Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 9

Arnold E. McFarland

One summer evening in 1976 the Big Red Machine was taking care of baseball business. (The Cincinnati Reds) I was running an errand in the family VW Beatle. I was seventeen that summer. We lived a few blocks from the park in Greenville, Ohio in the north end of town.

I ran an errand to the drug store that evening listening to the game on the AM radio. In the parking lot an older man was standing by his car with the window down listening to the game while he waited for his wife to finish her shopping.

I made small talk with him about baseball and turned the conversation toward the gospel. He was open to talk about the gospel but he had seen things as a WWII veteran in Europe that made him doubt if he could be forgiven.

“Can I show you what the Bible says about that?” I asked.

“I’d like that,” he said.

I grabbed a New Testament from my car and we sat in the front seat of his car and I showed him the “Romans Road” to salvation. I showed him the promise of forgiveness in 1 John 1:9 and led him in a prayer of confession and faith in Christ.

I had heard a preacher once say that you should carry a New Testament with you all the time so you can witness to people. He said, “When you lead someone to Christ, write their name down in the fly leaf of your New Testament and pray for them and keep in touch with them.” He called it following up…

I wrote his name in my New Testament and it’s still there though I’m fairly sure by now he has gone to be with the Lord.

That was the summer of 1976. Around 1991 I looked up his number and called him on the phone. He remembered me and told me he attended the Brethren Church.

It’s been almost 50 years now. The name is still there: Arnold McFarland. His name is in my New Testament and, I trust, in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

This morning I discovered his obituary. He died in 2021 in the Brethren Home in Greenville.

OBITUARY

Arnold Ernest McFarland, 96, of New Madison, Ohio, passed away on Tuesday, February 23, 2021, at the Brethren Retirement Community in Greenville, Ohio. He was born on February 25, 1924, in Dublin, Indiana, to the late James and Emma (Sweet) McFarland. In addition to his parents, Arnold was preceded in death by his wife, Annie (Hancock) McFarland, whom he married June 8, 1947; four brothers; and one sister.

Arnold served his country honorably in the United States Army, serving in the European Theater during WWII as a 1st Lieutenant in the 80th infantry division.

He was a member of the Free and Accepted Masons for more than 50 years, the AASR Valley of Dayton, and the American Legion. He retired in April 1985 from Con-Rail after a 40-year career in the railroad industry.

Arnold is survived by his four sons, Larry, Rodney, Dale and Bruce McFarland; and his granddaughter, Megan McFarland. Private burial, with military honors provided by the Greenville Honor Guard, in Greenmound Cemetery in New Madison, will be held at the convenience of his family.

 

 

 

 

 

Marriage: Follow the Directions (Eph. 5:21-33) Video

Marriage: Follow the Directions (Eph. 5:21-33)

Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan

Ken Pierpont; Lead Pastor

June 25, 2023 AM

Gathering Sticks

So the grandchildren came over last week. Grandma leaves surprizes around the house for when they come over and they know it. They greet us and they the scour the places they know the little prizes are hidden and pilfer around. They all go home with a little something, a doll, binoculars, a cash register, or cash box…I went to town to get pizza and cheese bread. Later we load up and head to the Horton Hop for treats. (We let mom and dad worry about bean sprouts and kale juice).While I am gone for pizza the kids get the wagon out without being told and delight gramps by pulling it around our little two-acre “farm” and harvesting windfall sticks and branches for my fire-ring. I’m delighted to discover a that these little people have filled the wagon upon my return making my “sit-on-the-mower-and-fly-around” habit easier.Every time I see them they have learned something new. Lalea is a little lady now. Aspen is a lot like granny. Gunnison has a big heart and says “I love you” readily. Denver is Miss Congeniality with her little short pageboy haircut and smiling eyes. Routt Ranger and walking around now. He look a lot like sister Aspen and has some of Denver’s smile.They are a delightful van full of adorableness and love and I would cherish them even if they didn’t pick up sticks for me.I hear little voices shouting their love as the van disappears into the arch of trees and climbs the hill west of the farm. Everything is quiet again.I notice there is a spot of oil on the driveway and I stop there and pray.

“O, God, please, Lord, meet their every need. I can’t imagine raising a precious van-load of children again… Help them, Lord. God before them. Bless them. Protect them Save them each and every one. Send your holy angels to watch over them. Bless them with full and happy lives. Help them each to have people in their lives one day that bring them love and joy, like they bring love and joy to us. In Jesus holy name. Amen.”

Bittersweet Farm June 2023

A Small Circle | Bittersweet Farm Journal | June 8, 2023

We have returned from our visit to Oregon and settled back into our routine and Bethel Church and Bittersweet Farm. Though we need rain, it has been delightful weather of late and I’ve been working in my loft over the Carriage House. The other evening I saw a Northern Flicker for the first time. They are common but I had never seen them before. A flash of yellow under the wings and their unique pattern of color captured my attention as the unusual woodpeckers hopped along the ground eating supper.

A friend of mine (Dr. David Parsons) says, “…a flicker is a bird that could only be drawn by a kindergartener or created by God. What sensible adult would dream to give this guy a mustache, a polka-dotted belly, red splotches on his head, a white rump spot, a triangular black bib, a striped back and super bright yellow feathers under the wings and tail.”

That is why we call Him, “Our Great Creator.”  Anyway I like to work in the loft when I can. I’m closer to the birds out here and if it rains it will ring on the roof like music.

A Small Circle of Love

It is the prerogative of storytellers to repeat their best stories. So you will understand if you remember this story from the Bethel Pulpit a few weeks ago. Maybe you have heard me mention watching the movie “A Man Called Peter,” and reading the book with the same title. It is an inspiring true story of a Scottish immigrant who lost his father in his youth. He came to America and eventually became the pastor the of the New York Street Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. and chaplain of the Senate. They say his sermons were powerful.

The church was weak when he came but soon the auditorium was filled to capacity and the choir loft and the balcony. In one scene people waited in the rain to hear the young Scotsman’s prosaic sermons delivered in his musical native dialect.

It’s dangerous for pastors to read books and watch movies like that. Few of us will ever preach to great crowds or be assigned to positions of power and prestige. It can ruin a man to expect it. It is good to have holy ambition and attempt great things for God, but it is as important to be faithful and fruitful in all the small daily assignments we are given and leave the scale and scope of our ministry ultimately to the Lord.

I love the story Fred Craddock tells of the baptism at Watts Barr Lake in Tennessee. After the outdoor baptism a small circle of Christians stood around the fire and each one introduced himself and offered his unique way of serving. Craddock said that they have a name for what in the mountains. They call it “Church.”

We may wait for years and years for the moon and stars to align in a way that people will line up in the rain and pack the church all the way to the balcony, but this very week we can gather with a few around the fire and listen and love and care and follow the Jesus way.

You may not draw a great crowd, but you can find someone to love and so can I. Before I went to the study this morning I stopped at the Hospice facility, there I found a precious soul eager to talk about eternal things. One of our members introduced us. He had given him a Bible and the man was reading it when I arrived. He was hungry for God and soon he prayed for forgiveness. He was confident of eternal life before I left.

He now warms his hands at the Lord’s fire. He is a brother and soon he will see the face of Jesus. Let’s build a fire of love and faithfully tend it for the sake of Christ and all who will gather there.

Bittersweet Farm
June 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God’s Dream Church (Ephesians 4:1-16) Audio

God’s Dream Church
Ephesians 4:1-16
Ken Pierpont, Lead Pastor
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan

God’s Dream Church (Eph. 4:1-16) Video

God’s Dream Church
Ephesians 4:1-16
Ken Pierpont, Lead Pastor
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan

Why Church? (Part 2) Eph. 3:12-22

Why Church? (Part 2)

Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan

Ken Pierpont, Lead Pastor

May 21, 2023 AM

 

 

Salty Cove | Gearhart, Oregon | May 27, 2023

Our oldest daughter lives with her family in home they call Salty Cove on the north coast region of Oregon. Holly lives there with her husband Jesse and their children Aiden Redemption and Bella Allene. Holly is due to deliver another child in December, a boy, they believe.

Traditional houses in this region are sided with cedar shingles and trimmed in white. Their home is a modern ranch in the same tradition. It is set back just off iconic highway 101 which runs up the Pacific coast from Los Angelas to Olympia, Washington. Parts of the highway are designated a scenic byway including the section that passes Salty Cove.

Just on the other side of Highway 101 is Del Ray Beach. You can drive out onto the beach and bike or hike or run or walk or even drive up and down the vast beach there for miles. Looking south you see the dark silhouettes of mountains in the distance along the picturesque coastline.

Each morning I try to get up first and drive to the beach for a walk along the ocean. Yesterday all along the walk there was a beautiful fragrance in the air, maybe lavender growing in the wide band seagrass growing on the dunes between the beautiful beach homes and the sand.

It’s a vast place and solitary. Still you will see a man walking a dog, a woman on a morning run, a lone cyclist rolling along the beach. Birds run in and out with the tide. There is a constant roar of the waves foaming white.

We have been here three days, each a mix of sun and cool gray mist. It’s a delightful place to walk. I usually pair it with a robust black Americano, strong and smooth and rich to the last sip. It’s a little pricey but, heh, the customer service is tops at Brew 22 and I’m on vacation.

Our son-in-law has been traveling for work and he got home in the night. We will enjoy the long Memorial Day weekend all together on the coast. Today the plan is e-bikes over in Washington coast just beyond the Columbia River. The trail follows the coast to a couple stunning lighthouses with views of the sea and the mouth of the river. You can count on pictures of that.

Holly was raised in a large family in very modest homes, parsonages, or simple homes we rented or leased from others. She waited for her turn in the bath. She was happy but our lives were very simple. She and her husband work hard and they are blessed. God has been very kind to them. You wonder where God will lead each of your children and what their lives will be like. To visit their home and see their life, their work and their church does a dad’s heart good.

Salty Cove | Gearhart, Oregon

May 27, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do Any of Us Really Know the Thanks We Owe?

We are visiting our daughter Holly and her family on the Oregon coast. Holly, Lois and the kids just left for town to get some things. I was left alone here to think in the quiet. I sat down in a chair and picked up my daughter’s worn Bible and thumbed through it. I looked at the parts especially worn and marked. It moved my heart.

I’m filled with deep gratitude now over a conversation we just had before she left and I mouth and quiet prayer to the Lord.

“Lord, I want to thank you from the depths of my soul today for something I did not know until today that would have devastated our lives and maybe even destroyed our family.”

We flew out to the coast yesterday to visit our oldest daughter, Holly.

Just before they left for town Holly told us about an incident neither of us knew, something that happened in about 1993 or 1994. Our son Daniel was born in November of 1991 in a farmhouse we were leasing on a dead end road in Knox County, Ohio. The house was a wonderful answer to prayer. We have always been grateful for the years we were able to enjoy with our growing family there. Daniel is the sixth of eight children. I was starting a church. Lois was a homemaker. Lois made crafts and dolls non-stop and I drove Amish to help pay the bills. We were busy trying to make it all work.

We were having a conversation today and Lois said, “I have not heard anything from the children for a while, should we check on them?”

Holly chuckled and said, “They are fine, I’m sure. Sometimes we just let them play around the house outside. They are safe. They know not to go past the end of the drive. Then she said something that made us all laugh.

“Do you have any idea the crazy, dangerous things we did out on that old farm on Rutledge Road?”

It sounded to me like she had a story to tell.

I knee off some of the dangerous things they did. I was involved in some of them myself. I remembered that the kids would take a toboggan or sled to the top of a long, steep hill and careen down when the snow fell. God protected us from trips to the ER during those times. In warmer months the kids would take their big wagon with the pneumatic tires to the top of the hill and ride it down. That was dangerous, but God protected them.

I remember Kyle mentioning that he and Chuk played in the barn loft, and that was dangerous. We didn’t really know it at the time. There were things done with the BB guns and the canoe that could have ended badly. Heidi had a some emergency attention at the doctor’s office one Saturday evening. Kyle jumped on a nail in the barn that was hidden in some old manure. The nail punctured his shoe and made a deep, clean puncture wound in his foot. Miraculously no tetanus.

Holly was a little thing and she was swinging from a bar in the closet once. It broke and hurt her head. A clear-thinking friend talked us out of running to the ER on that one. Holly healed up fine. I remember some scraped knees, a few bike crashes and yellow-jacket stings, but no broken bones for hospitalizations, and thank God, no serious injuries or tragedies, even with Kyle and Chuk playing baseball every year. There were some heavy farm implements we were not particularly good at operating on the dangerous hills, tractors with PTO’s, wagons, and dangerous mowers. I lost control of a big International “H” on a hill and had to bail off of it. It came to rest when it slammed head-on into a tree a hundred yards down hill but I was not hurt. I ran over an oil line on one occasion but God spared us from injury. Once I caught a wicker wastebasket on fire and that was really not safe. I burned on old couch that could have reduced the house to hot ashes, but we avoided tragedy. Once the hood on my van blew up and smashed my windshield when Chuk pulled the latch. I had hit a deer, so there was no safety latch. Still no one died.

“Do you have something to tell me, Holly?” I said.

“I just remember having Danny back at the creek playing one afternoon. It was way back the lane from the house. I don’t know how old he was but he was in a diaper.”

Well, I said, “He was born in 1991 and we were living on Apple Valley Road in December 1994 when Wesley was born, so he had to be about 2 and half years old.

Holly continued, “He fell into the creek and Kyle was there. Kyle jumped in to get him. Danny was drifting down toward a tangle of branches. Kyle was always horsing around and joking but that day he was very, very serious. He grabbed Danny and got out of the water.”

Holly said, “I remember that he was shaken and he was very, very sober and right away he took him back to the house. That could have been tragic.”

Lois said, “This is the first time I ever heard that story.” My blood ran cold at the thought.

Shortly after that conversation the family left for own and I sat down quietly and began to page though Holly’s Bible and think about what she had said. Dan is a strapping specimen of a man now, a married father of three boys in robust good health, living and working in West Texas, but he could have drowned that day. What would have become of us? I shook my head as if to shake the thought from my mind. How would his brothers and sister have ever processed his loss under those circumstances? How would his mother have ever dealt with just a tragedy. What would I have done?

I quietly and sincerely thanked the Lord for the first time for something I did not know until today. I thanked him for Danny, for the mercy of God on us, for his protection and care. I wonder how many things I have to thank him for that I will not know until all the stories are told on earth and then in heaven.

 

 

 

 

The Church is God’s Plan for the Age

Are you participating in church this morning? There are ages to come, but the church is God’s plan for our age. The local church is the hope of the world.

It is popular to criticize the church and church people. Pastors are fair game, too. Let’s be honest we could all tell our “scary church stories…” We have all known leaders who fell short of their high calling, but still it is true that “Like a mighty army moves the church of God…”

C. S. Lewis in Screwtape Letters imagines a correspondence between demons warning not to let people see the church as it really is…

“One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.”

The old demon encourages the young demon to tempt the person he is tormenting with the silliness or imperfections of the people around him in church. Demons are still working the same angle today, but the church before God is like a mighty army of God in spiritual reality.

The church is God’s plan for this age. She is the temple of the Living God in our day. The church is the place and people of his glory/presence. The local church is the hope of the world, even in it’s simplest and most organic expression.

Rise up Oh Church of God, have done with lesser things. Give heart and soul and strength and might to serve the King of Kings!