Peakland UMC

Some years ago I was playing at a New Year’s Eve party - you know - a gig. The late Bill Carroll was the band leader that evening and he called for the song Blue Skies. I did not know the tune but he had a fake book, which is basically the chord progressions and the melody. That melody really resonated with me that evening and it lead to the 2nd album project that my flugelhorn friend Lynn Nash and I recorded - the first being a Christmas project.

Everyone once in a while I pull that recording out and listen to what we did. Yesterday, I did a remix of the recording - fixing a few things and changing some of the instrumentation I used.

If you get any kind of correspondence from me, you will typically see me sign it “Blue Skies” and then my name. We’ve all had our ups and downs in life. And sometimes it’s hard to see Blue Skies when we feel the storms of life all around us. But just above those clouds, are indeed blue skies. So I try to close every correspondence with that little song title. As my friend Mike Lowry reminded me this morning, I try to remember that my cup over-runs with incredible blessings.

Here’s our version of the Irvin Berlin song, Blue Skies. And by the way, I have a lot of our recordings as well some other projects I have done on my website - linwoodcampbell.com

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. I’m posting videos each Wednesday sharing devotions, reflections, church news, and book studies. Today is Wednesday, June 7, 2023

When I was a child in Sunday School, Miss Amanda, my Sunday School teacher, read us the story from the Old Testament of Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Daniel, a Jewish man, living in Babylon had been ordered by the Babylonian King not to pray to God, but Daniel did, so the king threw him into a den full of lions. The next morning, the King opened the den to see if Daniel had survived, which he had. Daniel said that God had closed the Lions’ mouths, preventing them from killing Daniel. It’s not in the scriptures, but I’m guessing God remembered to put mittens on the Lion’s claws too. Miss Amanda, my Sunday School teacher, had us make a Lion’s Den by our cupping our hands together and then we looked inside to count the number of lions we imagined in our dens. I don’t think Miss Amanda read us the end of the story in which the king ordered those who had conspired against Daniel to be thrown into the Lion’s den along with their families, and the lions absolutely killed all of them.

The stories from the Bible that we were told as children often have unpleasant aspects to them.

God saved Noah, and his family and all the animals on the ark, but what happened to Noah and his sons after the story is not really appropriate for a children’s Sunday school class. You can read that in Genesis 9. The young shepherd David was God’s chosen to be King of the Jewish people after he knocked out the giant Goliath, but what David did to Uzzah, one of his own soldiers was despicable. You can read that story in 2 Samuel chapter 11.

Most of the great Biblical heroes and heroines do not always make good and Godly decisions, which is why I their stories so much. God was able to use these very flawed men and women to be a blessing to the nations, and that’s good news for me and for us because I am a very flawed person, and I do want to be a blessing to my family, my church, and my neighbors.

Throughout the rest of the Sunday worship services in June, I’m going to be focusing on the biblical stories of the first family of Genesis: Abraham and Sarah, Hagar who is the mother of Abraham’s oldest son Ishmael, Abraham’s and Sarah’s son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob. I’ll begin this upcoming Sunday, June 11 with God’s call to Abraham and Sarah, who were at that point known as Abram and Sarai. Each Wednesday beginning today and throughout June, I’ll give you a preview of Sunday’s Biblical story. So next Sunday we’ll read Genesis 12, verses 1-5, God calls Abram and Sarai and tells them to leave their home country and to travel to a new land. God tells them that they would settle in the new land, have a family, become a new people, and become a blessing to the nations. That’s a very tall order considering that Abram and Sarai had no children and were well beyond childbearing and child raising years. How they were to have a family and be a blessing to anyone was a mystery beyond them, but they went, and God delivered. Eventually. Abram and Sarai had any number of mistakes and misadventures and miscommunications along the way.

We make mistakes and have misadventures and miscommunications along our way as well. And yet, God is willing and able to use us imperfect people to do good and Godly things. I’m eager to read these stories with you over the next few weeks! See you on Wednesdays and see you in church!

At one point in my life, I was an organ major in college. I gave it up ‘cause Bach and I don’t see eye to eye 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. I do enjoy playing the organ, though, and I am the organist here at Peakland UMC.

While our organ is not a pipe organ, it is a fine instrument. One of my favorite pieces to play is the Doxology we sing on Sunday mornings. If you watch our online Sunday service, you will recognize the Doxologies we use in our church services as part of our response to how we have been blessed by giving our offerings.

The words are magnificent and the organ is the only single instrument I can think of that can adequately express the wonder and power of these two Doxologies. They are both titled “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow, but set to different melodies and with some different wordings.

If you’re watching the words are on the screen with a drone shot of the church.

Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. I’m posting videos each Wednesday sharing devotions, reflections, church news, and book studies. Today is Wednesday, June 1, 2023

These past weeks, I’ve been sharing my thoughts with you on a book I’ve been reading Forging a New Path: moving the church forward in a post-pandemic world, written by one of my mentors Rev. Rebekah Simon-Peter, a United Methodist clergy who now does leadership training for church leaders full time.

Last week, I introduced some challenging questions the Rebekah asks us to ponder:

I discussed the first question last week: How do we in the church live faithfully in this new normal? I proposed that to live faithfully in our new normal, we worship each Sunday either online or in person, we make a commitment to nurturing our souls through participation in a Bible study, or prayer group, or participating in one of the church choirs. We nurture our souls through the church meals, or fellowship groups like Peakland After Dark, the Ruth Circle or the United Methodist Men’s group, and finally we give generously. We give financial gifts to the church, and we give our time and our talents not only here at the church but in the community. As Peakland’s pastor my role is to work with the staff and church lay leader to ensure that Peakland is always offering ways to worship God and to nurture our faith and to give generously so that we can live faithfully

Forging a New Path also challenges us with the question: How do we invite folks to church so that our ministries and our community grow stronger?

How do we do that? How do we invite people to church? Used to be a church just had to be open on Sundays and folks would find their way to us. We didn’t have to invite them at all. If the pastor was clever and didn’t take too long in the pulpit and if there were children’s and youth ministries that the church had, then that was enough for a church to sustain itself.

That’s not our reality anymore. Fewer and fewer folks just come to a new church on their own. Now for those who do come to Peakland, they will find a clever pastor who doesn’t take too long in the pulpit, and our Peakland After Dark Sunday evening ministry for children, youth and adults is growing and welcoming. Peakland After Dark isn’t the same as the old model of Sunday school in the morning and youth group on Sunday night, but what we’re doing at Peakland After Dark is uniting youth, children and adults to lean about our faith together. As a parent, Peakland After Dark has been a blessing to me and to my family.

Two weeks ago, our church united for worship and lunch and conversation about how to strengthen our ministries. One of the insights I took away from that conversation was the need to update our website and have some information to give to visitors and guests. When folks are looking for a new church, a good website and up to date information about our church helps them get to know us. Those are good suggestions and the church staff and I will start creating those. Stay tuned.

In a conversation that Andrew and I had with Peakland’s Staff Parish Relations Committee last week, Andrew told us that an essential way for Peakland to invite folks to our church was for us Peakland people to be out in the community serving and helping and showing the community that we at Peakland are serious about our faith and reaching out, serving all, and extending God’s Table. That’s an excellent insight. Instead of waiting for people to come to church, we in the church need to be out in the world, showing our faith in action and inviting folks to join us. We need to be where the people are.

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. I’m posting videos each Wednesday sharing devotions, reflections, church news, and book studies. Today is Wednesday, May 24, 2023

The past two weeks, I’ve been sharing my thoughts with you on a book I’ve been reading, Forging a New Path: moving the church forward in a post-pandemic world, written by one of my mentors Rev. Rebekah Simon-Peter, a United Methodist clergy who now does leadership training for church leaders full time. Peakland will be reading this book together later this fall but you all are getting a preview now.

In the past two weeks, I’ve covered the three persistent questions that Rebekah has heard again and again from congregations and church leaders.

When do things go back to normal?

How do we get people back to church?

And (3) How do we do more with less?

The short answers to those questions are:

Things in church aren’t going back to what was normal before Covid. We in the church are creating the new normal now. We get people back to church or to our church for the first time by inviting them to church, and finally we all have to be inventive and creative to do more ministries with fewer volunteers and fewer resources. Peakland is something of an exception in that we have an abundance of both volunteers and resources, so we’re blessed there.

Rebecca has some longer, more thoughtfully developed responses to those questions in her book, and I look forward to the time this fall when we are all reading this book together.

And Rebecca also challenges churches with three new questions that we can ponder and discuss together.

Her three challenging questions for us are:

How do we live faithfully in this new normal?

How are we inviting new people into our church community?

And finally, what can we do now that we couldn’t do before?

Those are challenging questions and I have a few thoughts about that:

How do we live faithfully in this new normal? How do we live faithfully? In my ideal church, I would want everyone of us to worship faithfully either in person or online. Some Sundays are packed with activities beyond our control, but on the Sundays that we are healthy and free, let’s be in church either in person or online. I’ll be here for worship on Sunday, come join me.

To live faithfully, we nurture our spiritual growth. Peakland has an abundance of small group ministries that nurture our souls. United Methodist men gather on Saturday, the Ruth Circle fellowship meets monthly. We have a praise choir, a sanctuary choir, and a handbell choir for ringing and singing. We have the Bible Alive class for adults on Sunday mornings, and Peakland After Dark Sunday evenings for children, youth, and families. Andrew, Pastor Dave, and I host book studies and Bible studies throughout the year, and we are now forming activity groups. If you like Lego building, video games, hiking, cooking, or handiwork and maintenance, then come join likeminded people. Contact Andrew at [email protected] to learn more about them.

A lot of times, I will create practice tracks for the choir and or PT to use to help them learn anthems or praise and worship songs for upcoming weeks. Most of the time I just play a piano accompaniment and them each of their parts, and them place the individual recordings, which means soprano and piano, alto and piano, into DropBox for them to access whenever they feel inclined to listen and practice.

A few weeks ago I was making a practice version of this song, I Give You My Heart, for the PT to work on. It’s an older P&W song but I did some rearranging to my original chart I had written. As I was listening along to what I had recorded, I begin to wonder what this new arrangement might sound like if I added some more instrumentation.

One thing led to another, and, well, here’s my new rendition of I Give You My Heart, with some help from Lynn Nash on Flugelhorn.

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. I’m posting videos each Wednesday sharing devotions, reflections, church news, and book studies. Today is Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Last Wednesday, today and next Wednesday, I’m sharing my thoughts with you on this book I’m reading now: Forging a New Path: moving the church forward in a post-covid pandemic world, written by a mentor of mine Rev. Rebekah Simon-Peter. I had planned on leading a Monday night discussion on this book, but we’re going to do that in the Fall. You online folks are getting a preview!

Last week, I presented three persistent questions that Rebekah has heard again and again from congregations and church leaders.

When do things go back to normal?

How do we get people back to church?

And (3) How do we do more with less?

Last week, we explored some answers to those questions:

When do things go back to normal? The answer is they don’t. We are creating the next normal right now.

How do we get people back to church or to the church for the first time. The short answer to that is that we invite them. We invite folks to come back to worship and into the life of the community. Some won’t come or come back, but others will, if we invite them.

How do we do more with fewer people and fewer resources? That’s a tricky one and Peakland itself is blessed with a deep well of resources and great folks dedicated to our church.

Rebekah spends some time looking back into church history to help us forge a new path. Covid wasn’t the first plague to disrupt life in the world and in the church. The black plague did that. The first wave of the plague began in 1347 lasted for a handful of years but then kept coming back again and again over the next 4-5 centuries in Europe disrupting all aspects of life: social, political, economic and religious but that disruption also led to new creativity and new possibilities.

In the early 1600s, during an outbreak of plague in London, all the theaters were closed, as were the movies and theaters during the height of covid. Without the demands of producing and performing, Shakespeare had time to write Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.

When the plague raged in Cambridge in 1666, Newton fled to the countryside and had a miracle year of progress in calculus, physics and gravitation.

Because so many clergy and church leaders were killed during the plauge, the laity took more and more of a role in their own spiritual formation outside of the church building. . Private devotions grew in popularity and use. The Protestant reformation emphasized each person’s personal relationship with God that didn’t require the church or the clergy to serve as a mediator.

The creativity during the plague also occurred during covid.

During our covid time, we in the church figured out how to do creative online worship and do our essential church meetings through zoom . Peakland started these church videos during covid. Because we couldn’t be as together in the same physical space as we wanted, we learned new ways supporting one another and praying for one another. We had outside gatherings and online gatherings.

Both during the plague and covid, the church recognized the things that are essential for us, the “must haves” in church life. For Peakland folks, what I’m hearing again and again is that what is essential for us is worship and a deep connection to God, fellowship and a deeper connection with each other, and service, and the ways we can be a deeper blessing in the community.

Well I did it again….

I was talking to my Flugelhorn friend Lynn Nash yesterday afternoon late and he said where’s Music Monday????? Ooopppsss.

And then he suggested one we had recorded a few years back. After listening to it this morning, and making a few additions and subtractions, I am please to offer this arrangement to you. Some of our singers came in and recorded, and Lynn added some majesty to it.

Here is Revelation Song.

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. I’m posting videos each Wednesday sharing devotions, reflections, church news, and book studies. Today is Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing on Friday, March 13, 2020? Do you remember that day, Friday, March 13, 2020. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. That morning, I was waiting to get a haircut from my barber in Lexington, Virginia, and I received a text from Dave Rochford, who was my district superintendent.

Dave texted me, “Joe, in the next 20 minutes, the bishop is recommending that our conference churches suspend worship this Sunday and next Sunday to slow the advance of the virus.”

That was the text and that was the day that changed our churches. We stopped in person worship not just for the last two weeks in March 2020 but for several weeks and for some of our churches it was months before we were worshipping in person again. I learned how to create an online worship experience for Trinity where I was the pastor, and I know the staff and worship leaders at Peakland did the same as well. Most of our essential church meetings were held through zoom and as the whole world closed, we in the church had to improvise and recreate our ministries and our lives together.

Today, just over three years later, we at Peakland are prayerfully considering how we forge a new path in a post covid world.

Forging a new path just happens to be the name of this book that I am reading and discussing on Monday nights here at Peakland. I’m eager to share my insights in this book not just with those in person in the class but with you online as well.

This book was written by Rev. Rebekah Simon-Peter, a United Methodist pastor who has created a church leadership program called Creating a Culture of Renewal, which I have been participating in for two years now.

In the opening chapters of the book, Rebekah lists three persistent questions that she has heard again and again from congregations in our post-covid world:

When do things go back to normal?

How do we get people back to church?

And (3) How do we do more with less?

Rebekah draws from her own experiences and what she has seen and heard to provide some answers to those questions.

On Sunday mornings typically the choir will sing at the 11:00 service in the sanctuary. We also have an 8:30 service in the sanctuary that pretty much mirrors the 11:00 service, but perhaps a little more relaxed. Same bulletin, same everything, except the choir does not sing. Noémi conducts the choir now, so I accompany the choir and it’s typically on the piano. So at 8:30 I sorta rearrange the choir song that’s sung at 11:00 and make a piano solo out of it.

Yesterday the choir sang the old gospel song “Just A Little Talk With Jesus” and I will admit I had some fun with the solo I played. Here’s a rendition of that arrangement that I recorded this morning just for this edition of Music Monday.