As you may have noticed, the month of September has been a transitional month between blog series. We completed the Gospel of John series in August, and in October we’ll be starting a series studying the Armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-20), which will take us to Advent.
During the month of September, then, we’ve had the opportunity for a variety of themes. David Hundert started the month guest blogging on how we can reflect the image of God. If you haven’t read his posts, you can do so starting here. This past week was Silent Sunday at Faith Church, so we didn’t have a sermon. Instead, we did a silent review of some main themes in the Gospel of John: Believe, Life, Love, and Spirit. On September 23rd I’ll start the next quarterly Current Events week of blog posts about how we can talk with people when we have significant ideological differences of opinion with them.
But what about this week? Because this coming Sunday Faith Church is having worship in a local park, I thought it would be good for our Worship in the Park sermon to connect with the fact that we will be worshiping outdoors. Let me explain.
Each week I write a mid-week devotional for Faith Church. You can read those on my Substack here. In recent months, I’ve worked through the compelling book When Church Stops Working by Root & Bertrand (first post here), and I currently studying the book Surprise the World by Michael Frost (first post here). Those mid-week devotionals are part of a Prayer Guide which includes readings in the book of Psalms. If you follow the guides, you’ll slowly pray through the entire Psalter. Since I started writing the prayer guides during the Covid shutdown of 2020, we’re in our second run through the Psalms. Recently we’ve been in the 90s, and Psalm 96, in particular, caught my attention as one that might work well for Worship in the Park.
So consider reading Psalm 96 ahead of time. See if you can figure out why I think it relates to Worship in the Park. Psalm 96 has a lot to say that also relates to life in 2023. Then check back on Monday, as we begin studying this wonderful psalm!
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 