As the new minister, the Rev Julie Martin brings forthright views to Barnard Castle URC - but there's still room for shades of Scottishness

IN this part of the world, at any rate, the United Reformed Church tends to be religion with a Scottish accent. It was still a bit of a shock before Sunday's service at Barnard Castle URC to see a chap at the back reading the Sunday Post and more surprising still to discover how much Oor Wullie has grown up.

He's still the same wee nyaff in dungarees, of course, but last week Wullie was wondering about Lord Snooty having an ASBO and about putting his pennies into a PSP.

Only the stoical, short trousered Soapy Soutar carried a reminder of old days and Dundee cake. "PSP?" he said. "Is that pie supper with peas?"

The United Reformed Church was created in 1972, principally by the amalgamation of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in England. Barnard Castle URC, at the end of a half-hidden snicket called Hall Street, was built for the Congregationalists in 1836. With the caretaker's house and schoolroom, it cost £1,400; now it's a protected building.

An earlier church had stood in Newgate, Barney's first gas fired public building. Alan Wilkinson's excellent church history records that the flames could sometimes be seen through the metal grill in the floor - "making them fear for their lives in this world and, perhaps, the next."

Non-conformists and dissenters, he adds, had been active in Barnard Castle since the 16th century, when the town was said to be in a "very ignorant and irreligious state".

Hall Street also has a thrift shop and a charity shop - there may be a difference - a plaque to mark the site of Low Mill and an independent financial adviser with a plaque so bright burnished that it was possible to conduct a little personal grooming beforehand, and thus to arrive more smartly than usual.

Elizabeth Conran, church elder and former curator of the Bowes Museum - a Scot, of course - believes that that semi-secluded area was home to several other small churches, the early 19th century law of the land allowing only the Church of England to lord it in the main street.

As if to underline that it's not the Queen's highway, a sign across the road indicates that it's part of the National Byway: Bishop Auckland 17, Durham 30.

It's also part of something called the W2W. If the C2C is coast-to-coast, what on earth's the W2W?

The occasion was the official induction of the Rev Julie Martin, the first minister to serve both the Barnard Castle congregation and those at Low Row and Keld, in Swaledale, now called the Two Dales Pastorate.

Julie's from Birmingham, former teacher, served in the Chapeltown area of Leeds and at St Helens, on Merseyside.

"It's going to be very different," she conceded. "It'll be nice to have the Barnard Castle section on one sheet of A4 paper and not to have to buy a map book."

Between Teesdale and Swaledale, of course, is a great ridge set and, over it, a high road called The Stang which can be a bit fearful in winter, even for ministers of religion.

Julie had heard of it. "Everyone says how lovely the area is at this time of year, but they were honest enough to tell me about the winters, too."

We'd last been to Barney URC four years ago, a lively service in which around ten children took part before heading for their Sunday school. When the Sunday school celebrated its centenary in 1903, events were spread over three weekends and included 31 speeches in six days. In the 1920s there were 16 classes with between three and 16 in each class, attendance rewarded with medals and an annual bar. Half a century ago, 32 were on the roll. Now both pews and children are gone, one more happily than the other. After a £55,000 restoration the church is light, comfortably furnished, warmly and agreeably welcoming. Children no longer come.

If 40 or so were present on Sunday morning, few were under 60.

Perhaps acknowledging that it was a time for grown-ups, Julie - who'd been formally inducted at Low Row the day previously - began with some distinctly adult education.

One of the readings had included the verse from St Paul: "Even if God is foolish, he is wiser than everyone else; even if God is weak, he is stronger than everyone else."

She tackled it directly, head first into the deep end, recalled the tsunami, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. "How can we think of God as foolish or weak when we spend so much time in prayer thinking of him as powerful and almighty? How can we make sense of such a contradiction?"

Though there were no easy answers - unlike, say, the Sunday Post problems page - she made a thoroughly good fist of it. Prayers that were lucid, succinct and powerful included the admission: "Lord, it is sometimes hard for us to think of you as the God of love..."

After a 50 minute service there was chance for folk from other Barnard Castle churches to meet the new minister, for the column to chat to someone who appeared to be a lone Welshman - he was from the Isle of Lewis, missed Charlie Barley's incomparable black pudding as well he might - and to congratulate Julie on her sermon.

The church magazine talks of a dales tradition of independent thinkers. Julie said she believed in folk using their brains, not leaving them at the church door. She and they could be very well met.