Since we last reported for News of Liturgy, the Southwell Diocesan Liturgical Committee has seen some changes - most obviously, a number of members have left the Diocese, and we have recruited new faces to serve on the committee, but secondly, the liturgical scene has changed, with Common Worship having been adopted in most parishes.

So what have we been doing? We continue to arrange training events…

• intercessions - a week-day evening and a Saturday morning were each very well attended
• Visual Liturgy - an afternoon using the computing facilities in a local school, with the expertise of David Green who travelled up from London for us. We almost cancelled this for lack of participants, but advertised it to Leicester Diocese, and this tipped the balance.
• daily prayer - neither a week-day evening nor a Saturday morning proved attractive, so we cancelled this event completely.
• weddings - in 2002 we put on an evening where we tried to tackle both the options for wedding preparation, and the service options in a few hours; this proved a bit rushed, so in 2003 we ran a morning on the service itself, theory and practice, mainly for new curates but open to others.
• healing - in the context of a diocesan clergy day on healing, we ran a workshop on services with prayer for healing
• buildings - together with the Diocesan Advisory Committee, we organised a day when we considered the use of our buildings, and possible reorderings, by visiting four quite different churches in Newstead deanery.
• New Patterns for Worship - one session well-attended and appreciated, the other cancelled for lack of punters.

We ask people to register in advance for training events. Sometimes the lack of interest shown disappoints us, and raises questions about what people really want or need us to do.

Some of our members have been involved in Midlands Praxis, which arranges events in Birmingham, and other folk from our Diocese attend.

Alongside training events we try to resource the liturgical life of the Diocese, by

• contributing to the planning of major services, such as the annual Family Care Offering service, and services relating to the Bishop's Certificate in Lay Ministry course
• organising worship at the Diocesan conference
• and by providing advice and templates on our website for local services such as confirmations and institutions.