President and correct

THE Methodists do things differently, as readers are doubtless aware. They don’t have bishops and similarly purple people, at least not yet, though there are one or two who quite fancy themselves in a mitre.

Each district has instead a chair, who may be male or female, must be a minister and is unlikely to have more than two legs. The Methodist Conference annually elects a president and vice-president.

The president is a minister, the vice-president a layman. Quite often they form an effective double act, which is what happened at Richmond two Sunday evenings ago.

David Gamble, the president, was completing a five-day visit to the Darlington district, which embraces Teesside, Durham and the North Yorkshire dales. Vice-president Richard Vautrey, a Leeds GP and BMA bigwig, has joined him for some of the time.

“It’s been a wonderful few days,”

says district chair – aforesaid – the Reverend Ruth Gee, and it’s also a wonderful and uplifting service, save for a vexatious little matter to which shortly we shall return.

Mr Gamble had made national headlines a few weeks earlier by suggesting that Methodism would be prepared to lose its separate identity in the interests of Christian unity.

At Richmond, the 6.30pm service is preceded by what the organisers call a tea, but which might feasibly have fed the five thousand.

That’s one of the differences – perhaps even the stumbling blocks, though there seem to be quite a few others – between the Methodists and the Anglicans. The non-conformists like their bun fights before the service, the Church of England thereafter.

There are a couple of televisions, too, perhaps for reasons of crowd control – the place is packed, upstairs and down, Stockton alone has sent two busloads. Certainly they’re not showing Sunderland v Man City.

The president has had a busy time, met all sides at Corus, speaks of hope and of hopelessness. He’s also been much impressed by all that’s going on at Thornaby Methodist Church and by the Anglican/Methodist ecumenical partnership on the Woodhouse Close estate, in Bishop Auckland.

“Around there,” he says, approvingly, “people don’t talk of the Methodists or the Church of England.

They talk of the church.”

Keith Bamford, Richmond’s minister, reminds everyone that they are in the original Richmond of many worldwide – “beware of falsifications”

– and that John Wesley had himself visited the town three times between 1768-86.

On the first occasion, Wesley recorded that he had never seen a ruder rabblement – “without sense, decency or manners” – though they’d learned a little more decorum by the third. The present church, built in 1939, has 170 members and grows.

Mr Bamford, a newcomer himself, has appeared on the BBC2 quiz show Eggheads – “We didn’t win, but it was a good day out” – and is said to like his new patch. He is said, indeed, to have supposed Swaledale to be paradise on earth and may not be too far wrong.

“People have been hugely welcoming.

I’ve never been made to feel more at home,” he says.

He’s also much looking forward to the service. “These boys are good,”

he adds.

The first hymn is O For a Thousand Tongues, one of the three greatest in Christendom, but sung – this is the vexatious bit – to the wrong tune.

The chosen tune is Richmond, what else. It’s not even named after the town but after the composer’s sister’s second cousin or something and is more familiarly set to Praise to the Holiest in the Height.

O For a Thousand Tongues is properly sung to the tune Lyngham or, second best, to Lydia. Perhaps they’ve chosen Richmond for structural reasons: had it been a proper tune, a rousing tune, a full church would surely have shifted a few tiles.

I have a little sulk, anyway.

Otherwise it’s all carefully considered and expertly executed, including an ecclesiastical version of Red Riding Hood. “I have a room in my house which will keep you warm and comfortable,” cajoles the Big Bad Wolf. “I call it my Aga.”

The president and vice-president are anxious to talk about their North-East experiences, full of encouragement, though Dr Vautrey had earlier diagnosed light-under-abushel syndrome, to which most churches are prone.

“We don’t sufficiently talk up the amazing things that are happening all over the place. Everywhere we go there are examples of witness and of service to the community. People can talk themselves into a feeling of decline, but there are things I wouldn’t have dreamed of. People are responding.”

Mr Gamble’s a bit inclined to blame the national press. “They’re only interested in naughty vicar stories,”

he says.

The two also try to list the worldwide places they’ve visited during their year of office. It might be easier to list those they haven’t.

The president is pushed, gently, to explain his views on unity. He talks more sense in five minutes than some conferences and synods, Methodist and Anglican, might in five days.

It isn’t a good message, he says, when a community might have churches of both denominations and they’re both struggling to keep their doors open.

“We should be willing to go out of existence,” he says, “for the sake of the Messiah and the sake of the Kingdom. If you are putting Methodism before the work of God, that can’t be right.”

The service has lasted an hour and 45 minutes, a long shift, but it’s at that moment that David Gamble seems a very good bet.