Bittersweet Farm – Page 198

Pastoral Leadership

February 29, 2016 Filed Under: Current Thoughts, Past Ministry, Village Parson

I’m reading through the Bible again. Every time I read a passage that I have read and studied before I see something new. Usually this is because of what I am going through. Lately I have been thinking about the importance of leadership. Leadership has always been an enigma to me. I would never consider myself an expert at leadership. Sometimes the idea of leadership they way it is expressed in our culture is distasteful to me as a pastor.

I’m working though a bit of a mid-life self-evaluation and have been thinking about the difference between being a parson-storyteller and leading Evangel forward to the next level of ministry and mission in the Downriver. I have a strong sense that at this time in my life the Lord is leading me to LEAD.

This morning I built and fire, brewed some coffee, and sat down in the quiet house to read my Bible. I noticed how God gave simple instructions to Moses and Moses led and organized the people to carry out God’s instructions. Moses organized, motivated, and invited people to use their gifts to complete the Tabernacle. The people gave sacrificially. They each contributed their giftedness. They accomplished what God wanted them to do with great excellence, Moses commended them, and then the glory of God fell on the project.

Leading the Moses way looks pretty strait-forward. You get your direction from the Lord. You tell the people. You inspire them to give and work. You find people who are gifted and have them work in their area of giftedness. You affirm their work. You watch the glory of God fall.

I changed the header on my web site a few minutes ago from “Parson-Storyteller” to “Leading People to Follow Jesus.” I still intend to be a faithful pastor and, like my Master, I will always use storytelling, but it is clear that now is the time in my life to lead.

Longing for the Blessing

February 25, 2016 Filed Under: Faith and Family

We all long for the verbal blessing of others. This longing starts early and continues all through our lives. Last night we were all lying in our bunks in a cabin where I was speaking at a family camp. The children were getting in their last squirms and giggles. When things were finally quiet I could hear Hope talking to mom.

“Mom, when are you going to teach me to cook?”

“Why do you want to learn to cook, Hope?”

“When I get married I need to know how to cook.”

Hope is five so I was a little surprised to find that she was already thinking about honing her homemaking skills.

Lois asked her, “Hope, what do you want to learn to make?”

Without hesitation she said, “I want to know how to make pies.”

I think Hope is going to make her husband very happy some day. Men appreciate women who take pie-making seriously.

The room fell silent for a moment and then Hope began to making sneezing sounds. She wasn’t really sneezing, she was pretending to sneeze. She “sneezed” three or four times and then she was quiet for a while. Finally she said with disgust, “Isn’t anybody going to bless me?”

Quickly out of the darkness voices came. All of Hope’s brothers and sisters and her mom and dad chimed in together to give her the blessing she asked for.

“Bless you, Hope. Bless you,” everyone said.

They were the last words of the day.

People all around us every day wherever we go long for the blessing of others. Often when they come to the end of the day and lie in the darkness with their thoughts they have to go to sleep night after night without it. We should be quick to bless others even before they ask for it. And we should all know someone who loves us and takes pie-making seriously. Life would be a lot happier then, now wouldn’t it?

Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
September 6, 2004

Icy, Cold, Darkness

February 24, 2016 Filed Under: Current Thoughts, Pondering His Creation

It’s dark and cold and there is a cold, sleety, slush falling from the sky at an angle in the wind as I push the dumpster to the curb this morning. Somewhere there is a resilient little bird out there in the icy, cold, darkness… singing… Give me that spirit today, Lord.

I Failed

February 23, 2016 Filed Under: Current Thoughts, Past Ministry, Village Parson

Have you heard of the failure lab? People gather in a hall and they tell stories of a time of regret or failure. I think the point of the project is to encourage people that even the most successful people in the world have had to overcome failure. I have a failure story that haunts me. It happened on a spring-like Sunday morning in May.

We lived in Fremont, Michigan, a small town famous for Gerber Baby Food. I was the pastor of First Baptist Church. Just before dawn on that Sunday morning a powerful thunder storm roiled through town and knocked out most of the power. Trees were down. Things were a mess. After the storm blew through, the sun came out it was a beautiful sunny spring day, but only a small part of the town had power.

One of my first thoughts was—“I want a cup of coffee.” First things first. I got in the car and drove out to the business strip for a cup of coffee at McDonalds. No power there. No power anywhere. No coffee. I drove to the church. The church just happened to be one of the only places in town that still had power. We could still hold services.

I consolidated the classes and we met in the auditorium for a class during the Sunday School hour. We met with a fraction of our normal congregation for the worship hour and then we went home to clean up from the storm and wait for the power to come back on. Though we held our services at the usual times, most people probably did what I did. They drove around looking for a cup of coffee and then drove back home to deal with the problems, clean up the yard and wait for the power to come back on.

Looking back I realized that way I handled that opportunity was a failure on my part as a leader. If I could take a Mulligan on that I would have organized the crew that showed up for Sunday School that day. I would have had some of them make “Free Coffee” signs and go out to stand by the main road and direct people to the church. I would have had some of them make signs to direct people a little “drive-through” place between our buildings. I would have sent the church ladies to the kitchen to brew fresh coffee. We had a perfect place for people to pull through and grab a cup of coffee without even getting out of their car. We would have served all the coffee we owned and provided a needed service for our whole town. The town was full of frugal Dutch folk, they would have admired us for our initiative.

If I had been a leader that day we would still be talking about it today. We would have created a wonderful buzz of good will and prevented hundreds of headaches all over town.

I woke up this morning with that story on my mind and I realized it has happened again. The power is out all over the town where I live. People feel powerless to fix their marriages, powerless to overcome their addictions, powerless to help their kids flourish, powerless to kick addictions—they feel powerless, but the power is on at the church. We have what people need! We need leaders to take charge and organize the church to meet the needs of powerless people all around our churches.

We just need to lead. If we don’t we will look back on this time some day with deep regret.

We have power to help people. I know we do. It’s time for leaders to lead.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
February 23, 2016

Here is an example of a Failure Lab talk:

A Howling Storm; Story Podcast #57

February 16, 2016 Filed Under: Story Podcast

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A Howling Storm
by Ken Pierpont (David Kline)

David Kline is an Amish farmer and gifted writer. In the sixties he was drafted and forced to move to Cleveland to work in a hospital since he was a conscientious objector. Born and raised in the quiet countryside of Holmes County, Ohio, the largest Amish settlement in the world, life in the city was a difficult adjustment.

“I moved to Cleveland in late November, and when I was returning after spending the Christmas holiday at home, the Greyhound bus got caught in one of the early winter snowstorms northeastern Ohio is famous for. Arriving three hours late, in the early morning hours, the city was at a standstill. The city buses, my usual mode of travel to my apartment eight miles out in the suburb (for thirty-five cents), had quit for the night, and there were no taxis running. The city was asleep.

Since I did not have enough money for a hotel room and sleeping in the bus station wasn’t an option, I walked into the howling fury of the storm. Almost immediately car lights came out of the swirling snow and stopped by the curb; the driver reached over and opened the passenger door.

“Do you need help, or a ride?” a voice asked.

“Indeed I do, but I have almost no money,” I said,

After the driver said it was no problem, I got in the car, and we headed, alone on the wide streets, for my new home. The driver, an African American with some gray in his hair said he had woken at 1:00 A.M. and hearing the storm outside could not go back to sleep. He thought someone might be in need of help, so he got in his car and drove to the bus station.

Finally, after numerous U-turns on the slippery roads, we reached the street where I lived. He did not want to take many money for the ride, but I insisted and gave him all I had. As I watched the tail lights of his car fade into the storm, my eyes welled with tears of gratitude for this angel of mercy.

That man forever changed my view of the city. I realized that love can live in the human heart anywhere.”

From about 1991 to 1996 we lived in rural Ohio. Today our home is in a suburb of a great city. But if you keep your heart open to it, no matter where you live, you will see that love can live in the human heart anywhere.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
February 16, 2016