God is My Shepherd

At Lake Forest, we're big on meeting people where they are at, speaking their language, presenting the gospel in a style that make sense.

But we hold that together in beautiful tension with another idea: that we would be missing out if we didn't look at more ancient and liturgical worship elements. It's important to us that we don't miss out on things that the church has been doing for hundreds or even thousands of years, things like celebrating communion, reciting scripture aloud, or reading through the apostles creed, just to name a few.

In a recent series called Suburban Legends, we looked at some of the lies that we believe as a culture, things like "more is better" and "busyness equals importance".

We thought a great counterbalance to these myths we so readily believe would be Psalm 23, so throughout the series we constantly went back to Psalm 23, in teaching AND in worship.

Here is what we did the first week, after the teaching, as a means of reflection and response:

READER: Romans 12 tells us that true and proper worship is offering our whole selves to God.  this comes with a promise: you'll be able to test and approve what the will of God is. let us together pray this prayer for renewal. 

ALL: 'let us not be conformed to the pattern of this world' that 'more is better', but instead 'let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds' that 'the Lord is my shepherd, I want for nothing.' Holy Spirit show me where I'm believing 'more is better.'" 

PAUSE FOR REFLECTION 

ALL: The Lord is my shepherd, I want for nothing.

This turned into a really cool moment, and we also learned a song together during the series called "House of God Forever" by Jon Foreman that became an anthem for the series.

Just wanted to share one of the ways that liturgy manifests in our Sunday mornings at Lake Forest, hopefully in a manner that feels both ancient and future.