A minister will be swapping traditional hymns for tracks by rock band U2 at a communion service with a difference this weekend.

The Rev Nick Cook will perform as Bono for Leicestershire’s first U2charist, at St Hugh’s Church, Market Harborough, on Saturday.

The band – with Dick Callan as guitarist The Edge, Trevor Roach as bass player Adam Clayton and Alex Ulyett as drummer Larry Mullen Jr – will be performing seven of U2’s biggest hits, including One, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride (In The Name Of Love) and Where The Streets Have No Name.

Nick, who is minister of Harborough Baptist Church, said it was a first for the county.

“Well, I’ve never done anything like this before,” he said.

“It will be a fairly normal communion service, but whereas we’d normally have hymns, this will be interspersed with some classic U2 songs.

“I’ll be doing my Bono impression, although I’m not like him as a singer. He can sing slightly higher, so we’ve had to take a couple of songs down a notch.

“We haven’t talked about how we’re going to dress yet.

“I think we’ll be fairly casual but I’m not going to go out and buy the big shades.”

The first U2charist service took place in the United States, where a minister inspired by the spiritual content of some of U2’s hits got permission from the band to use their songs for worship without copyright charges.

The idea is to make the traditional service more appealing to a wider audience, particularly younger people.

The service in Market Harborough is expected to attract more than 100 people. Money raised will go to Christian Aid.

The event also aims to raise awareness of the Millennium Development Goals – eight objectives set by world leaders at the start of the millennium with the aim of halving the number of people living in poverty across the world by 2015.

The service has been organised by Nick and the Rev Andrew Quigley, from Harborough Anglican team, along with Christian Aid.

Andrew said: “There’s a lot of spiritual content in U2’s music and Bono is known for speaking out on issues such as poverty and raising funds.

“We thought bringing in the live music would make it appealing to younger people and maybe, for people who already support the service, it will perhaps help them see it in a fresh way.

“We want people to come because they like the music, we want people to come because they care about the issues, we want people to hear the church speak about values in different and perhaps challenging words.”

Christian Aid spokeswoman Sue Richardson said: “The service is at the end of our annual Christian Aid Week, when we ask volunteers to collect door to door in their communities to fund our work with the poor overseas.”

The U2charist takes place at St Hugh’s Church, in Northampton Road, Market Harborough, at 8pm on Saturday.

U2 manager Paul McGuinness is launching the exhibition Thursday night at The Little Museum of Dublin, a townhouse whose walls are filled, floor to ceiling, with eclectic memorabilia of Ireland’s turbulent 20th century. The 32-photo show will be on display through Sept. 2, and Brocklebank also is selling original prints of 10 images through the museum’s Web site.

Brocklebank was shooting for the Irish music magazine Hot Press in 1978 when he attended several of U2’s first Dublin gigs and became their occasional roadie. His first photo on Sept. 9, 1978, is of a muscle-shirted Bono, mike in hand, performing as the opening act for English punk rockers The Stranglers in front of a foul crowd of hard-core punks. U2 was paid 50 Irish pounds (about $80) for the gig.

The Stranglers’ pre-set equipment took up most of the stage, leaving U2 only one claustrophobic corner. Brocklebank recalled that fans, reflecting the punk crudities of the day, spat and tossed lit cigarettes at them throughout their set. Afterward, he said, Bono confronted The Stranglers in their dressing room about the shoddy treatment.

Barely a week later, Brocklebank took an iconic photo of U2 after another gig: the four boys posing backstage, two with fake guns in hand. Later that night, he took the first known photo of the band with their brand-new manager, McGuinness, over pints at Dublin’s long-closed Granary Bar.

The band’s humble beginnings take pride of place in that photo. Mullen, the drummer who founded the band by posting a recruitment ad on his high school’s bulletin board, can be seen holding up U2’s first award: First place in a talent competition in Limerick the previous St. Patrick’s Day, grand prize 500 Irish pounds—sufficient finance for the band to cut its first demo tape.

Brocklebank also shot publicity photos in February 1979 before U2’s first tour of Britain. A sequence of 12 images shows the band donning a range of poses—messing with fire extinguishers, pretending to be interviewed on TV, climbing atop air vents—inside the corridors and classrooms of Trinity College Dublin.

Formed in 1976, the band first performed under the name Feedback, then The Hype, before settling on U2 in March 1978. Since 1980 the band has recorded 12 albums, sold more than 150 million records, won 22 Grammys and become one of the highest-grossing live acts in history.

In fact, many churches will point to U2 as evidence of the fact that the music industry is too full of corruption and depravity for even the most committed believers to hold out against, almost as mothers used to frighten their children into good behaviour with stories of the hobgoblins that awaited the ill-behaved child! Viewing U2 on the surface this can be understandable, but a deeper look at what the band are doing portrays a very different story.

Without a doubt U2 have changed a lot since their early albums. Many believe that U2 no longer possess the Christian beliefs which so obviously underpinned these albums, and in many respects amidst the images which U2 have created their beliefs can be difficult to unearth.

Often such use of artistic subterfuge is deeply frowned upon by Christian fundamentalists who argue that the gospel message should be perfectly clear; however, this is ignoring the fact that much of the Bible is itself written in artistic prose, rich in hidden meanings and multi-faceted nuances, whilst several books merely contain poetry - the most artistic of all writing forms.

Jesus himself taught in parables, using the images of the day to bring across truths about God, and most of the time leaving the people scratching their heads and wondering what he meant.