Over the past year or so, the pattern has gradually become established at St Clement’s that I get to lead the informal service on the second Sunday evening of every month. It works well because my lack of liturgical training isn’t a hindrance and my natural bent towards experimenting becomes a positive boon.

The nature of experiments, of course, is that you try new things and not all of them work quite as well as you hoped. I incorporated several twists tonight. Incorporating more readings into the worship set seemed to go down well but my attempts to folkify the songs by playing them in DADGAD tuning and taking liberties with the melodies felt like hard work despite a fair amount of practise. I suppose unfamiliar songs are even harder to follow when you can’t be sure what twists they are going to take. Next time, I might go for an open tuning again but perhaps pick my music from songs with easy and well known tunes.

It may not all have been perfect but at least I have the freedom to fail and, thus, the opportunity to succeed (as well as the ever present opportunity that, even in my failings, there might be the right combination of things to bless some of those present).