Paul's.

"We look the same, we almost smell the same, in worship we do things similarly. This building could just as easily have been URC and you could just as easily have moved into our church."

Mr Poulter added - "ecclesiology and cupboards" - that they'd stub their toes on each other's presumptions and argue over which cups went where.

Mr Wilkinson had looked up "moderator" and "chair" in the dictionary. A moderator, he said, was a mechanical device for controlling the flow of gas; a chair was a seat with backing.

The spark which ignited progress - but not, of course, the gas - was said to have come from Margaret Stephenson, baptised in the church behind Presto's and most recently its secretary. She'd urged the annual meeting to look seriously at the future; they did.

"We felt we had something of value we wanted to protect and keep," said Ruth Crofton, minister of the United Reformed churches in Durham and Crook. "We could have just gone pottering on into the future until everyone was worn out, but that just wasn't on."

They looked at both buildings, decreed Dawson Street better suited to their joint purposes.

The church was well filled, the congregation as positive, as cheerful and as thoroughly good natured as wedding gatherings should be. As with matrimony, there were also formalities. Fewer may have signed the Geneva Convention than signed the new church's constitution.

"It enshrines both our traditions and draws on both," said Mrs Crofton.

"I'm almost tempted to say that I now pronounce you man and wife but I'd better not," said the Rev David Kinch, a retired Methodist minister. "I am at least the first to welcome you to St Andrew's, Dawson Street."

It was an admirable service, thoughtfulness and laughter also happily combined, and with a hymn specially written by Mr Wilkinson to the tune of Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon.

When Andrew left his nets behind

And followed at his Lord's command,

The way ahead was not defined

No route map for the road to hand...

If there were a slight problem, it was that the Methodist hour, usually so closely watched that you could boil an ostrich egg by it, extended to an hour and 45 minutes (which may also have explained the fractious baby).

The photographer had been told to come after an hour, too, but waited patiently outside. He'd had a book, he said, even adding that it was a good book. Whether it was THE good book is another matter entirely.

Afterwards there was a most magnificent feast which might have fed half of Crook until Christmas. Everyone seemed chuffed to bits, everyone settling in.

For years the local headlines were all about Crook Town. Now they were Crook united.