I was a U2 fan before the compact disc.

I bought their second album, "October," on vinyl after I saw a video of the song "Gloria" on MTV in 1983.

I loved their combination of clanging guitar riffs and subtle Christian lyrics. How cool that a band that sounded so great sang so much about Jesus.

The band peaked with "The Joshua Tree" in 1987. Every song a winner, not a second of filler.

My enthusiasm for the band cooled soon after, when they started producing junk like "Zooropa." But they kept churning out the hits and gaining fans.

One of their newest is the Rev. Heather Buchanan Wiseman, associate rector of St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Anderson Township. With 1,000 members, it's the largest church in the Diocese of Southern Ohio.

About 18 months ago, the 63-year-old grandmother was looking for a way to bring people to church who don't traditionally attend.

Last January, she hit on a few things that clicked: a Celtic service, a Taize service and a "U2charist."

The U2charist has the same elements of the Eucharist, the service of bread and wine, but the music is all U2. Many of the group's songs lend themselves to worship, such as "40," whose lyrics lead singer Bono took from Psalm 40.

But Wiseman's fondest of "When Love Comes to Town," a collaboration between the group and blues legend B.B. King:

"I was there when they crucified my Lord.

"I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword.

"I threw the dice when they pierced his side,

"But I've seen love conquer the great divide."

At 5 p.m. on the first Sunday of the month, the casually clad worshippers meet in the parish hall, not the sanctuary.

About 30 middle-aged worshippers sing, clap and sway along to "Where the Streets Have No Name" or "Pride (In the Name of Love)."

There are no bulletins - the entire liturgy is projected onto a large screen. Accompanying the songs are videos of the band performing, or still photos that illustrate the things sung about.

Sometimes Wiseman uses song lyrics in her sermon, such as, "What you don't have you don't need it now," a phrase in "A Beautiful Day," which she used in a sermon on materialism.

The offering goes to Bread for the World, which feeds hungry people, or to Millennium Villages, which works on lifting one village at a time. U2 allows churches to use its music in services like this only if the offering supports the goals of the ONE Campaign, which include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

Wiseman was in Columbus a year ago when the General Convention of the Episcopal Church made the ONE Campaign a top priority.

She heard a new liturgy written for a child moving from a crib to a bed, which doesn't sound remarkable until you realize that most of those it was written for die before they leave the crib.

Hearing that was like getting punched in the stomach, she said.

Sometimes, when the U2 music's playing, the worshippers see photos of a village in Honduras, where many of St. Timothy's parishioners have done mission work.

The church supports a school, El Hogar, where boys who live in one-room, dirt houses can learn a trade and improve their lot. It's one place where the church has made a different in a place of abject poverty, Wiseman said.

No doubt Bono would approve.

Staff reporter Kevin Eigelbach writes