A BOLTON church will feature in a BBC TV broadcast on Christmas Day.

The Christmas morning family service at St Peter's CE Church, on Church Road, Halliwell, will be shown live as part of BBC 1's No Room at the Inn programme.

The service will explore the theme of making room for worship in our lives.

The Rev Roger Oldfield, said: "We received a telephone call from the BBC to ask if we would be interested in having our family service filmed on Christmas Morning.

"We have taken part in radio shows before and, after consideration, we decided we would. We are all looking forward to the morning. I'll have to just forget that there will be about 1.3 million people watching."

Associate Minister, the Rev Alison Baillie, will be lead the service and Mr Oldfield will welcom parishioners and viewers to the church.

Nigel Swinford, who directs music for Songs of Praise and who worships at the Halliwell church will conduct the musicians and singers of the New English Orchestra as they join the congregation in carols ancient and modern.

The TV programme will be screened from 10.15am to 11.15am and will reflect the fun and informality of a typical family service.

There will also be a phone link-up to Israel, plus drama, music and stories.

As there will not be enough room for everyone who wants to be at the Halliwell service, it will be relayed to St Peter's Parish Centre and Bolton's Central Baptist Church so that as many as possible can join in.

Although this service does not reflect the national trend of the Church of England which has attracted 200,000 fewer worshippers last year for Christmas Day and Christmas Eve services, according to statistics.

More than 2.6 million people attended church and cathedral services on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day last year, compared to 2.8 million in 2000, when Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday.

Overall, the number of Christmas worshippers remained static during the last three years as the number of communicants in 2001 was slightly greater than in 1999.

A Church of England spokesman said the adult attendance figures were statistically insignificant and that in fact, average Sunday attendance had remained static.

He said: "With figures of that magnitude, anything less than a 2% change, you cannot be sure that it was real. It could be a sampling error."

Attendance at cathedrals has continued to rise steadily over the past seven years.