A CHORLEY vicar is aiming to pew-form miracles this weekend -- such as encouraging people to attend church.

The Reverend Ken Howles has even given his ecclesiastical campaign the special codename CB2C - Come Back to Church Sunday.

The vicar of St James's in Brooke Street, launched the operation this week in a bid to boost dwindling congregations around Lancashire.

The plan is to encourage other churches to transform occasional visitors into regular churchgoers.

Some 150 invitations have been delivered from St James's for a special service on Come Back to Church Sunday this weekend (January 25).

The invitation list includes those who have been to church for special occasions, such as baptisms and weddings, or former members with whom the church has lost contact.

And people are being promised they will not have to sit and suffer.

"There will be no long sermon," pledged Rev Howles, a self-confessed former football hooligan who saw the light, and become chaplain at Blackburn Rovers Football Club before moving to St James's.

"It is aimed at people who used to come to our church. It is setting up a process, we are now making contact with our people and telling them we have missed them. It is nothing heavy."

He said that losing parishioners was a problem for churches.

"I think to be fair some churches are very, very concerned about it. We are not a failing church, but you never know.

"I'm sure that St James's is not the only one that could benefit from this idea."

Contacts renewed on Sunday are likely to be followed up by a visiting programme.

Latest Church of England figures nationally show a slight continuing drop in church attendance figures, despite a small growth among younger people.

In the Blackburn Diocese the average weekly attendance in 2002 was 34,000 adults and young people, a decline of 3,000 on the previous year.

Mr Howles, who has also organised for advertisements to go on the back of buses promoting church services, hit the headlines when he said his congregation grew because he preached longer sermons.

"I do believe people want to hear the word of God," he said.