Proclaimer Blog
Bringing the Psalms back into use
I’m just finishing a teaching series on the Psalms at Cornhill and have been very struck by how God has given us the Psalms to teach us how to pray and to praise him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his little booklet “Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible” makes the point that we need Jesus to teach us how to pray (Lord teach us to pray) and that one of the main ways in which Jesus teaches us to pray is through the Psalms which are supremely his own prayers.
But the Psalms have fallen into disuse in many of our churches, so that we neither know them nor learn how to pray them. It was very encouraging to hear from Greg Strain (Spicer Street Chapel, St Alban’s) that for the past 150 Sundays they have focused on one Psalm each week in their Sunday morning meetings. They say a few words of introduction about the Psalm, and then the leader reads the Psalm, after which they all sing a paraphrase of the Psalm (often from the Praise! hymn book). After that the Psalm is used as the basis for the main corporate prayer. After 150 weeks, Greg tells me that they’re about to go back and start again at Psalm 1 and that this time they will all read the Psalm together aloud. Greg has told the congregation that they’re going to keep going through the Psalms until they’ve memorised them! Greg comments to me that they have found this very very helpful and that the Psalms “are teaching us to pray”. And also that “(corporate) praying is shaped by Scripture every week and yet is different every week”.