Thesis Done

Last tuesday was the deadline for my thesis so obviously I worked all weekend and monday and got very little sleep while working on trying to finish it off. I did get it finished, wrote the right number of words and managed to get it bound and handed in with one hour to spare.

However, I'm not convinced that I did a brilliant job. I think it was far too shallow in places, where I should have been aiming for something more profound. Nevertheless, it is done and I can't change it now. If anyone would like to read it, let me know in the comments here or send me an email (lou at silkworm dot org dot uk).

Here's a tiny extract of it, about creative prayer:

Creative Prayer
Alternative worship is good at prayer. Or rather, it is good at creating spaces in which people can pray and creative ways of illustrating and embodying prayer. One example, taken from a Sanctus 1 service was a prayer for peace in the world. We wrote our individual prayers for peace on coloured paper, taking time to think through the issues and pray seriously and quietly. We then followed instructions to turn the paper into origami cranes – a UN symbol of peace. Our creations were hung from the ceiling and our birds joined a flock of similar winged peace prayers. In this way, our prayers were both individual and corporate, while being creative and thoughtful.

This exercise could have provoked many responses. My own was to think how peace does not just appear from nowhere. Peace takes time and effort. It requires peacemakers, guidelines and love and making peace will involve some wrong turns and some creative thinking. It would have been entirely possible to undertake that exercise without really praying or engaging the brain or senses – but the same is true of most worship. It is possible to attend but not truly partake.

Limitations of Contemplation
Pete Ward’s book Liquid Church shares a dream of how a networked, community focused, creative and culturally relevant church might look. It is a good dream but I feel that where it is strong on a revaluation of ecclesiastical structure for a contemporary age, and good in a call for greater creativity, it is weak in the creative applications of this dream towards worship. Ward sets out some examples of worship that might work well in this new fluid church, these are all examples of what he calls ‘decentred worship’. Some of the examples are what we would recognise as alternative worship – a labyrinth at St Paul’s Cathedral with prayer stations and activities for reflection and a greenbelt service where various activities were available for people to partake in and they were free to choose whether to wander round the room and take part or sit quietly and pray. His other examples were of Greek Orthodox worship and pre-reformation worship, where again, worshippers took part in a number of activities as the service went on.

These are all valuable spiritual exercises, and it is good to be able to worship in freedom without being told exactly how and when that worship will happen. However, for a movement that is calling for more creativity in worship, to promote only one creative method for people to be involved in worship seems like a backward step. All of the examples portrayed in Liquid Church are varieties of how to pray individually and in silence in a corporate setting. If individual prayer, no matter how creative, is all there is to alternative worship then worship will truly be paralysed as a result.

Alternative worship has really explored many different and interesting ways to provide much needed space for individual prayer. Thankfully, there are also alternative ways of praying corporately – in a centred way. There are also alternative ways of praying for one another and there are many creative ideas that enhance other aspects of worship too.