Xcelsior

HOW often these past 16 years – for the At Your Service column is getting on a bit, too – has it been supposed not only that none of the congregation is in the first flush of youth, but that the average age may be approximately that of a giant sequoia?

It is not to impugn the elderly, goodness knows, rather to underline the churches’ near-institutional difficulty in catching – and keeping – them young.

So now for something completely different, something which may compel the average churchgoer to sit down, if not to fall on his knees.

Maybe 400 are at last Sunday’s 6pm service at the Xcel Centre, in Newton Aycliffe. Perhaps half of those – the guesses become wilder – are between 18 and 25. They come, it’s said, from 40 miles away.

It’s held in a new £5.2m building, addressed – for 62 minutes – by a former fruit and vegetable stall-holder who if he weren’t an engrossing evangelist could make a fortune as a stand-up comedian.

Andy Elmes is up from Portsmouth, where the church he started with a dozen members now has more than 600, and with two “plants” nearby. “I meant to bring my wife this weekend,” he tells them, “I only told her I was popping out for a pint of milk.”

He also essays impressions of Tina Turner and of the Bee Gees – “men who sang like that should have been sent down the pit” – and admits that he’d led an evil life. “Evil”. If it is true that by their fruits shall ye know them, Andy Elmes could make the man from Del Monte resemble a packet of prunes.

The Xcel church was formed, as a new town house group, in 1967. The new centre, necessary because they’d outgrown the former church – itself just 25 years old – had officially been opened the day previously. “It’s been quite a struggle. We needed somewhere bigger for a long time and this is a dream come true,” says John Greenow, the senior pastor. “It’s been an amazing journey really.”

IT’S what they call a “Full Gospel”

church, formed by John and Pansy Dickenson. After it had moved around several rented buildings, pastors Glyn and Pamela Greenow – the Dickensons’ daughter and son-in-law – led the development of a new place in Woodham Village.

The present leader is their son. “I don’t know what the secret is,” John insists. “It’s always been in our DNA, but if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. It isn’t about religion, it’s about life. I’d be happy if just one young person’s life changed.”

The Xcel Centre, officially run by a holding company from which the church rents space, occupies 4.2 acres on the Heighington Lane Business Park. There are six conference suites, parking for 150, nursery space for 78 children, an auditorium that can seat 1,200 and a 64-seat coffee house called Jackson’s, because that’s what Glyn and John are.

Community initiatives range from dance classes to debt counselling, with much in between. A second Sunday morning gathering, at the Dolphin Centre in Darlington, has just marked its second anniversary and has a membership topping 100.

Everything, every beat and every Tweet, takes advantage of technology.

“Jesus packaged the message, too, but in those days it was about farmers and fishermen,” says Kerina Clark, the centre manager. “The message is the same, it’s just packaged differently.”

The children’s pastor runs 11 different programmes each week, the youth pastor had 180 in for a footballrelated evening the previous Friday.

Kerina – “business head, church heart,” she says – has been a member since she was 14 and admits to surprise that they’ve ended up where they are. “It’s as people say, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

THE service begins with songs – “We will not stay silent, we’ll see this generation changed”

– led by a band of 11 or 12 (they keep moving) on stage. Scores of unselfconscious youngsters are jumping up and down at the front; none in the hall is sitting, neither on the fence or otherwise.

There are those of us, so old and so greatly in the middle of the ecclesiastical road as to be in danger of being knocked down by the white line machine, for whom such music is never going to displace Charles Wesley, of course.

There’s a chap in Jackson’s afterwards who cheerfully says that he brings earplugs. He may not be joking.

There’s testimony from a lady whose son played a saving role in a school trip skiing mishap the week previously – “There was nearly an extremely fatal accident,” she says – a T-shirt for the head car park steward, Jackson’s vouchers for John and Christine Dent (who probably aren’t of T-shirt age).

The invitation to give speaks of “tithes and offerings”. They don’t pass the collection plate, they send round the buckets.

Andy Elmes speaks without notes or autocue, not so much animated as perpetual motion. His text’s the familiar Corinthians verse about faith, hope and love, his approach inclusive, entertaining, almost folksy. “I did a bit of in-depth Greek study,” he says. “In other words, I looked it up on Google.”

The gathering’s with him from go, murmuring “very good” and “that’s right” or whatever. No matter that some of them would have muttered much the same thing had he been selling best bananas four for a quid, it’s a virtuoso performance and a memorable and meaningful address.

It finishes shortly before 8pm, big screen messages ranging from “Please ensure you collect your children”

to “Proud to be brewing Starbuck’s coffee”.

Andy admits afterwards that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. “It would be a pretty bland taste if it were.”

The coffee house is still thronged at nine, some of the older fellers talking football and real ale – happily – but talking, too, about all that’s gone on at the church.

It’s been a rewarding evening; for many a centre of Xcelence.

■ The Xcel Centre, Long Tens Road, Newton Aycliffe DL5 6AP.

Sunday services at 11am and 6pm and at Darlington at 11am. Visit xcelchurch.com