Welcome to the new (looking) KenPierpont.com. We’ve been around for several years as the Pine Street Parsonage. We are now shifting gears and redesigning a bit to highlight the Stonebridge Newsletter. Each week Ken sends a thought provoking article your way via e-mail in the Stonebridge Newsletter. This site contains all the articles Ken has sent over the past year plus lots of articles Ken has written and posted here in the years prior to sending the Stonebridge Newsletter.
We hope you enjoy the new look and we welcome your comments …

I made pastoral visits yesterday and enjoyed being out of the study on a perfect autumn day. In the late afternoon I drove to Mr. Smith’s house. It was a nice drive, past neat Amish farms, through a section of National Forest, over the White River, leaves floating downstream on the water. The Salmon are running and fishermen eagerly worked the water. The sun was shining and it was sweatshirt-cool.

In 1990 we lived in an old farmhouse nestled snug in a valley on Rutledge Road in eastern Knox County in Ohio. My study was at home in a garret room in the top of the house. Often I would start my day by taking a walk.

When I was a boy I hated having to go to bed. I still try to milk every minute of life out of every day, but I have grown to love the sweetness of sleep. When I sleep I could sleep through a tornado or a train wreck.

You should meet Harold Johnson. I visit him whenever I can and it’s always an event. Harold Johnson is one of the patriarchs of our church. He has a neat apartment in a retirement home in nice part of Grand Rapids. He is a prayerful godly man. He’s been a part of the church I pastor since its early days. He served on the church board for years. He loves news about the church. He always tells me that he is happy to see that the …

To me the ultimate feeling of well-being is sitting down to a holiday meal with the family all around the table. It is especially sweet at Thanksgiving. No one cooks for you quite like your own wife. Over the years your tastes move in the direction of her gifts and her dishes move in the direction of your preferences. After a couple decades you meet in the middle and prefer her cooking over just about anyone.

My mother taught me to walk briskly wherever I go. She said that way people know you are not interested in foolishness. Dad walked so fast I always had to jog to keep up with him. When you walk that way it leaves people with the impression that you’re up to something important and that you are serious about what you’re doing.

He was a country preacher and a farmer. Early one Saturday morning he was milking his cow. His faith was at low ebb. Times were tough and things were thin and he was feeling low. Bills were due and things around the farm were in need of repair. He sat milking his cow and wondering what he had to say to the people that would gather for worship the next day. Quietly he began to talk out loud to the Lord.

Things are not always as they appear.
The whole thing played itself out before my eyes. Her husband did not want her to walk all the way in from the parking lot so he dropped her off at the main entrance. She was a pleasant-looking woman, nicely groomed and conservatively dressed. She was planning to spend the evening strolling the shopping mall on her husband’s arm. It wouldn’t be that simple.

Autumn breaks the stranglehold of summer’s heat. The corn dries and the fields slowly turn from green to golden. Birds flock and fly south. The air becomes clear and the sky bluer. The last flowers of the season bloom and farm markets spill over with bounty. Grains await the harvest forming a patchwork quilt of field, pasture, and woods. These are days to be outdoors.