Revelation Series: Message 13
The Control Center of the Universe-Part 2 (Rev. 5)
A Place for You; Story Podcast #34
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The Control Center of the Universe-Part 1 (Rev. 4)
Revelation Series: Message 12
The Control-Center of the Universe (Part 1)
Lewis Shellenbarger’s Last Words
One evening in 1987 I got a call from a young man named Eddie Earnest who was serving as a deacon at our church in Ohio. An old friend of his was in the hospital. His name was Lewis. Lewis had been driving a cement truck when the front tire blew and he lost control and hit a tree. He was in intensive care at Grant Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Eddie wanted to go on Friday night. I had planned a much-needed day off and we were planning to visit family in another county. I told Eddie we would drive over and meet him at the hospital in Columbus, but Friday afternoon we were visiting with family and to get to Columbus to visit Lewis would require us cutting our visit short. I considered calling Eddie and asking him if he would mind moving our visit to Saturday. Finally I reconsidered and we headed home.
That evening we drove to Columbus. Lewis was in intensive care. He was strapped to a bed that tilted from side to side slowly to keep the fluid moving in his lungs. There were nurses, doctors and technicians all around him. His wife was standing beside him. I felt intimidated with all the people in the room since I had never met him before and wasn’t sure if he wanted a visit from a stranger at such a difficult time.
The hospital staff stepped away from the bed and let me talk with him. I introduced myself and said I was Eddie’s pastor hoping he would remember him. He and Eddie had not seen each other in years and at the time he and Eddie were drinking buddies.
He had a large tube taped in his mouth and could not speak. His eyes were closed but he responded my nodding his head yes or no.
I said; “Lewis I came to talk to you about your soul. If you had died in the accident do you know for sure that you would have gone to heaven?”
He nodded no.
I said; “Lewis the Bible says you can know for sure. Would you like me to explain what the Bible says about how you can know for sure that you are right with God and that you will go to heaven when you die?
I watched him closely to see how he was responding. Every one in the room was quiet and I sensed they were all listening. Lewis nodded yes.
I said; “Lewis, the Bible says we have all sinned and broken God’s law and that we deserve to die and go to hell but the Lord Jesus died for our sin. According to the Bible, if we confess our sin and believe that Jesus died for our sin we will be saved. Would you like to pray and turn to Christ and ask him to forgive your sin and give you a home in heaven when you die?”
He nodded yes.
I said, “Lewis if you truly mean that I want you to pray in your heart the words I tell you to pray.”
I prayed a sinners prayer and when I was done I said; “Lewis did you pray that prayer?”
He nodded yes.
I prayed thanking God for his profession of faith asked the Lord to heal and restore his health and stepped away from the bed.
It occurred to me that I should have spoken to his wife about her soul. Her name was April and she was standing nearby. I stepped back over and handed her a copy of “The Four Spiritual Laws.” I said; “You might want to go over this together, it explains what we just talked about.”
We left and drove home. The next day the phone rang and it was Eddie. Shortly after I left Lewis lost consciousness. The next day he died. I hung up the phone and thanked God that I had not delayed my visit. If I had I would never have seen him and he would probably be in hell today.
The next week I was sitting in my study and received a phone call from home. April was trying to get a hold of me. She didn’t remember my name or where I pastored, but she was visiting a friend telling her about what happened. When she described me her friend said; well, that sounds like the man who pastors next door. A few minutes later April and her friend were walking across the churchyard to see me.
April said that after I left the hospital she took the tract, went to the hospital chapel, read it and prayed the sinners prayer printed in the back of the tract. That Sunday she was in our service and came forward in the invitation to make a public profession of faith. Later she remarried a man who was a deacon at another good church in the area.
This time of the year I always remember Lewis’ last words to me. After I had prayed with him and stepped away from his bedside April could tell that he was struggling to say something. She leaned over him and said; “What is it?” I turned back in time to catch her tear-filled eyes looking at me. She said; “He said; “Thank you.”
He died a few hours later and I don’t know what his last words were. Maybe they were words of love to his wife or for his little boy Wesley. I do know that one of the last things on his mind before he died was thanksgiving for Jesus who died for him.
“Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”
Up-date: Thanksgiving 2015
The story you just read happened in 1987. Every Thankgiving I think of Lewis Shellenbarger and his last words to me. Tears were forming in his eyes and rolling down his face to the bed. His eyes followed mine and he strained to speek, barely able to form a sound he said; “Thank you.”
Today I looked up April and gave her a call to see what had happened in the years since Lewis died.
She has been married to a Christian man for over 23 years. Along with Wesley they have three more boys, Caleb, Gabriel, and Joshua. All of them know the Lord. April and her husband Greg are active members of the Mount Vernon Baptist Temple today, faithfully serving the Lord.
We had a good talk. She thanked me again for coming to the hospital that night. She said; “I was angry, but when Lewis died I knew he had received Christ and I knew I wanted to see Lewis again and I knew I needed the Lord. I took the pamphlet you gave me and went to the hospital chapel with my sister-in-law and prayed to receive Christ. I’m so glad you called. Thank you so much for coming to the hospital that night. So many have come to know that Lord because of what happened with Lewis. I’m in nursing now and I have been able to help so many others who have lost loved ones. I remember the tears rolling down Lewis’s face when he prayed to receive Christ. It has always made me feel secure to know we will all see him again.”
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
Thanksgiving Week 2015
Lessons on the Porch (Part Five)
(Here is my final installment in my series of blog-posts: “Lessons on the Porch”)
When God began to move my heart to pray more faithfully, more frequently, more fervently I knew that prayer was a clear command and emphasis of the Bible. I didn’t need any confirmation of that. All I had to do was open the Bible and read the place of prayer in the life of men and women of God, the place of prayer in the life of the church, and the place of prayer in the life of our Savior, Jesus. But there was something more that troubled me and has for many, many years.
I have read dozens of books, scores of articles, and I have attended conferences and had hundreds of conversations with fellow pastors who’s ministry skills I admire, to discover the adjustments that need to be made to see increase in the church.
Church increase is a good thing, if it is something that God has given, but there can be a painful, dangerous, subtile idolatry in it for me. If I’m not careful the default setting of my soul will tell me that all that is wrong will be right if there are more people in the pews and if the church prospers as an organization. I can depend too heavily on the numbers for a sense of personal affirmation and that is a painful trap for a pastor.
There is the temptation to try to be someone you are not in ministry–to try to copy the ministry gifts and leadership styles of people who have experienced the increase you desire. God has gifted each of us uniquely. To try to reproduce the leadership stye of another is like trying to defeat Goliath in Saul’s armor.
The roots of this weakness are deep in my heart. I was only fourteen when I knew that I would pursue pastoral ministry. I began immediately to be a student of the pastoral calling. My Dad is a pastor, my grandfather was a pastor. The continual conversation around our dinner table and on long car rides was speculation about what it was that made churches flourish. How could we see more people become followers of Jesus? What should we emphasize? What did other people do to achieve such impressive attendance numbers?
The Church-Growth Movement
Dad read inspiring stories about growing churches with dynamic pastors and flourishing ministries, but that level of success always eluded us. The churches Dad pastored always grew. He was faithful and sincere. Mom and the whole family were engaged in the ministry, but the level of increase was modest. As a result Dad usually was bi-vocational. He would take a small church that could not afford a full-time pastor and he would get a school-teaching assignment within commuting distance. With this bi-vocational arrangement and in churches that were often small for very good reasons, the kind of growth that you read about in ministry success books was unlikely. It didn’t happen for us. Longing for a ministry of a thousand we usually had a ministry south of one-hundred.
Sometimes churches were small because they were not healthy. There are people in control who should not be in control and they are unwilling to do the things they should do to see the church be what God wants it to be. Conflict or friction and tension between people and pastor and in-fighting makes increase impossible, but it is not always the fault of the people.
Other times small churches or churches that are declining or plateaued are not growing because pastors feel pressure to make them grow and they import programs from other churches and force them on the people. They assume that because they worked in one place they will work in every place, but they don’t take into account other factors, like the location of the church, the skills and gifts of the people, the providential factors that make the church unique, or the leadership skill of the pastor himself. The people try to follow the pastor, but the efforts they make don’t bring increase and they end in frustration. Often the church suffers leading to a pastoral change and the new pastor comes into town with a new bag of ministry tricks and the people have to go through the whole frustrating cycle again.
Ministry and Idolatry
God was showing me the ministry idols in my heart. He was helping me discern my own gifts and skills and leadership style. Now, entering my ninth year of ministry here at Evangel I had plenty of time to evaluate and meditate on what kind of pastor God wanted me to be and what I should depend on for the flourishing of the church. That led me to the emphasis on prayer and personal pastoral care. It brought me full-circle to a way of seeing ministry like a village parson. I saw that I should not primarily concentrate on trying to do things go get the church to grow. I should not put inordinate pressure on the people to use them to grow the church. Instead I should know the state of the flock. I should arrange for the care of every member of the body. I should faithfully and passionately preach. I should identify other men who have natural leadership in the church and inspire them to inspire others. I should lead the way God gifted me to lead and not frustrate myself by trying to be someone I am not and hurt the people by pressuring them to be something they are not.
You’re Not Spurgeon
Years ago my secretary said; “Pastor, I think you should put your sermon titles in the bulletin.”
“I’m not sure what my sermon titles are until just before I preach the message,” I said. “Charles Spurgeon did not write his Sunday morning message until Saturday night and he did not write his Sunday night message until Sunday afternoon.”
She said; “Well, you’re not Charles Spurgeon.”
As you can imagine, that is not my favorite memory, but it is an important truth. A pastor should have a good awareness of how God has gifted him and where God has placed him. I’m not Spurgeon. You are problably not Spurgeon either. Spurgeons are rare. But I can be faithful and fruitful even though I am not Charles Spurgeon. I am people-oriented. I am creative. I have a busy mind and high-energy. I am verbal. It’s been that way for years. You can see it on every one of my report cards from my school days. Everyone who knows me knows that to be true. I am not linear and left-brain in my thinking. My thought-process is more like fire-works than a flow-chart. I have many tabs open on my mental browser all the time. I am not a high-powered Teddy Roosevelt, “Let’s-charge-San-Juan-hill” kind of leader. I am not John Wayne or William Wallace. I’m Ken Pierpont. God led me to be a pastor. God gifted me to be a pastor, but I don’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, I’m not faster then a speeding bullet, I’m not more powerful than a locomotive, and I don’t walk on water.
I can call on you when you are in the hospital. I can pray for you by name. I can go to your child’s soccer game. I can weep with you when you grieve. I can rejoice with you when you have something to celebrate. I’m actually pretty good at that. I can pray and study the Bible and pay careful attention to your life and preach and teach in a way that is directly applicable to your life and family, because I know you and I live where you live. Your favorite ministry mega-gifted star cannot do that for you.
God has gifted and called local parsons to do that and they should not spend their time spinning their wheels trying to be the local reincarnation of Bill Hybles, Rick Warren, Charles Stanley, Charles Swindoll, Chuck Smith, or David Jeremiah. If pastors try to do that they are going to hurt themselves and they are going to hurt their people. Pastors are shepherds who know the flock and care for the flock. They should work intimately among their people until the sheep know their voice and follow them even as the under-shepherd knows the voice of the Chief-Shepherd and follows Him.
I’m not Charles Spurgeon. When I was very young and occasionally even now I fantasize about what it would be like to preach to thousands and have people in foreign lands snatch up and read everything I write. There is a lot I’m not sure about but one thing I know: “I’m not Charles Spurgeon, or Charles Stanely or Charles Swindoll.” I’m just Ken, the village parson. You will probably never meet the great Charles Pastors, but if Evangel is your church home and you need me I will do my best to be there for you and I will pray for you by name continually. I will pray for your children. I will pray about the state of your soul and try to shepherd your heart godward every week.
The heart of all of that is prayer, personal, frequent, faithful prayer by name for each of those who are in my flock. How do I know what people need? How do I know what temptations they face? How do I know who needs help, when and what kind of help they need? All this begins in the morning when I mention them by name one at a time to the Lord.
Would God Confirm This Direction?
I was sure God was at work in my heart. I asked Him to give me a confirmation that this new emphasis on faithful, fervent, frequent prayer was what He wanted me to emphasize in my ministry. The week of my experience on the porch I began to create prayer lists of all the families in the church and I began to pray for them by name, dividing the list so I would pray for about 50-60 families a day. I created files on Evernote so the lists would always be with me on my phone and they would be easy to edit.
While I was praying that first week I came upon a name and had a sense that I should connect with this young husband and dad. Later that morning I called him. I said, “The Lord put you on my heart today and I wondered if you would like to grab coffee sometime?”
He said; “Well, I’ve been pretty busy and I’ve been working six days a week so I’m not off work until Saturday at 2:00.” Then he said something that surprised and humbled me. He said; “So i could meet you at 3:00.” The first free hour he had after a long busy week of work he was willing to give to me, because I prayed for him and I cared about him
We met for coffee. We had a great talk. I learned a lot about him and his little family, his dreams, frustrations, temptations, pressures and successes. It was a good meeting.
Sunday morning when I stood to preach he and his wife were in the front row. I had prayed that week for a clear confirmation that this emphasis on prayer was the direction that God wanted me to take for the flourishing of the church when I saw that couple in the front row I knew the God had confirmed the direction He gave me.
That week I spoke to the people about what God was teaching me about prayer. I told the people this; “Today I am going to just tell you what God has been teaching me. I want you to let me know if any of you feel He has been saying the same thing to you.”
Often people are slow to adopt new ideas and lacking in enthusiasm about any new emphasis. In this case one after another the people have come to me to tell me they believe God has been saying the same thing to them. Over and over God has confirmed to me that this emphasis on prayer is Biblically-sound, pleasing to God, and universally applicable to any church anywhere at any time.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
November 18, 2015
Lessons on the Porch (Part Four)
Last August God began to work in my heart, bringing me to deep conviction about devoting myself to prayer in the same way I have devoted myself to the ministry of the Word for the last 36 years. Using the Word, the the inner voice of the Spirit, and divinely-arranged circumstances, He moved me to devote myself to pray for each of the members and each of the regular attenders of Evangel every week. This would mean that ministry for me would change in a significant way.
Here were the lessons God was teaching me beginning on that summer evening on the porch:
1. Devote yourself to prayer in the same way you have devoted yourself to the ministry of the Word.
2. Pray for every member and every attender of Evangel every week.
3. Make prayer for the people a priority. If you don’t pray for people you aren’t really their pastor. Don’t preach to people you haven’t prayed for.
A friend gave me the name of a pastor in Oregon who had experienced a remarkable working of God in his church. His name is Dee Duke. He had started the church but he had been through three church splits. He was raised on a dairy farm and he know the importance of hard work. He worked hard and every time he got to church up to 200 in attendance at split and dropped back to 100.
No matter how hard he worked he could not see the church grow beyond 100. He was discouraged. He was defeated. He was determined to quit the ministry. About this time he was invited to a meeting in Cannon Beach, Oregon at a Bible Conference Center on the Pacific Coast. The meeting was organized by Joe Aldrich, then the president of Multnomah School of the Bible. He didn’t have enough money to attend, but he was offered a scholarship. (Cannon Beach is just a few miles south of where our daughter and her husband Jesse live. It is a beautiful place).
Pastor Duke said to himself; “I’ll go to the conference that way I can walk on the beach and eat the food, but I will skip the sessions. When he got to the conference he felt obligated to attend at least the first session of the conference. During that first session God began to show him why he had been defeated in ministry. His pastoral life was revolutionized by what he was learning about prayer. He returned to his church and began to emphasize prayer. God began to bless. The spirit of the church was transformed thought prayer. The church grew to over 1000. Now they have stared other churches in Oregon and over 20 churches in Africa.
More Prayer More Often
Pastor Duke told the story of his dad who was a farmer and a faithful church attender though he wasn’t a believer until late in his life. His dad during the sermon every week would methodically fold his offering and faithfully drop it in the plate when the offering plate was passed at the end of the service. He was a consistent and faithful giver but he only gave one dollar a week.
If you asked him if he was a giver he could honestly say, “Yes. I give every week and I give a consistent amount. I am a regular, faithful giver.” What is wrong with that picture? It’s simple. He did not give enough. Most of us pray. We may even pray faithfully and often, but like Dee Duke’s dad, we just don’t pray enough we don’t pray frequently, faithfully, and fervently.
If you read the prayers of the Bible you will see that men and women of God took prayer seriously. Daniel, Nehemiah, Paul, and Jesus made prayer a priority. They prayed frequently. They prayed faithfully. The prayed fervently.
If you only give a dollar a week unless you only make ten dollars a week, you are not a faithful giver. If you only pray when it comes to mind, and when you stop to eat, you are not a faithful prayer. You cannot say you are devoted to prayer.
After my conversation with Pastor Duke I went on-line and listened to some of his messages on prayer and I decided to take action and make some significant changes in the way I do ministry.
I decided to divide the members and regular attenders into six groups and pray for them Monday through Saturday. On the Lord stay I would pray for pastors and missionaries. There are about four-hundred families in the church so I’m praying for 60 or so families a day.
I began to pray faithfully for every member and every attender of Evangel.
Paul said; I planted Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. We may work, plant, plan, cultivate and water, but only God can give the increase and he gives the increase when we pray.
I noticed that as I prayed for each of the people every day I began to have a greater burden and a greater connection and involvement in their lives. I began to “know the state of the flock” better than ever. I began to take more interest in each person, in each family, in each child. Ministry ideas would come to mind and as I prepared my messages their circumstances would naturally come to me in the from of powerful and pointed applications in my preaching to help the very heart of each of those who listened to me.
I began to encourage the other pastor, deacons, teachers, and small group leaders to devoted themselves to prayer for those who were under their care. I began to challenge the people to create a detailed list of all their neighbors and friends who did not yet know the Lord and begin to faithfully pray for them.
I had a strong sense that God was in this. I asked Him for a token–a confirmation that this was the way He wanted me to approach ministry. Before a week passed He gave me powerful confirmation. I will tell you that story next time.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
November 16, 2015
If you would like to here the story Pastor Duke re-told the story a few weeks ago at the beginning of a message. You can listen to it here.
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