During the month of June they will return for their Kentucky Mountain Parkway Summer Tour. Their first stop will be at my Dad and Mom’s church in southern Ohio.

The summer of my fourteenth year Dad and Mom planned a wonderful family vacation that I will never forget. We loaded up our 1969 Chrysler and took a road trip. We tented through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and back home by way of Washington D. C. and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. To save money we stayed in a tent and cooked our own meals on a camp stove. It was a wonderful vacation. Whenever we could we talked Dad into staying at a campground with a swimming pool.

We tented in a large canvass cabin tent big enough to sleep eight average-sized people who didn’t mind sleeping close enough to hear one another breathe. I remember the night we bought it. It wasn’t a cottage in Franconia, but served a similar purpose for our family.

We got so we could get that cabin tent set up in minutes after we arrived at our campsite so we could cool off in the pool before supper. Most nights I slept in my own small pup tent, a tent I earned in a newspaper sales contest. It had no floor but I improvised one from thick plastic. Each night I inflated an air mattress, unrolled my sleeping bag on it, positioned my AM radio near my pillow and went to sleep listening to baseball when I was in range of AM 700 out of Cincinnati. If we were out of range or the Reds were having an off night I went to sleep to the sound of crickets and frogs.

One memorable night in Tennessee we camped at a State Park. We set up our cabin tent under a big white pine. I went to work readying my personal tent. I lay the plastic down first then set my tent up over it. I rolled the extra plastic up in a roll and used clothes pins to clip the rolls to the side of the tent. I inflated my air mattress, unrolled my sleeping bag, put my radio under my pillow and tied back the tent flaps so the breeze would blow thorough.

The breeze that made music in the pine branches crescendoed into a strong wind and blew in a storm. I unrolled the tent flaps and lay back down to listen to the rain on my tent. The rain ran down the sides of my tent and the plastic rolls created a gutter which caught the rain. The water was over an inch deep on the floor of the tent and I didn’t have any idea until one of my shoes floated past my head.

My family had the happy experience of my company in the big tent that night. It must have been like having a big, wet dog sleeping on the foot of your bed. I don’t think they were very happy about it. I don’t know how they feel about it today but it is a happy memory to me.

We didn’t have a cottage in Maine. We visited my grandparents farm in Ohio on special days and for a week or so in the summer but our family doesn’t own a cabin in the mountains or a house on the lake. I doubt if we ever will. I do speak and do ministry in some beautiful places—places with water and forest, kayaks and mountain bikes, great food, hot showers, comfortable quarters and rich Christian fellowship. And I have happy memories of a family vacation in the Smokys, food outdoors, gazing into a campfire, swimming and diving with my brothers and my sister. I have memories of walking under the stars, sleeping on a picnic table, even treading water in my tent one night.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
May 12, 2008

O the pure delight of a single hour,
That before Thy throne I spend,
When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God;
I commune as friend with friend!

There are depths of love that I cannot know,
Till I cross the narrow sea;
There are heights of joy that I may not reach;
Till I rest in peace with Thee.

I borrowed this post from the TeamPyro… Read on and you will see why Spurgeon is still on my top shelf and always will be. One day I will add a set of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit to my library. For now I have to settle for my digital version.

In reference to ministers, many church-members are indifferent as to the personal piety of the preacher; what they want is talent or cleverness. What the man preaches does not matter now; he must draw a crowd, or please the elite, and that is enough. Cleverness is the main thing. One would think they were looking for a conjurer rather than a pastor. Whether he preaches truth or error, the man is held in admiration so long as he can talk glibly, and keep up a reputation as a speaker.

If we had truer piety in members and deacons, pretenders would soon take their wares to other markets. Alas! I fear there has been great laxity in the admission of members, and the quality of our churches has become defiled and debased by “the mixed multitude,” among whom all manner of evil finds a congenial dwelling-place. Unhappy leader, who has an Achan in his own camp! Better that Demas should forsake us, than that he should abide with us, and import the world into the church. -Charles Spurgeon

Thank you for all you have done for so many years for all of us and for Dad. You have put music in our lives every day. You have put bread on the table.

Above all, thank you for treasuring Christ since you were in the third grade every day. People search musty books and travel to remote places to sit at the feet of sages to discover evidence of God or form arguments for the existence of God. I never had to do that. All I had to do was look in the next room and I could always see Him in you.

Thank you for doing all the things you had to do to make our home a fine, Christian home. God has rewarded you with 31 grandchildren so far. Imagine the far-reaching impact of your quiet faithfulness in small things. It will touch the lives of thousands if Jesus’ return is not soon.

I hope you know this morning that I love you and appreciate you and cherish you. Thank you for your song. Thank you for your constant instruction and conviction about the things of Christ. Thank you for maintaining high standards all your life that clearly flowed from a heart of love for Christ. Thank you for making me clothes, meals, even making my bed. (I still feel guilty about that one).

I was traveling with the boys the other day on the way to a speaking assignment and quizzing them on basic Bible knowledge. I found myself praying that I could instruct my children in the Bible and theology as well as you did us. Thank you so much for all those JOY Clubs and Good News Clubs and Five Day Clubs and after school teachings. I have such a love for stories and for singing and for the Bible. I know that you are largely responsible for that.

I remember doing the funeral of an elderly woman one day. At the close standing at the head of the casket her son was the last one to say goodbye before the casket was closed. He stood and wept and then, suddenly, without warning grabbed his mother’s body and began to pull it up and cried out over and over again in a pitiful voice, “O mother, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me mother, I’m sorry.”

His pitiful cries rang in my ears for a long time. I don’t want to come to the end of my life and leave the important things unsaid. If any good comes from my life, I owe it to you and Dad. Not just because I came into this world through you but because of your clear, continual, Christian testimony that flowed out of the fountain of love for Christ within you.

I wish I could buy you expensive gifts today and be with you and take you to a fine restaurant. I wish I could afford to take you to some lovely place that you would enjoy and remember for the rest of your life. I will tell you this, Mom. I want you to know that I am going to do my best with all my heart to see that your grandchildren carry the same temperature of faith that is in you to their children, your great-grandchildren. One day we will have riches that are beyond the scope of our finite imagination. One day we will travel to a place so beautiful and wonderful beyond human description and we will be together forever there with all the rough edges taken off, all the pain and sadness of sin lifted forever, and to think in the presence of the One whom we have loved without seeing for so long.

Thank you most of all for making Him real to my heart. I love you, Mom.

Ken (Mother’s Day—May 8, 2005)

Well, there you go. Now you have almost a week to write your mom a letter or find her a nice gift, or plan a visit to make her Mother’s Day special.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
May 5, 2008

Dan Cummings is a pastor friend who I admire in so many ways. He is one of the finest preachers in the state. He is a marathoner. He is a good dad and a fine husband. He is a leader of men. I admire him more than I can say and often listen to his preaching on my iPod.

A few weeks ago it was announced that he has inoperable cancer. If God does not choose to intervene in a miracle, he will not live. He is trying to write and preach to the glory of God while he is dying. He is writing and preaching through his affliction. This is his blog. There are links to his preaching, too.

We often quote Richard Baxter who said; I preach as a dying man to dying men. We all preach as dying men to dying men. In light of Dan’s condition the reality of that is very sharp now. May God give Dan grace to die if that is what He has chosen for him. May he give each of us grace to live and die.

May each of us seize every moment of life we are given for the Glory of God and for things eternal that will never pass away. It’s good to be alive but it is much better to know that in Chrsit we will never, never die.

Pastor Ken Pierpont
The Study
Evangel Baptist Church
May 2, 2008

In May 2006 I skipped my graduate school commencement and Chuk skipped his college graduation ceremony to take advantage of a missionary opportunity. Our family went with an evangelistic team to Mexico. One evening we visited a tiny, humble village on Lake Chapala. Most of the streets in the village were dirt. The main street was cobblestone.

The street was filled with children when we got there. We had a big watermelon to use for a skit, but someone had the idea that we should just slice the melon and give it out to children. A long line of children formed for watermelon. One of our team members made animal balloons. Another line formed there. Three or four girls visited in homes. I walked to a little shop that opened up to the street and ordered a Coke. I didn’t drink the water in Mexico but I put away the Coke. In Mexico they are cheap and cold and sold in real glass bottles.

Dan, Wes, and Chuk juggled. We sang to draw a crowd, told stories and did skits. Finally it was time to go. Most of the team made their way to the bus, but two of our young women stayed behind. The sun had set and the street was getting dark. I stayed with them. One of them knew Spanish. She interpreted while the other told the gospel story to a group of about five teenaged girls from the village. I watched. None of the girls looked away from her eyes for even a second. She explained the gospel and prayed with the girls, then we all walked back to the bus in the cool night air.

That spring night in a tiny, poor village in Mexico, a young lady from Indiana and another from Boston were learning missions first-hand. On the bus home they were tired but joyful that they had been able to give the gospel and pray with the girls. I will never forget the look in the eyes of each of the girls, the joyful chatter of our young ladies, the cool of the night, or the worn cobblestone streets of the village. I will never tire of telling the story.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
April 28, 2008