Cross purposes

Absent with leave, last Sunday I was covering the National Village Cricket Cup final at Lord’s. Tomorrow, at 1pm, I’ll be at the Weardale Railway’s open-air service on Stanhope station.

So it was over coffee on Wednesday morning that I caught up with the folk of Chester-le-Street Methodists and, by way of a little productivity bonus, learnt how Durham County Council had refused planning permission for a cross on a church.

“Not conducive to the host building,”

they ruled.

“If it had been a minaret it would have been up no bother at all,” says Eric Donkin.

Since the bureaucrats persisted in their attitude – cross-grained, it might most politely be said – the church went to the effort and expense of hiring a planning consultant to present an appeal. “In 30 years I’ve never heard of anything so stupid,” he said.

The Christians got their status symbol, visible all the way down Newcastle Road and illuminated at night. “It’s what we stand for,” says Eric.

ONCE, Chester-le-Street had three Methodist churches, two that had been Primitive and one Wesleyan. They were united about 35 years ago in the big church at the opposite end of the market place from the Grade II listed viaduct that carries the East Coast Main Line.

The church retains 269 members, holds three Sunday services and still has a celebrated choir. The adjoining Sunday school room, as they still called it, had been built in 1866 and seen very much better days. “The windows were rotten, the brickwork was spalling, the roof needed a lot of work, all sorts of things. It was a very tired building,” says Eric. They sought professional advice.

Refurbishment? What the architect meant was never in a month of Sunday school rooms. What he said was “Don’t even think about it”.

Instead, they thought about a new building in which the 21st Century church could serve the community seven days a week, formed a steering group and set out to raise £1m with which to build and equip it.

The target has been reached without help from the local authority, which declined to contribute.

“It seemed an impossible task,”

says Eric. “There were plenty of times we wondered if we’d bitten off more than we could chew. We always kept our vision, but you can understand why people pack up.”

Tomorrow, joyously, the Cornerstones Centre will be dedicated. During an open day on September 30 it will be officially opened. A church newsletter talks of a palpable sense of excitement.

“We’re ecstatic,” says Fred Raine.

“It’s early days, but already there are signs that it’s working in the way we’d hoped. The reward is when you come in and see all those rooms being used.”

Bob Watson agrees. “I know of very few people who’ve come to church because they’ve been bashed about the head with a bible. They come because of acts of kindness or generosity, or because there is a real community spirit. We hope we can share that here.”

BOB’S a retired deputy head and for 60 years has been a Methodist church organist in the Chester-le-Street area. Fred was a college lecturer; Eric, happily, a building works officer.

“I’ve never worked as hard in my life as I did on this, hundreds of hours,” he says.

Church members had already raised £150,000, a lot of it from concerts – “Chester-le-Street people have always liked their concerts”

says Bob – when the National Lottery approved a £500,000 grant.

“The first hint of success,” says Bob – a pretty heavy hint, no doubt, and goodness knows they’d worked for it. “We had an awful suspicion that the National Lottery would be down on us because we were a church, but they were very good,”

says Bob. “The problem is the amount of hoops you have to jump through. I went to a Lottery conference and there was woman whose husband had left her, poor soul, because of all the hours she was spending on her application.

“I always realised at that conference how fortunate we were to have a steering group that never lost its focus, not even when they were told they couldn’t have a cross on the church. The difficulty is how we ignite this vision to the membership.

It’s important that everyone sees the vision.”

SEVERAL rooms are named after northern saints, another dedicated to sundry Wesleys.

The main hall, in which on Wednesday there was something called an NHS IAPT conference – whatever it is, it sounded pretty painful – is simply, biblically, the Upper Room.

The carers and toddlers’ group overflowed another room downstairs.

Many other organisations have already made bookings. It’s run almost entirely by volunteers.

Though it’s not easy to forget that these are church premises, especially now that they have a cross, it’s enthusiastically open to all.

The logo talks of serving the community in the 21st Century. “We’d like to think,” says Fred Raine, “that that’s what we’re doing”.

■ The thanksgiving and dedication service, led by Deacon Eunice Attwood, vice-president of the Methodist Conference, is at 3pm tomorrow. The Cornerstones open day is on Thursday September 30 from 10am to 4pm and 6pm to 9pm. The opening ceremony, by the Reverend Paul Worsnop, is at 2pm.