Revelation Series: Message 11
Revelation 3:14-22
Lessons on the Porch (Part Three)
Sunday night August 10 God spoke to my heart in a very clear way out on the porch after a long Lord’s Day of ministry. He challenged me to devote myself to prayer in the same way I have devoted myself to the ministry of the Word. The next morning God arranged an experience for me at the hospital early in the morning to challenge me to pray for every member and every regular attender of Evangel every week. He was not done.
Tuesday morning I got up and went for a walk around the pond. Hazard (our Yorkie) loves to walk and we have a great neighborhood for walking. Just north of our home is a park that is situated around a pond. I try to walk around the pond regularly. On this morning the lessons about prayer God was teaching me were fresh in my heart. Devote yourself to prayer in the same way you have devoted yourself to the ministry of the Word. Pray for every member and every regular attender at least every week.
On my walk I listened to a message by Pastor Francis Chan. In the message he was talking about a network of house church pastors he leads. He said something that shocked me. It went something like this: “I don’t care if the pastors are great preachers. What I want to know is this; Do they get down on their knees and pray for the people by name every week. Isn’t that the pastor you want. If you are not going to do that for your church I don’t want you to be one of our pastors.”
Immediately I know that God was speaking to my very own soul. I went home and watched a video version of the message. I asked our son Kyle to create a video clip from the message to share with the people and to remind me. Now there were three parts to what God was showing me:
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.
It was unmistakable. God was using a series of circumstances and reminders to guide me to a biblical truth that would transform my pastoral ministry. I was grieved because it was so simple and because it took me so long to see it.
I have always prayed for the people, but I moved through the membership slowly. I didn’t pray for every person every week. I didn’t devote myself to it. I didn’t carefully add people to the list who consider Evangel their home and me their pastor who had not yet formally joined. I knew I would have to make some changes. I wasn’t sure how.
I heard of a pastor in Oregon who had experienced a ministry revolution after years of frustration and three church splits. What he discovered about prayer transformed his life and his church. The church grew to over a thousand and became strong and unified. I had a remarkable conversation with him. I will tell what I learned from him in my next post. (Until then you can watch a clip of the message by Francis Chan below).
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
November 13, 2015
Lessons on the Porch (Part Two)
Monday is my day off. Now that most of the children are grown I almost always work most of the day, but I rarely go into the study at church. Some Mondays I will have a funeral or a hospital call or an emergency. On Monday morning, August 10th I had a hospital call early in the morning. I rose about five a.m. and made my way to the hospital. I was there to pray with a woman before her surgery. She and her family mentioned another family from the church who was there in the hospital that morning. Neither of us could remember their names. I knew someone who would remember and taking a risk that I would wake them up I called. It was 630 a.m. Immediately they answered and told me the name of the family.
I found them in the hospital and visited with them. As I drove away from the hospital that morning I had two things on my mind. First, I wanted to get a cup of coffee and some breakfast. The other thought wasn’t so pleasant. It came in the form of a gentle rebuke. It was that inner voice from the Spirit speaking to me again as He had the night before out on the porch.
“You didn’t remember their names, but they have been faithfully listening to you preach for eight years.”
The family had not officially joined our church so their contact information fell through the cracks of our system and even though they came almost every week, their names did not come to my mind. Something about that just isn’t the way it should be. It was as if the Lord said to me in my heart, “If you prayed for them every week you would remember their names. You don’t remember their names because you don’t pray for them.”
A pastor is a shepherd. To shepherd the flock you have to know they flock. The very first step in knowing someone is knowing their name.
As I drove away from the hospital that morning the sun was coming up. I prayed. “Yes, Lord. Please forgive me and help me. By your grace and help I will make it my goal never to preach to people that I have not prayed for by name that week if at all possible.”
I thought about it over breakfast and I had an idea about how I could begin to devote myself to prayer in the same way I have devoted myself to the ministry of the Word for the last thirty-five years. I had a strong feeling in my heart that God was teaching me something very important, something vital to my ministry as a pastor. He wasn’t done. Walking around the pond in a neighborhood park the next day He would teach me more. I will tell you that story tomorrow.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
November 12, 2015
Lessons on the Porch (Part One)
It was mid-August 2015. It was the Lord’s Day. It had been a long day. Sundays are always long days. Good, long days. After a full Lord’s Day of ministry I call my parents on the way home and we catch up and talk about the things of the Lord and our churches. I remember them doing the same with their folks. Back then one of the reasons was because long distance rates were lower on the weekend. Now it is because our lives are built around ministry and our ministries are built around the Lord’s Day.
After the conversation I went out and sat in the rocker on the front porch and put my feet up. A couple raccoons frolicked around the other side the the street then crossed passing into the back yard without noticing me. Then I heard a voice. It was the voice of the Spirit in my soul, like an internal conversation.
“Ken, you have certainly devoted yourself to the ministry of the Word, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have, Lord, for decades now I have devoted myself to the ministry of the Word every single week for over thirty-five years. I have written messages and Bible studies and articles for Sunday School, Sunday Morning and Wednesday Evening Bible and sermons week after week, month after month, and year after wonderful year of ministry. The delivery of those messages has been the great joy of my ministry.”
The Lord seemed to say to me: “Have you devoted yourself to prayer in the same way?”
I knew the answer was no.
The book of Acts records the story of the early church. The sixth chapter is the passage where the first deacons were chosen. They were chosen so the Apostles could devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. If the Apostles were were directly commissioned by the risen Christ needed to devote themselves to prayer, it is certain that we will not have the increase that comes from God unless we devote ourselves to prayer.
The dialog was an inner dialog in my spirit, but I went to sleep that night knowing that God was communicating something very significant to me on that summer evening out on the porch. I need to devote myself to prayer like I have devoted myself to the ministry of the Word.
In the morning a parishioner was scheduled for an early surgery. I would need to rise early. What happened that morning is something I will not soon forget… I’ll tell you that story tomorrow.
The Beginning of Year Nine
On November 10, 2007 this is what I wrote on my blog:
“Autumn is mercifully lingering into November in the Midwest this year. I don’t mind at all. The season is like a favorite guest that you try to talk into staying just a little longer. We drove across the bottom of the “mitten” yesterday from Detroit to Chicago. Heidi met us in Northern Indiana with my Jeep and I drove down through Indiana for the Dad’s Conference in Indianapolis. It was a pretty drive. The trees are clinging to their leaves, like they are bracing for winter. The sun came out to brighten my drive through the countryside.”
On Sunday, November 11, 2007 I preached in Indianapolis. That afternoon I drove to Chicago to preach in the evening–but my heart was not in Indiana or Illinois. My heart was in Michigan. In Taylor, Michigan. It had been for weeks. That night Evangel Baptist Church would gather for an important business meeting to decide if I should be their next Senior Pastor.
After preaching that evening I dismissed myself early from the service to wait on a call from Bill Musham, the chairman of the Deacons at Evangel. That night I sat quietly in my study and prayed while I waited for the call. My phone rang and Bill informed me that I had been received a 98.7% call. I joyfully and immediately accepted the call. So today is my 8-year anniversary of being the pastor at Evangel. Tomorrow morning I begin year nine!
Thanks be unto God for the gift this church has been to me. It is a great privilege and a sobering responsibility. By the grace of God I hope to care for the flock here and watch over the church for many years to come as God gives me strength and direction.
Pastor Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
November 11, 2015
Enduring Opposition (Rev. 3:7-13)
Revelation Series; Message 10
Revelation 3:7-13
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