Making church services interesting for younger people isn't always easy, but retired minister Tom Duerden manages it with a football

IT was Mr W C Fields who famously enjoined against working with children and animals, a caveat clearly lost on the Reverend Tom Duerden. Not, strictly to be accurate, that many domestic animals are in attendance. It's been raining cats and dogs, nonetheless.

Tom, a retired minister, is leading a family service at the Methodist church at Scorton, near Richmond in North Yorkshire, among a number of events to mark the church's centenary.

He not only engages in wonderfully conversational banter with the bairns - "I'm old, I know I don't look it" - but has even brought along a football.

Clad in cassock, bands and Open University hood - "When I was an electrician I wore a boiler suit, this is my church boiler suit," he says - he recalls a game in goal for the Sunday school team, back home in Burnley, when the other lot scored 13.

Still he's holding the ball. "Thirteen,"

he repeats, lest the bairns fail to believe it, "it's no good blaming the goalkeeper, the forward line should have done better."

The following day, nonetheless, there'd been a knock at his door.

If not quite the late Mr Bob Lord, whom older readers will remember as a ruddy-faced butcher who was a long serving and outspoken chairman of Burnley FC and of the Football League, it was at least someone from another church team, seeking his signature.

He played, kept a clean sheet. The ifat- first moral would prove unexpectedly useful a little later in the service.

There'd been another little chapel on the outskirts of the village before this one was built. Its opening service was on October 18, 1908, the collection a thenmassive 19 shillings and sixpence.

The following morning's Northern Echo had nothing of it, merely the usual mix of ranters and rascals and the melancholy overflow from the Saturday morning police courts.

In Sunderland, the landlord of the Noah's Ark had been fined 40 shillings for permitting drunkenness; in Malton - remember the year, 1908 - six motorists had been fined a total of £18 after police set up a speed trap.

Scorton chapel's own history exhibition is at the back, early minute books recording a donation of 3/8d to the Waifs and Strays, 4/8d to the Young Abstainers, five bob to the music stool fund and ten bob, chicken and egg, towards a piano.

A 1912 minute notes that Miss Frier and Mr Lowson had been appointed consulting censors, though what was to be censored and who was to be consulted is not easily explained. The minute's written in pencil; it may have been blue pencil.

There are reports of Sunday school trips, inevitably to Redcar, of Bands of Hope and possibly of glory. A newspaper cutting also chronicles the wedding, in 1949, of David Keenleyside and Sheila Hetherington, the church overflowing and the schoolroom pretty full, too.

The Keenleysides had had long association with Scorton; Sheila and David met at a social there. Though they moved four miles up the road to Middleton Tyas, they never left the church.

"I sit here now and realise that there's almost no one left who was here when I arrived. It still comes as a bit of a surprise to me," says Sheila, 83. "I've had my troubles but things always seem better for coming here. People are so kind here."

Margaret Grainger was baptised at Scorton in 1931, never wanted to leave and is one of four organists. Both her boys became Methodist local preachers.

A flower stand on the path carries beneath it the simple word "Welcome," a message universally echoed, not least by the gift of some of Mrs Pauline Hustwick's glorious jam.

"No one ever goes unwelcome here,"

says Margaret. Since Scorton's churches work happily together, other denominations are present, too.

Maybe ten bairns, bright and enthusiastic, are at the front. Tom eventually gives them the ball. A clandestine little kickabout, a cross between footy and footsie, ensues beneath the pew.

The minister also prays for forgiveness "if we have an assumption of class, instead of open doors and open hearts".

It's after that that things go a bit offcourse, however. The chap reading the Gospel has inexplicably opened the wrong passage, banging on about bodily lusts and other things not entirely suitable to a family service. There also appears to be a reference to false teeth, but that may be a case of nothing dentured nothing gained.

"It's yet another example of God having a sense of humour," someone says afterwards.

Tom takes it entirely in his stride.

"Remember those 13 goals," he says.

He's been so long chatting away with the youngsters, however, that the fabled Methodist hour is unavoidably overrun.

Even by omitting a hymn and truncating the sermon - "Don't tell everyone,"

he says, "they'll want a short sermon" - the service lasts 75 minutes. Afterwards there's coffee and conversation, a cake to cut later in the day. "You'll have to come back for that one," they say.

"I still think this church has a real role, a real future," says Sheila Keenleyside.

As doubtless they say of Tom Duerden, safe hands.

* Other centenary events at Scorton Methodist church include a picnic on the village's famous table-top green (June 21), a family service and picnic (July 6), Scorton Feast at which the preacher will be the Reverend Andrew Champley (July 17) and a harvest festival (September 28)