Psalms: Small Group Resources
In light of the desire of so many church and ministry leaders to find good resources on behalf of their small group ministries, I’ve compiled here a set of resources which I’ve created over the past year that might facilitate a small group discussion of the psalms:
“How to Write Your Own Psalm of Lament”
“How to Write Your Own Psalm of Praise”
“An Illustrated Set of Psalms Prayer Cards”
“Discerning the Shape of a Faithful Life”
“Guide for Film, ‘Bono & Eugene Peterson: The Psalms’”
“Sermon Outline: ‘A Heart That is Set Free’”
“Sermon Outline: ‘An Honest to God Prayer Life’”
“Order of Worship: ‘The Psalms of Community’”
For some of us, of course, the territory of the psalms is a deeply familiar one and the resources here would simply serve to deepen our love of the psalms, ultimately hopefully for the sake of a fresh knowledge of God and encounter with God.
For others of us, the Psalter is a strange and intimating world, with its foreign language and its strange concerns. The tediously repetitive Psalm 119 or the seeming cruelty of Psalm 137 baffle us, and many of us end up reading only our favorite bits and ignore the rest.
But if God has given us the psalms in order to teach us how to pray, how to worship, and how to live faithfully in the world, then a little guidance may help us to get the most out of the psalms, what Martin Luther called the “Little Bible.”
My hope, then, is that these resources might make it easy for small groups to make the most of the psalms and to read them for all they’re worth as a way to discover afresh these ancient and transformative words of life.
OPEN AND UNAFRAID: THE PSALMS AS A GUIDE TO LIFE
(Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins, 2020).
This is the book that I’ve written to offer an accessible but substantial introduction to the world of the psalms.
I’ve done so in the hopes that readers might become excited to embrace this “prayer book” that has been deeply influential, not just for Jesus and the apostles, and for monastic and cathedral practices of prayer, but also to the songs of the Reformation and to the spirituals of African-American slaves.
My hope is that both saints and sinners would understand that they are never alone in their joys, sorrows, angers, doubts, thanksgivings, or questions about justice and enemies, life and death.
And because our fullest transformation comes only when we have embodied and enacted the good words of Scripture, not just read or thought about them, I’ve included a list of questions and exercises, along with a prayer, at the end of each chapter in order to put into practice the words of the psalms.
My sincerest hope is that small groups might take full advantage of this part of the book.
PS: At the end of my book I added a list of resources on the psalms, including helpful introductions to the psalms (from John Witvliet, for example), books on psalms and prayer (e.g. Bonhoeffer and Brueggemann), psalms and worship (from CICW), and psalms and the arts, fresh translations of the psalms (such as Ernesto Cardenal, Jim Cotter, and Eugene Peterson), and biblical and theological studies of the psalms (from Goldingay to Ellen Davis).
WRITING YOUR OWN PSALM OF LAMENT
For many of us, there are often so few opportunities, or even so little permission, to properly lament our losses and harms, our tragedies and frustrations, our wounds and disappointments, and it is equally difficult to find practical helps to give expression to our personal and communal laments.
So I’ve created this handout to make it easier to craft our own psalms of lament. I’ve done this exercise with my students and with folks in my own church, and the benefit of writing and sharing such psalms, I’ve found, has always been deeply meaningful. Here’s a PDF of the handout that you can share with your people:
WRITING YOUR OWN PSALM OF PRAISE
Our world, thankfully, isn’t only a sad one. It is also a happy one, full of moments of surprise and serendipitous gifts and happy accidents, thanks to the mercy and grace of God, which is why I think it’s also important to craft our own psalms of praise.
Writing and speaking our praise of God isn’t just medicine for the heavy heart; it also rewires our brains, opens new perspectives, and strengthens social bonds.
We see this throughout the psalms in a way that may surprise us, because, unlike our contemporary world that views happiness and sadness as mutually exclusive, the psalms make space for grief and joy to exist side by side.
The entire Psalter, in fact, is called the Tehillim, the “Book of Praises,” for a reason. For it is here that we see what praise looks like, what praise sounds like and what praise says to God. It says what creatures need to say to God, as an antidote to all the things that might tempt us to become a joyless people.
Illustrated Psalms Prayer Cards
My artist wife Phaedra and I have created a set of illustrated prayer cards to help individuals and small groups to pray with their ears and eyes, mouth and heart, hands and feet, in light of the themes that I explore in my book: honesty, community, prayer, joy, sorrow, life, death, justice, creation, and so on.
Each 4x6 card includes an image on one side and text on the other: a passage from the psalms, three questions for reflection, and a prayer. Each original watercolor illustration corresponds to a specific theme in the psalms and the text on the back offers an opportunity to reflect on one's life in the light of the good news that we discover in the psalms.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE: Discerning the Shape of a Faithful Life
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE: “Bono & Eugene Peterson: The Psalms”
SERMON OUTLINE: “A HEART SET FREE IS”
SERMON OUTLINE: “HONEST TO GOD”
ORDER OF WORSHIP ON THE THEME OF COMMUNITY
AN ILLUMINATED SET OF “PRAYERS FOR LIFE”
A final resource that might be helpful to small groups is a set of illuminated prayers that Phaedra and I created recently in the spirit of the psalmist. They include psalm-like prayers for morning and evening, work and school, community and loneliness, service and mission, justice and unity, and other general themes of life. They can be purchased here.
