From using the spellbinding scripts of soaps to boost its congregation, a church is now turning to the magic of Hogwarts for salvation.

The Battersby's and the Fowler's have helped one church to double its congregation this year, but shortly it will be using a new kind of wizardry.

Burley Methodist Church could be enlisting the help of Harry Potter and his friends to boost its ratings once again.

After receiving world-wide acclaim for their use of soap operas to increase congregations the winning ideas of Methodist preacher Michael Hardstaffe and Rev Philip McDonald could see them enlisting the help of award-winning fantasy fiction novels such as Harry Potter and J RR Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings.

Said Mr Hardstaffe: "I thought Harry Potter expresses Christian values and certainly Lord of the Rings does. Tolkien would talk about how some of his characters reflect things in the bible," he said.

"Some Christians believe there are positive messages in Harry Potter and others are against it, because they think sorcery and magic is against the bible. I think it would be something really good to look at, to explore its Christian values.

"We are considering trying to plan a series on a quarterly basis, the plan for the next quarter has already been drawn up, but for the December 2002 period I shall be proposing that we study Harry Potter. There are a lot of Christian values in the books and I think it would be something people would enjoy looking at.

Rather than study the feature-length film of J K Rowling's now classic children's series, Mr Hardstaffe believes the books would offer more.

" It would be nice to quote from the books in different voices," he said.

The idea comes from the success of Mr Hardstaffe's latest idea to show clips of soap operas and get the congregation to analyse the Christian values in them.

The church is still holding the innovative sessions at Salem Church on Sunday evening's at 6pm, the next two nights will be looking at Eastenders.

The idea to study the magic of J K Rowling's Harry Potter comes as religious groups across the country are praising JRR Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings for its Christian values.

The Fellowship Of The Ring sees the main character Frodo carrying a powerful ring across a kingdom to save mankind.

Rev Philip McDonald said: "I think that using Harry Potter is very good in that it puts forward the idea of good triumphing over evil.

"There are different views of Harry Potter, some people feel uncomfortable with witchcraft, I think Harry Potter has lots of good things in it.

"There is lots of literature which deals with the super natural for instance CS Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Harry Potter is very good and certainly I would feel very comfortable about using it in that context."