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IF the burgeoning public relations industry were wholly to be believed, and by and large it is not, every week of the year would now comprise seven redletter days – or possibly six, plus one on which the account director saw everything that he had made and speciously convinced himself that it was very good.

PR’s creations range from National Fish Finger Week to National Fight Flatulence Week, from Dumpling Day to Good Hair Day.

They differ only in their degree of absurdity.

Back to Church Sunday, again marked last weekend, is something else entirely – partly because it has a tangible, credible and laudable aim and partly because (so far as may be ascertained) inflatable curates and sophistry surveys are definitely not employed.

The initiative is ecumenical, though chiefly embraced by the Church of England. From the list of 60 or so participating churches offered by the Diocese of Durham I chose, and for good reason, a return to St John’s in Nevilles Cross.

Straddling the former Great North Road and the site of a fierce old battle in 1346, Nevilles Cross is on the western border of Durham. In the late Sixties, while in train with the station master’s daughter, I was a fairly familiar figure at St John’s but – apart from a funeral last year – hadn’t been there since.

The funeral was that of Peter Metcalfe – excellent chap, true sportsman and for 25 years chairman of the Durham County Cricket League. In a memorable eulogy, his son Andrew recalled his dad’s difficult last days in hospital.

Having difficulty swallowing, Peter had been given medication in the form of suppositories. Ever the joker, he called over a nurse – “little blonde thing,” said Andrew – to complain.

“These pills are useless,” said Peter, “I might as well shove them up my a**e.”

ST John’s is extended and much changed these past 40 years. The choir stalls and much of the other furniture are gone from the chancel, there are meeting rooms, kitchen and toilet facilities, activities for all ages.

It’s vibrant, relevant, community and communication-conscious, spiritually innovative and evangelically adventurous. Back to Church Sunday was prominently promoted.

Were the bottom line to be the number of Nevilles Cross folk persuaded to return to St John’s last Sunday, however, the answer would appear to offer naught for their comfort.

Though he lives barely 50 yards away, nor is there sight of Mr George Reynolds – celebrated safe cracker and former chairman of Darlington FC – not even in one of what the church calls its cell groups.

Anna de Lange, a reader who has led the service with the Reverend Ruth Jagger, says she’s not disappointed in the least at the absence of new faces.

“We are an open and welcoming church which is encouraging people to come back all the time. Every Sunday is Back to Church Sunday here.”

Mrs Jagger, wide of the Archdeacon of Durham, happily agrees.

“There may not be any unexpected people today, but it’s obviously working in some areas. It does take courage to come back to church.”

THE theme this year is Come As You Are, perhaps the ecclesiastical equivalent of Go As You Please, that staple of the workmen’s club concert room. The lovely hymn Just As I Am eloquently makes the point.

However swiftly the churches must move with the times, there must surely have been some who shudder at the issue of a “special invite”, when an invitation would have done nicely.

The day’s biblical hero is Zacchaeus, a particularly nasty and rather short tax collector who, if the Authorised Version is to be believed, climbed a tree “because he could not come nigh unto Jesus for the press”.

Perhaps fortunately, St John’s not only uses a very much more modern version but translates the story into a power point presentation in which Zacchaeus for his sins looks a bit like ET after a bad night. “A little man who became big in the sight of God,”

it says.

The screen also carries the words of the hymns, though there’s a beltand- braces option of hymn books – good on them – for those whose eyesight isn’t so clever.

About 100 are present, of all ages, toys in the foyer for the little ones. “It doesn’t matter if you want to stand up or walk about,” Mrs de Lange tells them and their parents, and also projects images onto the screen for her address.

They are of people of all ages and conditions, as they say, young and old, black and white, refugees and homeless. God, says Mrs de Lange, sees everyone’s potential.

“I’ve always been attracted to unconventional churches. If I went to a boring one, I wouldn’t go again,” she adds afterwards.

A thoughtful and lively service is over in 40 minutes – everyone seems a bit surprised by that – offering a chance to chat over coffee with 86- year-old Derek Corner, at St John’s since 1949. Everything, he says, has become much more informal; when he came they had lantern slides.

“I don’t think the message has got to change but the means by which it is carried may have to,” he says. “We have got to ring a bell with the people of today. It doesn’t really matter about one Sunday, but we have to try to make coming to church enjoyable.

In this church I think we do it very well.”

Back to normal, the column returns next week.