A senior official of the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom has suggested that planned "formal conversations" on unity between the Church of England and the Methodist Church should be widened to include the URC.

The Church of England's governing general synod voted last month in favour of bipartite unity talks with the Methodist Church. For its part, the Methodist Church will decide at its annual conference in June next year whether to back the talks.

Methodism emerged from the Church of England in the late 18th century, while the United Reformed Church - a merger chiefly of Congregationalists and Presbyterians - traces its roots back to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Bob Andrews, convener of the URC's ecumenical committee, told ENI this month that "the URC should ask to be full participants" in the formal conversations between the Anglicans and the Methodists.

Mr Andrews, who is pastor of a united Methodist-URC congregation in Woolton, Liverpool, said that further moves by the URC on the unity talks would be discussed at a meeting in January of the ecumenical committee.

The issue is complicated because the URC is involved in scores of local ecumenical projects (LEPs) with both Methodists and Anglicans. Supporters of three-way unity talks point out that there are more such partnerships between Methodist and URC churches than there are between Methodist and Anglican churches.

At its general assembly in July this year, the URC made clear that it wanted to be included in any talks between Anglicans and Methodists.

This position was reaffirmed at last month's Church of England synod by the URC's official representative, Christine Craven. She told the synod that while the URC welcomed the planned Anglican-Methodist talks, it would make more sense for all three churches to be involved in formal conversations.

Keith Reed, the Methodist Church's ecumenical officer, agreed that URC members might feel rebuffed by the planned Anglican-Methodist talks. "Some may take it like that," he told ENI.

Mr Reed explained that the URC approaches were taken seriously but that Methodists were "less far down the road" with the URC than with the Anglicans.

"Matters of ecclesiology give a very different feel to Methodist and URC groups," he said. "We have common ministries, but there can be tensions in local ecumenical partnerships for this reason."

A significant problem if the URC were to be included in the Anglican-Methodist talks would be the requirement of a further decision by the Church of England general synod. After the failure of two previous attempts at unity with the Methodists, many in both churches would be unwilling to take the risk.