UOWEMEBIGTWIME February 18, 2009
I’m in a really good mood today so I am going to give you some advice you will thank me for, for the absolute rest of your life. Get on iTunes and download all the Fernando Ortega you can afford as soon as you can. While you are at it surf over and check out the picture of his newborn daughter on his website. You can listen to one of his beautiful songs here. Now you owe me… Bigtwime.
Sunset on Summer July 5, 2008
Here is the title story from my book Sunset on Summer. Download and enjoy. Let me know what you think.
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Sunset on Summer
Thanks to Daniel for producing the podcast.
Alma Johnson March 24, 2008
Alma Johnson was highly respected at First Baptist Church in Fremont, Michigan. She was a the Sunday School teacher of almost every little girl in the church at one time or another. She was on the missionary committee. She was a mother, a grandmother, a great grandmother, and an adopted grandmother to many.
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Easter Sunday in America March 23, 2008
I have to admit to some quaint ideas. I still feel an inner warmth and get a little misty-eyed when I see a picture of a family walking to church on a spring morning. In these warm fantasies the sun is always shining, birds sing, and the walk is lined with daffodils. The trees are in the tender bud of spring and church bells ring in the distance.
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An Important Feature in Church Design March 17, 2008
photo by Lois Pierpont
I have often thought of things I like in a church building. I love a soaring white steeple glistening against the blue sky or lighted jutting up into the night. It would, of course, have a large pulpit in the very center, symbolic of the priority of the ministry of the Word. Maybe it would have the white colonial furniture, too.
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Cherry-picking Piper March 14, 2008
If I had a dollar for every time I have recommended The Supremacy of God in Preaching, by John Piper I could buy a new Easter suit. It is one of the top five books on preaching I have ever read and I have read hundreds of books on preaching.
Matt Frey did a great job putting together some interesting quotes from a powerful message by John Piper given recently on the west coast. It was a helpful message and had something like 32 points on How Pastoral Ministry Shapes Pulpit Ministry. Can you imagine?
“I cannot overstate how hell affects my ministry. I listen to a preacher for just a while to see if I smell the belief in hell. And if I don’t, I pray for him and I’m concerned; whether his demeanor or his doctrine or whatever just doesn’t smell like he believes in it. And that’s tragic. Because that’s what’s at stake. You’re not just tweaking people’s lives. You’re not just fixing their marriages, or fixing their health, or fixing their jobs, or fixing their personalities and their depression. You’re rescuing them from hell. This is the great passion. From hell for God. It’s a rescue operation and shaping them into the people that love to praise the grace that did that for them.”
“I don’t do change lists – I hardly ever talk about biblical principles of stuff. I don’t do principles. I do Jesus. I want to lift up Christ and his ways and his works and his purposes in such a full rich way, that people are caught up into another world, another realm of reality – and then they do diapers differently. They shop and cook and do computer and internet and audio – All of it is just in another realm. We have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God.”
“I get fed up with hearing so much non-Bible – I hear “Oh well we believe that – that’s foundational – ” Well, get it out of the foundation and put it in the kitchen. Nobody remodels the cement blocks of their basement. People are worried about – the kitchen – they live up there. They don’t give a rip about what the foundation looks like – So I’m not impressed by that answer –
These glorious truths in the Bible are not there to be hidden in the basement while you talk about other things. I’m talking about the value and the worth of Jesus, the triumphs of Jesus, the knowledge of Jesus, the wisdom, the authority, the providence, the power, the purity, trustworthiness, the justice, the patience, the endurance, the wrath, the love – that’s enough to keep you going for a life time. Talk about him. Make it so absolutely glorious they’ve got to come back and hear the next installment about King Jesus! Rather than just – oh my goodness – Another little pep talk about how you can do better at work or something. It’s just so sad – All I can conclude is that there are pastors who are not moved by their Bibles. They’re not moved. They read them and they say – “I’m supposed to talk about this – but frankly I find this new book about church planting, or marriage – This is what is really fascinating. I’m energized here, but here – this thing – this does not energize me – That’s all I can conclude – ”
“Show your people [in the text] where you get your points. There’s a big reason for that. [The Bible] has authority. I don’t have any. To the degree that I persuade people of my ideas, without showing them that it’s right here [in the Bible], they can see it over lunch, after the service, they can talk about it as a family, right out of that book – To the degree that I detract them for [the Bible], I raise up their dependence on me, and I reduce their dependence on The Book. You don’t want to do that. The Lord will spank you – ”
Heaven’s coming real fast – We murmur about our circumstances on the way to heaven. You’ve got two seconds to live folks, James says, because that’s how long a vapor lasts when you go “whew” on a Minnesota morning. You’ve got two seconds to live. And then you inherit the universe –
All things are yours – and “you are Christ’s and Christ’s is God’s”. Why would you murmur? You don’t believe it, or you don’t feel it. That the treasure coming for you in heaven is infinitely valuable, and it’s just around the corner.
So get free from the love of money. Do everything. There is more about money in the gospels ten-times over than there is about sex –That’s the killer. We’re greedy. We think we have to have endless securities and comforts around our lives, when actually we should be the most radical and risk taking, let-it-go kind of people.”
Here is a link to the message if you want more.
True Pastors October 27, 2007
Many years ago Richard Baxter accepted a call to a church in England in a town where few knew and loved the Lord. He preached faithfully and powerfully but he did more than that. He dealt individually with every member of the community. He made disciples among the people of the community. Two full days a week he started at one end of the village and went to every house speaking to every member of every house and asking in-depth questions about what they believed. With the help of an assistant he visited all 800 families in his parish every year. During his nineteen-year ministry the town was completely transformed. (more…)
My Studies at Cambridge August 23, 2006
In the first summer of my graduate work I took a week-long modular course. I traveled to the college and stayed in a hotel while taking the class. Loitering around the campus early in the week, I asked one of the students if he could recommend a church that would have a mid-week prayer meeting. He enthusiastically gave me directions to his church.
A Good Word at the Right Time July 31, 2006
Years ago in Ohio I had a friend named Cliff. Cliff loved to hunt deer, especially during the bow season. At the time I was meeting with Cliff and his wife Amy every week to disciple them. They were young, eager Christians, just starting a family. Their oldest child was a beautiful little girl named Torrey.
Cliff was a teacher and a coach. In the autumn he would spend his afternoons in a tree stand enjoying the fall and waiting in silent enjoyment for deer until dusk. One evening I drove west, across rolling Knox Country, for our meeting enjoying the cool snap in the autumn evening and the slant of the light as the sun set beyond the trees. When I arrived at Cliff and Amy’s I noticed that Cliff had been successful at taking a nice deer. It was hanging in his yard.
I came up the back stairs and in the door. Amy welcomed me. Cliff was there and Torrey. Trying to be funny I said; “Cliff, I see you shot Bambi there.”
Hopewell Baptist Church March 29, 2006
Western Knox County is a few miles north of my heartland. The countryside there is indistinguishable from the land where my dad, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather lived.
But west of Mount Vernon, the county seat, the countryside rolls gently toward the flatness of western Ohio. There, just off St. Route 229 about a fifty yards down Tucker Road, is a white frame hall shaded by a cluster of Maples. The building is well over a hundred years old. The sign in the gable end reads “Liberty Grange.”
Another mile down the road is the Mark Boucher home. The Bouchers were one of the founding families of a church we started there. He passed the Liberty Grange every day and the building came to mind after the men met and agreed not to borrow money to build a church building.
One night I had a dream of a simple preaching hall where we could meet with our families and preach and worship together. When I heard about the building I drove out on a clear blue autumn afternoon to pray. The little hall looked exactly like the one in my dream.
Within a few weeks we had worked out an agreement with the leaders of the Grange to lease the building for a dollar a year. We agreed to add a wheelchair ramp, paint the building, repair the roof, add indoor restrooms, build a small office and a nursery room, and expand the parking area. The Grange would continue its meetings and we would have the freedom to use the hall any other time. Once a year the church and the Grange would meet together.
In late October the men arrived in pickups with power-tools and tool belts. During the remodeling of the building one of the men leaned a ladder against the back wall and climbed up into the attic to examine the insulation and roof. When he shined his flashlight into the dark attic he could see that the inside of the sign in the gable end of the building had faded writing on it. He removed it and brought it down for us all to see. It was clearly lettered, “Hopewell Baptist Church.”
Mark Boucher’s wife remembered her grandmother telling her that as a young girl she had attended church there. It was there she had come to believe in Christ. The pastor had resigned under a cloud of scandal and the little Baptist church closed. It would be exactly seventy years to the month until another Baptist group sent prayer heavenward from the little building again. It would be seven decades until another assembly of believers would send hymns wafting out the windows over the waving corn again.
It was a rare Sunday when we had fewer than 100 or more than 135 people gathered there for worship. Almost every Sunday the little building was full of young families. Lives were changed there. Much good was done. It was a humble place but it was real Christian ministry. In all God gave our family ten years of service in quiet Knox County.
The night we found the sign I drove west, across the country toward home in my little brown station wagon. The boys were quiet. All along I had thought the church was just my idea, a private dream of my own I shared with a few others. But it was in the heart of God that after seventy years he would bring a group of people back to worship in the little hall again.
Ken Pierpont
March 28, 2006
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
