Church's lockdown Psalm 23 meditation  

Dereham Baptist Church marked its 237th anniversary with a special meditation on Psalm 23, put together by members of its congregation in lockdown. Lead minister Nigel Bayley explains more

We have been putting out daily messages through our YouTube channel since the lockdown began and people have been finding them a huge help. Many have said they feel more connected to the church in these days than they had previously.

We run our Sunday services on YouTube, recording all the sections in advance and then putting together a playlist including links to songs on other sites for us to sing along to. The whole thing just runs through from one video to the next, and works really well. We have also been recording songs as a music team, including some new songs that people have written and recorded in isolation. The video of us singing Here is Love together from our homes is also on our YouTube page and has been hugely appreciated. 

So generally we have been trying to be creative about linking our people to stuff that will help and encourage them. As part of that we saw a video of worship leaders in the US reading Psalm 23 and thought it was a really fresh and powerful way of engaging with that famous Psalm. I was going to share it as one of our morning messages, and then as a couple of us got chatting, we began to wonder if it might be possible for us to make our own version instead. We knew what a huge blessing it would be for people to see those they know reading it, and our main tech expert, Mark, was confident he could put it together.

We messaged the church and encouraged people to video themselves reading Psalm 23 in the New Living Translation (which we felt would be accessible for all) and over the next couple of weeks, a number of people sent them to us (by whatever means they could!) Mark then spent many hours cutting together the video, and I asked one of our musicians, Graham, if he could put together some music to go along with it.

As you can see and hear, they both did a superb job. I particularly love that the flute part uses some musical phrases from the original "The Lord is my Shepherd" hymn throughout the video, and we felt it would be great to finish with the tune of the hymn's final line.

Nigel Bayley is the Lead Minister of Dereham Baptist Church, Norfolk