Worship in The Early Church – The Lords Supper (Communion)
Do not make this an exegetical paper. Look at other church history documents (i.e., the Didache) to make this paper meet the requirements for a Church History paper.

Regarding your research paper topics: To some I gave some direction as to what I would like to see in the paper (see the notes section under your grade for the topic submission.) If you have any questions, let me know.

1) While we do want to see how history applies to our current milieu, you need to make sure that what you write is geared towards history. That is, writing about how we need to share the Gospel with our neighbor is different than writing about how the early church shared the Gospel with their neighbor. HOWEVER, you can draw implications for our current situation, but the lion’s share of your paper should be spent on history. Otherwise, you are writing an apologetics paper. I have received papers like these in the past and they missed a lot of points because they did not write a Church History paper.
2) Also, you need to make sure you are arguing for something. Don’t just put together a bunch of quotations. Interpret what you have researched. Regurgitating facts will not teach you anything. Take the hard work to think about those quotations and present them in a way that you agree or disagree with them. Your thesis statement needs to be clear, concise, and argued for.
3) Lastly, the Excellent Paper grade will interact with primary sources. If you want to present Augustine’s view of concupiscence, read his works on Original Sin. If you want to see how the early church worshiped, read documents (i.e., Josephus, The Didache, etc) that explain how they worshiped. Ferguson will help you find those sources. Do not use Ferguson as your primary text for research. Use him to find the deeper sources. Make sense?
Your thesis statement (what you will argue, show, or prove in your paper).
A bibliography of at least 6 scholarly sources (Wikipedia not being a scholarly source).
Your answer to this question: What initial conclusions have you drawn at this point in your research?