Week 28: Slower again but I am writing the theory now.

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	49,698
Words typed this week:	1268
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	1268
Days I managed to write this week:	4

Right this weeks progress is poor, I am not going to pretend otherwise. However I am more pleased with it than it looks.  I have swapped from writing the descriptive, which I find relatively easy to write, to writing the theoretical. The problem with the theoretical is that I have to be precise. That means when I am writing it up I need to get the references right. I spent a good couple of hours today looking for various bits a pieces. I remembered that when I first started out I found a couple of papers on congregations as organisations. I wanted to have a look at them again. So I needed to find them. I am fairly organised and they were in the folder I thought they would be in but I had to find the folder first. Then I wanted to cite a Kindle edition. I have been checking the internet and been told to cite one I needed to find the doi or a url. Have you ever tried finding a doi for a Kindle book! Worse still it was one of those books that do not have page numbers. Most Kindle books now do but there are still some early ones that don't. So I had to cite chapter.

The other thing is that I have planned out my theory part for this chapter and am actually quite excited about writing it. That might be part of the problem with me writing anything of any length. The thing is that I am getting a grasp of where I am going, still have to work out the last major data chapter on worship, plenty of stuff there just got to work it out. I never really expected to have a chapter on Worship when I started, just as I never expected to have to report that despite appearances it looks as if church meeting is a functioning institution and perhaps we should not put so much effort into revitalising it as put effort into using it for what it is good at. I have also finished the section on welcoming and that was tricky. Not so much because the congregations weren't welcoming; they both were, but because for once I had talk about the individual. I have kept it short, but this person really was the focus of some major parts of the congregation's character and yet she'd absolutely hate having any limelight at all. Its not that she has done anything bad, she is on the whole a force for good.

Anyway this week I need to write the the rest of the theory, this is going to be read and write so pretty intense and then next weekend I need to write it up and pull together all the data parts of the chapter and get it off to my supervisor. It is not a finished chapter there is one major section missing but I suspect it will now be closer than my previous chapter was at this stage which will make writing the next chapter easier. So a pretty intense week and I am doing the sound next Sunday so can't miss church.

Week 27: Slower progress due to getting distracted finding a quote

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	48,412
Words typed this week:	2164
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	2164
Days I managed to write this week:	4

This week the increase has been slower. This was in part due to me being sidetracked yesterday. In last weeks writing I recalled a quote from Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein, there was only one problem, I thought I no longer had a copy. So I ordered a full copy. I then found I still had a friends copy on my shelf, (sorry Sue sometime I really must get around to returning it to you, it is in far too good a condition to be mine). The old copy which is the same as edition of the one I owned twenty years ago had only one abbreviated appendix. Yesterday before I started writing in this weeks I decided to see if I could find the quote. This was going to be interesting as I have not looked at Lord of the Rings in any edition for fifteen years. Now my assumption was that it would have come from the edition I owned so I ignored the appendices. However after several hours absorbed in trying to find it by cross checking against the index (I found I was reading far more than was strictly necessary) I decided I had to try another approach. So I went on the internet. That was not easy but eventually on an obscure site found the actual quote. My assumption about it being in my old copy was wrong. It was in an appendix my old copy clearly had not had. That means I must have noted it while briefly reading in a friends copy some twenty years ago. It is strange how my brain works! Something must have struck me about that quote even then. Having traced it, I decided that as it was a mood quote I should use a different one from Lord of the Rings instead.

Also this week a friend sent through notice of conference on Exploring Spirituality in the Reformed Tradition  which will give me chance to talk to think about that section of the thesis with others just before I start it. I should be tidying up the chapter on community and starting the one on Worship before I try and write the chapter on Reformed Piety. The problem is that we use "Spirituality" and I am really not sure it should not be "Spiritualities" given the diversity is inherent within the tradition.

So yesterday I ended up very short of time for writing which meant I only got in about five hundred words, so I have had to make up for that today. I actually had plenty to write as I had the ideas for the rest of the section I am working on, which is on what the congregations understand as being "welcoming" and "friendly". It is intriguing that both congregations have understandings that suit their approach to being church and what they understand as important. I think that many other people have an idea of "welcoming" and "friendly" means, and that if any church is going to actually look at something with "Welcome" in the title then it needs to look at what it means by that and what others mean like that.

So tomorrow I am hoping to get some serious reading done (although I need to tidy the house and get some money out as well) then the rest of the week I need to finish drafting the section on Welcome and start on the theory section for the beginning. I think I will tackle anxiety first, rather than boundaries.

Week 26: Another week with good progress

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	46,248
Words typed this week:	3116
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	3116
Days I managed to write this week:	4

As you can see progress has been good this week with another 3,000 words added. I expect to find that I have another 2000 next week. The next topic is not so wordy as this one which is the real reason for the three thousand plus words this week not that I wrote them during the week. Indeed some I wrote the week before but then the week before I actually had two weeks of writing to deal with. Having put the location chapter to one side this week that leaves me clear to get on with the community chapter. I am sitting here and realising that there are things I will not talk about which if you had asked me at the start I would have said were part of the URC identity. Things like Peace and Justice and how the congregation relates to that. Now I am aware of those as topics within the life of both congregations but they were not ones that either were stressed over or doing work over. They are just an accepted part of congregational life. Indeed I suspect if you did not know what to look for you might not think there was even anything special on the go. Often the responsibility for keeping the topics on the agenda is left to one or two people.

The other thing is I am beginning to get my head around the reading. It is taking time to work out what. In some ways the easy thing has been to look for theories on group anxiety and it looks as if I can use the British Kleinian Psychotherapy rather than American Bowen Systems to do much the same thing. This is good news, as I know Klein psychotherapy quite well. Here is one of the real odd things about my thesis. One of the key writers for me if I take this line is Isabel Menzies Lyth. Now I thought nothing of a London Psychiatrist when I came across the name apart from the fact she was a woman. Then she died, and I found out not only is she a fellow child of the manse but she also is a St Andrew's graduate which is where I did my first degree. Now if I remember correctly from her obit in Alumnus (graduate magazine from St Andrew's ) I think she is largely overlooked. We can overlook the fact she worked for the Tavistock Clinic and URC headquarters are a Tavistock House (I suspect they are near neighbours). The world sometimes feels very small indeed.

Anyway having dealt with the relationship with children I need to move onto what is meant by a welcoming congregation. The problem with this is that it is actually a very hot topic in the URC at present with the collapse of ZI Campaign.  There really needs to be some sort of debate about what it means to be welcoming.