The initiative, which is being sponsored by a Christian businessman, is largely aimed at over-50s who have drifted away from worship rather than the under-20s, the age group Church leaders normally seem most anxious to attract.

The "Back to Church Sunday" scheme has been inspired by glitzy PR launches and marketing campaigns that give away gift bags to promote their products.

Half the diocese's 300 parishes have already signed up for the scheme and ordered material that includes colour posters depicting a crowd of people around a puzzle-shaped hole containing the slogan "Missing You".

Over the next few weeks regular churchgoers will hand out the specially designed invitations to friends, neighbours and relatives and the event will be heavily promoted across the diocese.

For the service on Sept 26, clergy will be encouraged to use a specially prepared traditional liturgy on the theme of thanksgiving and to use harvest festival hymns that resonate with older people, such as We Plough the Fields and Scatter.

They will also be urged to do something "completely different" during the service, such as showing a comedy video.

New worshippers will be handed a bag at the end of the service containing a glossy booklet about the Church, a special issue of the diocesan newsletter Crux and a bar of "fair trade" chocolate donated by the Co-Op supermarket chain.

In the newsletter, Bishop McCulloch will tell them: "We share a great Father. We're brothers and sisters in Christ. We're all on a journey together. I wonder, have you ever thought of coming back to join us?"

The Bishop caused a stir in March when he said that the Church of England could disappear "within a generation or two" without an immediate change of direction.

Commenting on projections that suggested that, at the current rate of decline, total Church membership across Britain will have fallen to below six million by next year, the bishop said: "We will, unless there is a turn in the tide, be a Church which gradually disappears from this land."

The Church's usual emphasis has been on attracting young people because of concerns that congregations are ageing but Manchester diocesan officials have identified the over-50s as fertile territory because many of them have memories of churchgoing not shared by younger generations.

The diocese cited new research that found that of the 20 million people aged 50 or over in Britain, half were estimated to have had an experience of the Christian worship through Sunday school or in later life.

The scheme is being monitored by academics at Wolverhampton University, and the organisers hope that if it proves successful it could be introduced nationally.

Canon Roger Hill, the rector of St Ann's church, Manchester, said he was very enthusiastic about the scheme. "We come across dozens of people who say they have slipped out of the habit of going to church and want to come back. We have found that personal invitations are a very effective way to achieve this. The bar of chocolate just brings an extra element of pleasure."

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