It wasn’t quite as big a crowd as Barack Obama attracted, but in Sunderland, Methodists still thronged to greet their very own president.

IT may not be supposed, as the hymnist does, that there is anything of the steep and rugged pathway about this column.

It’s just that, for us non-drivers, the going (and the coming back) can sometimes get a bit tricky.

Thus last Sunday morning, a 10.45am service in Sunderland, a replacement bus service – that perennial horror – between Darlington and Newcastle railway stations, a warm bed and a bitter-cold dawn.

It was reminiscent of the preacher’s all-time favourite joke, the one about the anxious mother trying to get her lie-a-bed son up for church.

“Give me three good reasons why I should,” he demands, pulling the duvet more firmly over his head.

“Firstly, I’m your mother,” she replies, “secondly, it’s Sunday morning and thirdly, you’re the vicar.”

Happily there’s a 9.15am train from Darlington to Middlesbrough and a four-minute connection from Thornaby to Sunderland. At Hartlepool, the train’s joined by a group of what might best be termed as infrequent travellers.

“Do you do pies?” one asks of the bleary-eyed conductor.

“Pies?” repeats the conductor.

“You’re just lucky to get a bloody train.”

A mile taxi ride from Sunderland station – £4.60, must be double time on Sundays – and to St John’s church in Ashbrooke, with just time to bag a seat by the pipes.

Ashbrooke, still well enough heeled, was once dubbed the Belgravia of Sunderland. St John’s 148ft spire is the city’s highest, its centre aisle the longest, its architecture among the most elegant.

It sounds Anglican, looks Anglican and is very definitely Methodist, built for £14,500 in 1888. “People familiar with the sober, barn-like meeting houses of the early Methodists must be struck with the evidence of an advance in the direction of a more cultivated taste,” wrote the Sunderland Echo’s man at the time.

Sunday’s big occasion is the visit of the Reverend Stephen Poxon, president of the Methodist Conference, and also a chance to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

For Newcastle United read Sunderland united.

It’s thronged, nearly as full as the Stadium of Light, so full that had a white jacketed feller gone around selling peanuts to all the president’s men and women it would not have been entirely surprising.

“You can sit down,” begins Derek Aldridge, Sunderland’s superintendent minister, tempting those at the back to riposte “I know we can, but where?”

THE president, approximate equivalent of an archbishop, holds office for just a year, which John Wesley had decreed long enough for anyone.

Also in attendance is the Reverend Leo Osborn, for eight years chair of the Newcastle upon Tyne Methodist district – they hang onto their chairs a little longer – and the North-East’s number one Aston Villa fan. Aston Villa had won at Sunderland the previous day. Leo, wisely, says nowt.

The president is a minister in Burnley and secretary of the Methodist Missionary Society. “I want to apologise for the misunderstanding,”

says Mr Aldridge, “to all those who, when I said the president was coming, thought that I meant Barack Obama.”

Myrtle, the president’s wife, is from Durham and a few years back was herself vice-president of Conference – the highest office open to a non-ordained minister.

She’s also a Sunderland fan, recipient at Christmas of a box of SFC paper napkins. “Very sad,” says her husband, though probably they were just to dry her eyes.

Mr Poxon has been making a weekend of it, visiting church projects in the district, particularly taken with the recently-appointed street pastors in Newcastle.

He’s been out with them on the Friday night club circuit. “It was freezing cold and most of the girls had nothing on,” he says by way of mild exaggeration.

Mr Poxon accepts that there’s a danger of only being shown the positive things – “I hope I have seen the church in all its glory, but also where there is decline” – suggests that Methodism in the UK is bottoming out, remains optimistic.

“I see some wonderful signs of fresh expressions, new ways of being church. There are churches which are closing and areas of real concern, but in London there are now more black Methodists than white.

“They are coming into empty Methodist churches and filling them.

The same is happening with Poles and others in the Roman Catholic church. I believe that God is bringing people from all over the world to renew churches in Britain. It is a very exciting time.”

A challenging sermon – presidential address, it might be said – also includes the story of how friends from other churches had arranged for him a surprise footplate ride on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

He’d been grateful for the gesture (“a wonderful ecumenical experience”) but doubtful of the steam enthusiasts.

“Sad anoraks,” he says.

There are hymns like Go Forth and Tell and Thy Hand O Lord Hath Guided – “One church, one faith, one Lord” – prayers for forgiveness “that we have become too accustomed to our separateness” and that diversity may not become division. The choir’s excellent.

Like the previous day’s match, it ends after precisely 90 minutes.

There is little doubt about which congregation goes home the WALKABOUT: President Stephen Poxon greets the congregation happier.