At Your Service - Sainst alive.

(From The Northern Echo)

Byline: Mike Amos

THOSE who say the last rites over the Church of England, who lament its age-bound inertia and self-serving sanctimony, who predict that soon it will vanish into a sort of ironic infinity, should heed the parish church of All Saints, Eaglescliffe.

It is not, admittedly, the CofE as most would know or recognise it, not the Church of Giles cartoon or Dibley vicarage. All Saints isn't on its knees at all.

For one thing it is vibrant with young people, for another it adds new families every month and for several more it is thriving, welcoming, vigorous, dynamic, confident, caring, community conscious and utterly upwardly mobile.

All Saints also rejects the traditional Anglican trappings of vestments, pomp and procession, allows children as young as five to share Holy Communion, has …