Here is a little bonus. About five years ago I send a pastoral epistle to the church that I founded with a few other families in beautiful central Ohio. Here is that letter:
[Read more…] about Pastoral Epistle
Higgins Lake
We spent the weekend at Higgins Lake where Daniel and Wesley and I enjoyed the fellowship of my brother Kevin and his family. (Without Kevin none of you would have the Stonebridge Newsletter). Dan, Wes and I camped out in their beautiful backyard, complete with a nice fire ring. We enjoyed his beautiful family.
The children’s smiles are like a dog wagging its tail. If it is scarred or unhappy it will not wag its tail. That wagging tail just cannot lie. The children happy, well-adjusted children clearly well-trained with happy faces. (You can see it in the picture below).
This is my brother Kevin and his family. We preached in his church, Higgins Lake Baptsit Church, this weekend and camped out in their back yard. It was a nice spot complete with a beautiful fire ring.
Kyle and Elizabeth backpacked on the Manistee River Trail this weekend. Chuk is a counselor at Camp Barakel. He will ride the bus home with the campers later this morning and we will get to spend the day with him.
The ladies are on a ‘trek’ of their own to Lois’s native Bluegrass. They visited Natural Bridge State Park where I have received reports that they visited Hoedown Island on Saturday night to watch the clogging and square-dancing and enjoy the bluegrass music. They attended Lois’s home church, Campton Baptist Church on Sunday morning.
July 11, 2005
Praying Men
Re-posted from July 2005
When I was growing up my Dad pastored a little country church on a edge of a tiny village in Ohio. In that church young and old alike were together for prayer meeting on Wednesday night. We would sing a hymn or two and Dad would teach and take prayer requests. He would read a missionary prayer letter or two and then divide into two groups. The ladies and the girls would come to the front and the men and boys would go to the back. We would get on our knees and pray.
The image of men on their knees in prayer on a summer evening, windows open to the cool night, is still sweet to my memory. I was about ten years old. I watched the men when they would pray, squeezing their eyes together and pouring out their souls to God. One evening I watched one of the older men of the church kneeling at his pew. Tears ran down his face and dripped off his chin while he prayed.
When I think back on those summer nights in prayer meeting I am reminded of what E. M. Bounds wrote on praying men over a hundred years ago:
“WE are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men… When God declares that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world.
What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men — men of prayer.” (E. M. Bounds, Power through Prayer)
We have camps and conferences and clubs for children. We have children’s books, software, video games, and cleaver Christian films aimed at them. We have catchy music and Christian action heroes for children. We have singing vegetables and Bible action hero dolls. But more then anything children need to see their fathers bent in humility before the Lord. They need to know some praying men.
Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
July 5, 2005
The Very Spot
This picture was taken Sunday, July 3rd at the very place where Kyle and Elizabeth met a few years ago. This is the East Side waterfront at Camp Barakel on Shear Lake in Northern Michigan.
Chuk’s Men
Last week I spoke at Camp Barakel. This was Chuk’s group for the week. Two of the guys were from Flint. Note the young man in front with the Buckeye visor. 🙂 It was a beautiful week. The whole family including Kyle and his new bride gathered on Sunday and we enjoyed most of the day together.
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