Psalm 23—Introduction A 12-Week Series for Ordinary Time

This is part of the worship series, 
"Psalm 23"

Series Introduction 
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 
Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10
Week 11 | Week 12

Introduction

This series was designed to be a flexible focal point during the summer months when family schedules were less predictable and many people, including our pastor, took vacation. By using Psalm 23, one of the most familiar passages in Scripture, as our summer theme, the worship team hoped people would feel a sense of continuity even if they had missed a service or a guest pastor was preaching. We sent an email each week inviting reflection on that week’s verse and providing prompts for additional engagement. Each children’s message was centered around the week’s verse, and we taught the congregation how to sign the psalm. Lorelai Reiffer, a talented young artist in our congregation, contributed artwork each week that we featured in our bulletin and on social media. Several other congregation members offered testimonies or reflections as the summer progressed. Psalm 23’s flexibility was proved as it coordinated well with two different sermon series and two services led by guest pastors over twelve weeks. She offers her artwork free to use with attribution. They can be downloaded from the resource section below.

We chose to use the New King James Version’s rendering of the psalm for this series because we felt it was more poetic and would tap into more people’s early memories.