BARELY a year after he called a crisis meeting to prevent the closure of Stanton St Gabriel Church in Morcombelake the Rev Stephen Skinner has had to call an emergency meeting about Wootton Fitzpaine Church.

It has been a busy year for the vicar who has also had to battle to secure a future for Charmouth Church which is about to submit a £450,000 Lottery bid to re-order the building.

In both those cases he said there had been some success and there plans for redevelopment of the buildings for multi use - but progress was slow.

Last week there was an encouraging response to his call to arms to save Wootton Fitzpaine church.

He said: "Another church in the Golden Cap team faces major problems. Now it is Wootton Fitzpaine Church that is in trouble. Very few people in the village any longer go to church and sometimes services simply have to be cancelled for lack of a congregation.

"This has also led to financial problems because so little is raised in the weekly collections and the church does not have a treasurer at present."

There were nearly 30 people who came along to the meeting last week and the Rev Skinner said he'd come away with a renewed sense of optimism.

He said: "We explained the situation and then opened the meeting up and people came up with lots and lots of ideas for the ways in which the church and the village can work together, recognising the church is some way out of the centre of the village which produces its own difficulties.

Among the ideas were different sorts of services to appeal to a younger generation, services at different times in different styles.

He added: "One of the more radical ideas was a walking service starting perhaps with a bacon butty in the village hall then all walking together perhaps across the fields and ending up at the church for a short service."

He said a few people volunteered to form a small group to talk through the ideas.

He added: "They'll then come up with plans to make the church relevant and attractive to those who currently don't attend maybe at all.

"I came away with renewed optimism. It was a really positive meeting there was no criticism by anybody of anything which was helpful.

"Everybody wanted to keep the church open and recognised we couldn't continue just holding the traditional services only."