Bantè, Benin · April 30 – May 2, 2026
Psalms Refresher Workshop

The church that hosted the Bantè workshop had made a decision at the start of 2026: every service, every gathering, every week of the year would return to Psalm 3, verse 5.

“I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.”

Psalm 3 is the prayer of a man surrounded. David wrote it while fleeing Jerusalem from his own son — a betrayal so complete that his kingdom, his family, and his life had come apart at once. By verse 5, he is not yet rescued. The enemies are still there. But something has shifted: he lies down, sleeps, and wakes — not because the danger has passed, but because the Lord is with him in it.

A community in Bantè chose to anchor their entire year of worship in that verse. They didn’t choose a doctrinal statement or a vision slogan. They chose a line of ancient Hebrew poetry, sung from inside crisis, that has traveled across millennia and languages and continents to land in a West African church as the truest thing they know to say about their year. That is what it looks like when Scripture reaches people in a form they can actually hold.