Peakland UMC

I was out walking our dog, Joey, this morning and noticed that the skies were blue - not a cloud to be seen! In years past I would take advantage of a day like today and hop on my motorcycle and head for the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are several Overlooks that have absolutely amazing views - especially on blue sky days!

Irving Berlin wrote a song that my flugelhorn friend, Lynn Nash, and I recorded a few years back. In fact it’s the title cut for an album we released. I thought of that this morning while walking Joey. The song makes me think of those days riding the Parkway, and of the peace I find communing with God in His creation.

The name of the song, you say? Why of course - Blue Skies!

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, September 6, 2023. +

Labor Day was this past Monday, marking the unofficial end to summer. I heard yesterday that one of our youth was sad that this weekend was the last time in the outdoor swimming pools, and then another church member said, end of summer was fine with her. She didn’t like the hot weather anyway.

I do like September weather, and I am excited about all the great ministries Peakland will be getting to in the weeks to come.

Yesterday, I sat in with the ladies of the Ruth Circle, Peakland’s women fellowship group. They are planning their great Card Party here at the church on Tuesday, October 17, and the money they raise supports local helping agencies.

The United Methodist Men begin their weekly morning breakfasts here at the church this Saturday, September 9 at 8:00 a.m. All men are welcome for a great breakfast and great fellowship.

This Sunday, September 10, Peakland unites in service with Rise Against Hunger, an organization which helps feed hungry communities around the world. This Sunday, 80 or so of us will gather at the church fellowship hall beginning at 4:30 and within 2 and half hours, we will have bagged 10,000 meals of rice and grain and dehydrated vegetables. For those of you who are volunteering, bring a baseball cap or you’ll have to wear one of the hairnets they provide. Andrew will be sending out more information to the church volunteers later this week about Sunday’s event.

Peakland After Dark, our ministry with children, youth, and their families. begins its regular Sunday night gathering on Sunday, September 17.

Looking ahead to October we at Peakland will unite for a church wide book study, reading Being United Methodist Christians, in which we’ll explore the questions of What do we United Methodists believe? What makes us distinct and how do we grow as disciples of Jesus. Whether you are a lifelong methodist are relatively new to the faith, I trust we’ll all learn a great deal together.

We’ve also got plans for an October baked potato fellowship supper. We’ll have our annual blood drive in November. Andrew will create some special worship services around All Hallow’s eve and all Saints Day.

And Advent and Christmas are coming. We already have great plans for Peakland in December.

If you worship in the sanctuary this Sunday, you’ll see that I have replaced the green banners with red banners. These red banners were a gift to Peakland from the family of Steve Cox, and I’m glad they will be on display. Red banners are usually reserved only for Pentecost and a couple of special Sundays, but your radical pastor likes to put on the red in the fall to signal not just the change in the seasonal weather, but the mark the change in church life as well. The green leaves of summer will be changing to the fiery reds and oranges of fall outside and at the church we have fire and excitement and a great spirit.

If you find that you have been away from Peakland for a season or two, now is the time to find your way back home. Christ is doing great things here at Peakland, and it’s so easy for you to be part of it.

Reach out to me at [email protected] if you’d like to be part of our great church family.

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, August 30, 2023. I am not in the parking lot today, as I’m recording this it’s wet and soggy outside and no place for middle aged pastors or expensive video cameras.

Last Wednesday I spoke to you about our parking lot, our 40-year-old parking lot in need of a lot of repairs.

This past Sunday, Don Weschler, Peakland’s chair of the Common Table, spoke at each of the worship services about our church’s Pave the Way to Grace capital campaign to fund the repairs, and after the 11:00 worship service, Mike Ohl, a Peakland trustees and the point man on the project, gave an excellent overview of the parking lot problems and the parking lot solutions.

This week, each Peakland household will receive a letter from the Pave The Way leadership team, along with an informative brochure, which Kim Ness, Peakland’s church administrator and I put together, along with a pledge card, which Cindy Harding, Peakland’s business manager put together.

We’ll also have these in the worship bulletins through the end of September.

Some folks had already filled in their pledge cards and turned them in. I will be doing mine later this week. We hope to hear from everyone by the end of September.

Two questions have come up since we announced this that I can address with you now.

The first is, “What kind of trees are we going to plant in the islands once the parking lot is done?” Good question! I love dogwoods and redbuds. I know having those in the parking lot would make me very happy when I come to church. But it’s not up to me. Our trustees will make that decision when the time comes.

The next question is really two questions when is this happening and how long will it take? Ideally if everything goes the way we want it to go, we will raise the money we need and accept a bid by the end of September, and work can begin toward the end of October and be done in 7-10 days with minimal disruption to church life.

that’s the ideal scenario which could happen.

However, sometimes things don’t work out exactly as planned. I promise we will keep everyone informed about the progress we are making and let folks know what’s happening when. The Peakland pre-school folks know what we are planning and parking lot work certainly impacts them! And we need to know if we have a place to park when we come to Sunday worship!

We’ll make announcements online, in worship and through email.

I’m grateful to the people of Peakland for their hard work and their generosity. As Don told us on Sunday, what we do now will benefit future generations of Peakland people.

I’m also excited that we at Peakland will be kicking off our Fall ministries on Sunday, September 10th with our Rise Against Hunger event here at the church. 80 of us will prepare 10,000 rice-based meals in just over 2 hours in our fellowship hall. We have so much more planned for our church in the weeks and months to come, as we keep reaching out, serving all, and extending God’s Table.

A few weeks back I shared with you the majestic version of the Doxologies we use in our church services. It was an arrangement I played on the organ, which is in our sanctuary at Peakland UMC. Sometimes you just want to shout out praise, and that is certainly a wonderful way to do it.

At other times, though, you might just want to offer that same praise in a little more laid back fashion. I enlisted my flugelhorn friend, Lynn Nash, to help me with this.

Here is our laid back version of the Doxology - Praise God To Whom All Blessings Flow.

It’s the 21st of August, 2023. While I was out working our dog, Joey, this morning, I was remembering that it is our daughter-in-law’s birthday today. And it occurred to me that it was a Monday, and I needed a Music Monday!

So why not honor our birthday gal, and give the rest of you a birthday song to play whenever it’s your birthday, or someone else’s birthday!

So happy birthday, Bri! Thank you for being you! And we all hope you have a wonderful birthday!

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, August 16.

I am standing in Peakland’s fellowship hall to show you the new thing we are doing at the Sunday morning Horizons Worship service. We’ve switched things up! When you come to Horizons worship this Sunday, you’ll be worshipping in a new direction. Instead of facing this side wall, we’ve set up the chairs to face the East, toward the rising of the sun.

Everything else about Horizon worship stays the same. The rocking chairs are still here. The tall tables and chairs are still here. The couch and the children’s play are still here. We’ll still be singing our praise songs. We’ll still have scriptures and sermons and prayers, and we will still offer ways that Peakland is reaching out, serving all, and extending God’s Table. We’re just doing it in a slightly different way.

This arrangement, we hope, will allow Peakland pre-school to make better use of the space when the children come back beginning next week. We hope this arrangement will make it easier for us to set up this room for receptions and small meetings and church suppers too.

Linwood and Robert and church folks have been working very hard these past few days to prepare, and I’m grateful to them for their vision for how Horizons makes use of this space.

Now we know there are some things that we still need to do to perfect this worship space. We’re to have some new curtains put up on the windows. We have some additional big screens coming that will help us worship, and we have to worship here together to see if it all fits together. That will happen over the next few weeks.

Horizon worship is at 9:45 on Sundays in person here in this space. Sanctuary worship is at 8:30 in person and we livestream and worship in person in the sanctuary at 11:00.

Come worship here at Peakland. All are welcome. Thanks be to God!

I received quite a favorable response from the song I used 2 weeks ago, from an album my son, Matt, and I did (Turn It Loose, if you forgot or missed it) that I thought I would offer another one from that same project. It’s actually the title song from the project - “Going Up”.

I realized a few weeks ago, that some of you might want to listen to some of these songs again, but maybe not all my commentary, so I created a new playlist on Soundcloud, where my songs are hosted, that are just the songs. If you go to my website - linwoodcampbell.com or click on this link, it will take you right to that playlist - all the good stuff without all the babbling!

And it’s only August, but my flugelhorn friend, Lynn Nash, and I are 9 songs into our Christmas Project. Most are done, a few having some finals touches including sending one to my Matt, to add some bass. That will be a fun song!

Ok, enough babble! Here’s “Going Up.”

I almost forgot to do today’s Music Monday. It entered my mind several times over the weekend but this morning I needed a little jogging, once again from my Flugel Horn friend, Lyn Nash. I was on the phone with him talking about a mix I had just completed of a Christmas song we were working on and he was saying, “don’t put that on Music Monday!” And I’m thinking to myself, good thing he said that . . .

So as I begin to think about today’s MM, I ran across a medley of 2 songs I had put together for something - who knows what, but I was not please with how it turned out. Time to start over.

The songs are “Still” and “Draw Me Close.” If you know these songs, then I think the words will come to mind as the melody goes by. These songs are very intimate in their approach to God, and I tried to communicate that with this arrangement.

If you don’t know the words, then here they are:

Still: Hide me now, under your wings. Cover me within Your mighty hand. When the oceans rise and thunder roars, I will soar with You above the storm. Father, You are King over the flood. I will be still, know You are God.

Draw Me Close: Draw me close to You. Never let me go. I lay it all down again, to hear You say that I’m your friend. You are my desire, no one else will do. ‘Cause nothing else can take Your place, to feel the warmth of Your embrace. Help me find the way, bring me back to You. You’re all I want, You’re all I ever needed.You’re all I want, help me know You are near. You’re all I want, You’re all I ever needed.You’re all I want, help me know You are near. Help me find the way, bring me back to You. Bring me back to You.

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Throughout the month of July, we at Peakland have been reading and discussing this book: God in the Wilderness, written by Rabbi Jamie Korngold.

This past Sunday morning in worship, I discussed chapter 6 of the book, Hear the Still Small Voice Within. We read the story of Elijah who was on the run following a religious battle between the priests of Baal and him. Elijah won the battle but Queen Jezebel threatened his life, so Elijah ran away to hide in the wilderness. Feeling pushed beyond his limits, he cries out to God to end his life. God doesn’t do that but comes to Elijah with a still small voice, providing comfort and presence.

The good news for us is that when we are pushed to our limits, God is with us too, and as followers of Jesus Christ, when we see those around us who are pushed to their limits, then Christ directs us to be a calm comforting resence helping each other and those in need around us.

Next Sunday, July 30, I’m covering chapter 7 of the God in the Wilderness book. The chapter is called Restore Your Souls Beside Still Waters and features the beloved Psalm 23. Many of us know the King James Version of Psalm 23 by heart. For this Sunday, I’ll have us read a version of Psalm 23 written by Robert Alter, a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at Berkley.

The King James version of Psalm 23 ends with Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Robert Alter’s version ends in a way he says is more accurate to the Hebrew: Let but goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for many long days.

That makes sense to me. Psalm 23 speaks of God’s care and provision in these days. God provides food and water and restful places to us now. God is present with us now even when enemies surround us, even as the shadows of death cover us.

This is an important reminder that God isn’t just in heaven waiting for us when we die. God is in the here and now. We Christians believe God is our Good Shepherd, and he’s not just waiting for us in the fields of eternity, his Holy Spirit is with us now, providing us comfort and care now, helping us to provide comfort and care to those around us now.

In her book, Rabbi Jamie pairs Psalm 23 with the book of Job, who is wailing to God about his suffering. Why am I suffering? Why does anyone suffer?

I’ll talk about the connection on Sunday in worship, join me here at Peakland in person for worship at 8:30 in the sanctuary. At 9:45 we have the Horizons worship in the fellowship hall, and at 11:00 we’re back in the sanctuary with our in person and online worship service. All are welcome. Everyone. Always.

Thanks be to God.

Before July totally gets away from me, I wanted to let all of you know that my flugelhorn friend Lynn Nash and I are recording a Christmas album. Now, I’m a fan of a little Christmas in July, but I was voted down on that so I will not be playing any of the songs we have recorded, although I would like to, I won’t. Shoot. I will tell you that so far it’s a pretty wide selection of songs - everything from “It’s The Holiday Season” to “O Holy Night”. The project is a pretty ambitious undertaking for us and I’ll say I’m really please with what we have done. Still some tweaks and a few more songs to record but we are having fun and making good progress!

A few years back, Lynn was listening to a recording project that my son, Matt, and I had done with some of Matt’s friends in the Nashville area. I remember Lynn saying, you know I wish you guys had just turned it loose on one of those songs.

Well, that thought stuck with me and on the next recording project Matt and I did, which was all original tunes, we did indeed turn it loose on one song - aptly named - “Turn It Loose”.