The Rev Roddy Hamilton says the advantage of a free church is that we can ‘speak anew’ each time we worship.

I REMEMBER being taught a lesson in a communion service where I had build up my prejudices, expecting that this was going to be a typically familiar experience. Oh boy, was I wrong! The words were beautifully composed for that particular communion and for these particular people. We were creating a unique space with each fresh phrase together.

Yet all the ritual was the same. The serving of bread and wine had the same awkwardness with hesitant signals for everyone to move off at the same time; there was the constant checking that the servers were in the correct area, and that the plates were going in the right direction.

But, it was crafted by language and phrases newly put together for that day. That was the only thing that was different. Someone had taken time to thoughtfully and appropriately sculpt a fresh communion liturgy for that particular community. And it would never be heard again.

The next communion season, there would be another freshly created liturgy. The expense of that kind of worship is huge but it is our gift to God and God’s People. Worship is the offering of a costly gift, rather than ‘here’s one I’ve done before’.

It is our tradition to recreate worship each time. It is what a free church is constantly inviting us to do: write new words, prayers, liturgy. Indeed, when you read the preface of ‘Common Worship’, the Church of Scotland’s book of patterns for worship, it reminds us that nothing in our tradition is mandatory, including communion. We are called to renew our worship continually.

“ Someone had taken time to thoughtfully and appropriately sculpt a fresh communion liturgy for that particular community. And it would never be heard again."

Now, that is not to say we throw out all our familiar communion words such as the Sanctus: ’Holy, Holy, holy’, that has been said by generations, or the Agnus Dei: ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’, which has been constantly on the lips of God’s People of nearly every tradition in Christianity for millennia. These ancient words bid us, bind us, and weave their ancient wonder among us.

The question we might constantly ask, rather, is, as we create our worship, what do we say to move us to these most sacred parts of our encounter? How might we shape a fresh path each time to the moments when we are most in touch with our ancient story?

We are a free church, so worship leaders are extended an invitation to offer the newest version of ourselves through our communion liturgy that weaves a unique path for these people here today into an encounter with God.

The only resource we give our worship leaders is a pattern of order, not the words themselves. These are ours to speak anew, as we create that meeting place between worlds, where God is waiting to encounter us, afresh, at the table. 

The Rev Roddy Hamilton is minister at Bearsden: New Kilpatrick.