The clowns parade over to the packed church and assemble in the front pews, squirting lapel flowers and sitting on whoopee cushions.
Then some archaeologists from Israel's antiquities authority used a grant from a Jewish-Mexican benefactor to erect pews and shelves of prayer books to turn it into a synagogue.
Attendance soars, as millions of once-a-year worshippers fill the pews.
Subsidised religion has seldom made sense for either state or church: witness Europe's empty pews.
Every valuable was first carted off, from a complete computer lab to the shiny new wooden pews in the Church of the Virgin, an incongruously majestic structure in the dusty town centre that was lovingly built and inaugurated only in April.
Checking out the chicks Political prisoners No rush for pews Down and perhaps in Marlboro Country no more Madame Secretary Reprints Related items Allotments: Take this job and shovel itApr 8th 2009 Victory gardens: Digging their way out of recessionFeb 26th 2009In any case, signs point to a bird surge.
In fact, the loudest complaints are coming from the pews rather than the press.
The Church of England's aversion to figures makes Alpha's success hard to quantify, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it has saved a few churches from closure, and filled pews and collection plates in others.
IN THE deconsecrated church of Saint-Esprit, jugglers toss fluorescent orange clubs in front of the former altar, trapeze artists soar under the gaze of stone saints and wobbly unicyclists use two lines of repurposed pews as handrails.
As one leading black Pentecostalist puts it, "we believe that God brought us here from the Caribbean for a reason to preach the Gospel not only among people of British origin but among fellow-newcomers to this country".But black immigrants are doing more to keep Christianity alive than starting new churches: they are also helping fill Anglican and Catholic pews which might otherwise be vacant.
Just a day before offering a tour of his Kensal Green premises (stone slabs, mahogany specimen cabinets from a London museum, church pews), Mr Hills had taken a call from a demolition firm in Essex poised to tear up 2,000 square metres of Rhodesian teak flooring from a town hall.
