Well I think Worship Chapter may at last coming together

coffee pot

This week I have been working on the draft of the chapter on Worship. This has been one of the difficult chapters to get into focus. It was already in second draft but there was a feeling of it being unsatisfactory and the style of my writing has changed in my data chapters where I discuss the congregations since I put it into draft. I therefore have pulled it out.

First challenge was to pull it to pieces and reshape around the narrative of a single event in this case a quite remarkable baptism service that happened towards the end of my time at my second placement. This balances the community chapter which centres around a remarkable church meeting that happened at my first congregation. The initial data chapter uses scenes from both congregations.

However when I use a single narrative the structure of the chapter changes. For instance in the original I had ministers role and congregations role in creating the worship. Now I have the role of hymns and the other parts of the service and in both cases I look at the ways tradition, congregation and minister combine to create the final act of worship. It is quite something to explore the dynamics of worship creation within the Reformed tradition. It is so different from those in others where there is a Rite to followed. For us the rite has become a grammar rather than a play. It tells you the way things fit together but does not determine what is actually said.  What is said is rather a matter of prayer, the character of the congregation, the gospel and the tradition. In worship the tradition pulls against the individuality of the community.

Oh and the coffee pot, well that is my mid way through a writing session treat at them moment. It will change with time, in January I was not drinking coffee at all, then I started making myself a single cup of Millicano to keep me awake when I was loosing concentration. However as I am coming to this stage I am finding that actually spending the ten to twenty minutes that it takes to make coffee this way is a good break. It is as much about the ritual as it is about the coffee. It is one pot a day otherwise its tea or water.