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This is the Monday I’ve been waiting for!

It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving Day, 2023! And the Christmas Album, “We Need A Little Christmas” is finally available! We are making this 10 song Christmas project available online via Facebook, Soundcloud, my website and Youtube.

There are links in the description, but here is a quick synopsis of what to expect from the various venues. Facebook will have some of the songs from the album as Music Mondays through the holidays. Soundcloud will have all 10 songs, in a playlist, as individual songs as well as one track that contains all 10 songs. On Youtube, there will be the individual songs set against my flugelhorn friend and partner in this endeavor, Lynn Nash’s outdoor fireplace that he and his wife, Katie, decorated. And there will be one track, that will have all 10 songs, again set with the outdoor fireplace as the backdrop. Ideal for those of you that have a way to show Youtube videos on your TV at home!

So here is the first song on our Christmas Album - Deck The Halls

In the description, and on my website, linwoodcampbell.com, will be a link to all of the ways you can enjoy our Christmas Album. This Album is totally free - it’s a labor of fun and love from us to all of you. Feel free to share it whenever and however you like. If you enjoy this project and would like to spread a little Christmas joy, please consider making a donation to Lynchburg Daily Bread. My late father-in-law, Neal O'Brien, volunteered there for many years. Daily Bread serves hot meals 365 days of the year to those who have fallen on hard times. The numbers continue to grow in our area and the need is great.  Here’s a link to their donation page:

https://www.lynchburgdailybread.com/donate

Thanks for listening and supporting Music Monday’s through this year! Happy Holidays!

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, November 22, 2023. It is the day before Thanksgiving here in the US.

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, I will be with my wife and our sons here in Lynchburg. I have a mighty feast planned, and I have to get the absolute last of my Thanksgiving meal ingredients later today. But really, I suspect I will have to get the absolute last of my ingredients for the thanksgiving meal, tomorrow as well.

My favorite Thanksgiving Day scripture passage is from Psalm 107, which I offer as a way of reminding ourselves of the source of all the blessings we have in life. I’ll read the regular print, and we’ll both read the bold print together.

PSALM 107:
O give thanks to the Lord, who is good,
whose steadfast love endures forever!
 LET THE REDEEMED OF THE LORD SAY SO,
 WHOM THE LORD HAS REDEEMED FROM TROUBLE
 AND GATHERED IN FROM THE LANDS.
We wandered in the desert wastes,
finding no way to a place in which to dwell;
 HUNGRY AND THIRSTY, OUR SOULS FAINTED WITHIN US.
Then in our trouble, we cry to the Lord,
who delivers us from our distress.
 AND LEADS US BY A STRAIGHT WAY,
 TIL WE REACHED A PLACE, A HOME, IN WHICH TO DWELL.
Let us thank the Lord for such steadfast love,
for wonderful works to humankind.
 FOR THE LORD SATISFIES THOSE WHO ARE THIRSTY,
 AND FILLS THE HUNGRY WITH GOOD THINGS.

Whoever you are with, wherever you are, I hope Thanksgiving is a day of blessing for you.

In the weeks to come, Peakland United Methodist Church will have wonderful advent and Christmas worship services here at the church and online. During Advent, we’ll be considering this book: All the Good, a Wesleyan Way of Christmas, and we’ll be reaching out and serving our neighbors with our Advent Mission Fest on Sunday December 3 beginning at 4:00 p.m. here at the church. You can find all our Advent and Christmas worship an ministries on our church website: PeaklandUMC.org.

I hope during Advent and Christmas, you join us here so that Christ can use you and all of us to be a blessing to others. As always, if you want to know more about our ministries here and how you can be part of our life here, reach out to me at PeaklandPastor@gmail.com

Happy Thanksgiving and Thanks be to God!.

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Halloween ended a few weeks ago, and Thanksgiving Day in the US is next week. But I’ve noticed that most of the grocery stores and big box stores have had their Christmas goods out for display for awhile now. Including my current favorite snack, Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes, which a church member brought to me last week. So tasty!

Peakland is not far behind, we have been planning our advent and Christmas seasons for weeks, and we’ve been unveiling in worship for a couple of weeks all the good that we want to do.

We have wrapped up our discussion of Being a United Methodist Christian this week and beginning in December we’re going to be reading and considering this book, All the Good, a Wesleyan Way of Christmas. We’ll have in person discussions at the church and around the table at Ihop. I’ll talk about this book in these Wednesday videos, and we’ll consider All the Good on Sunday mornings in December too.

This Advent season we’ll have some wonderful worship services. Peakland’s United music worship service will be at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 17 in the sanctuary. There will be singing and ringing and lots of lovely music.

This year, Sunday December 24th is both the fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve. So on Sunday December 24, we at Peakland will have a united 4th Sunday in advent worship service at 10:00 a.m. in the sanctuary and then we’ll have two Christmas Eve worship services Sunday evening. Our Christmas Eve family worship service will be at 4:00 p.m. and our traditional candlelight and communion worship service will be at 7:00 p.m. that evening both in the sanctuary.


This season we will nurture our faith, we’ll worship together, and we will serve our community together. Peakland’s fourth annual advent mission fest will be Sunday, December 3 from 4-5:30 in the fellowship hall. We’ve asked five of the helping agencies here in town to give us their Christmas wish list. UMFS needs gift cards to gas stations and box stores so that the foster families they sponsor can get what they need. Chase the chill needs knitted hats and scarves and mittens to distribute. The Salvation Army has these stockings that need filling, and Parkview and Daily Bread need canned and boxed goods just like these. Bring these items to the mission fest on Sunday, December 3 from 4-5:30 and then stick around for cookies, hot chocolate, ornament making, singing, and lighting our fantastic outdoor Christmas tree.

All of the details for all of these ministries are already on our church’s website. PeaklandUMC.org, and we have multicolored handouts for you here in church on Sunday morning, and we’ll keep sending out email reminders.

Peakland is an active, caring, generous congregation, but all the good we do for ourselves and for those around us is in response to the grace and love that our One Trinity God has done for us. That makes this season all the more meaningful for me and for all of us at Peakland.

This December we will have folks join and become members of the Peakland United Methodist Church family. If you’d like to become part of our church family or learn more about our ministries and the ways you can do all the good that you can, then reach out to me at PeaklandPastor@gmail.com

Thanks be to God

The was frost on the pumpkin this morning!

And that has absolutely nothing to do with Music Monday. It’s the 13th of November, 2023. A lot of things are happening - the Christmas program at the church is just a little over a month away, and I still have songs to write supplemental charts for, and practicing to do.

The Christmas project Lynn Nash and I have will be released 2 weeks from today! Lynn sent me some really nice videos of his outdoor fireplace that I will use as a backdrop for the video versions of our project. More on that another day.

This will be the last normal (whatever that means) Music Monday through the end of the year. Next week I will be in serious prep mode for the upcoming Christmas season music. The following week, I will start the Christmas Season of Music Monday’s that will feature different songs from the Christmas Project Lynn and I are releasing. While the whole album will be available online on Monday the 27th, I will be using various songs through the month of December from that Album. More details will be available on my website, linwoodcampbell.com, in the next few days.

So, for today, I once again turn to our talented, talented Deacon here at the church, Andrew LaBar-Dietz, for one of the songs he has recorded for me. Andrew sings and plays guitar on this arrangement of Great Things.

Song plays

I love using my drone for background footage behind the lyrics in our church services, and thought I would share that with you today.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with a friend! See you in 2 weeks!

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Peakland United Methodist Church is finishing up with this book, Being a United Methodist Christian which explores our beliefs, our best practices and our history as a United Methodist Christian.

This week and next, we are talking about the three general rules of being a United Methodist Christian. John Wesley created the three rules in 1743 when the methodist movement was growing beyond the Holy Club that he led at Oxford University. Small groups of Methodist men and women were gathering each week to pray for one another, read scripture together and to hold one another accountable in their Christian discipleship. John Wesley gave these methodist groups three rules to live by and to strengthen their faith:


First: Do no harm and avoid evil of every kind.
Second: Do good of every possible sort and as far as possible to all.
Third: Attend upon the ordinances of God.

A simple way to remember that: Avoid Harm. Do Good. Follow Christ.

John Wesley had specific ways that methodist were to avoid harm, do good and follow Christ.

Wesley wrote, Avoid harm like drunkenness and buying or selling spiritous liquor or drinking it, unless in extreme necessity. Avoid harm with no Fighting, quarreling, brawling, returning evil for evil or, the using of many words in buying or selling. No putting on gold or costly apparel. No softness or needless self-indulgence. My favorite is No uncharitable or unprofitable conversation particularly no speaking evil of magistrates or of ministers.

For doing good, John Wesley quotes the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25 and directs us to give food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, visiting or helping them who are sick or in prison. That will be the scripture and the theme of the sermon next Sunday, when we at Peakland welcome Rev. Leigh Anne Taylor to the pulpit.

John Wesley also warned methodists that they were to avoid the odious custom of avoiding good works unless our hearts be free to do it. Some Christians back then had gotten it into their heads that unless they felt like doing good works, they shouldn’t actually do good works. I trust none of us are so foolish as that. I don’t always feel like flossing or working out at 6:00 in the morning or paying my bills, but I still do those things. Charity and acts of mercy and kindness and justice are not optional for us United Methodists.

John Wesley’s final rule was to follow the ordinances of God. “Ordinances” in this case are the activities which God has ordered for us to draw us closer to God and closer to each other.
Things like: Sunday worship, prayer, Bible study, fasting and abstinence, communion, and baptism, acts of charity, justice, forgiveness, and mercy.

We today may disagree with some of the specific John Wesley wanted methodists to do but the three rules are an honorable part of our heritage and a really good way of being a United Methodist Christian, so this week and in the days to come figure out how you will Avoid Harm. Do Good and Follow Christ.

Thanks be to God.

It’s Monday, the 6th of November. Good Grief, where did this year go to?

I was looking through my files yesterday, trying to decide what to offer for today’s Music Monday. I ran across this arrangement thatLyn Nash and I did a few months back and, honestly, had totally forgotten about - I bet he has too! We’ve spend so much time working on our Christmas project, that everything else kinda gets lost sometimes. Speaking of the Christmas project, it will be released in just a few short weeks - the Monday after Thanksgiving to be exact. More on that in a future Music Monday.

This arrangement is a quiet - laid back if you will. The song itself is certainly not a in your face kinda song, but I like this interpretation especially. Nash provides an excellent solo line with his flugelhorn. AS a side note, we started recording together, I think, in 2016 - all of it long distance as he lives in Hickory NC, and I’m here in Lynchburg, VA. It’s truly amazing what technology allows us to do.

So here’s our rendition of Lord, I Give You My Heart.

Song plays.

You’ve been listening to Music Monday with Linwood. A lot of the material you hear on this program can be found on my website - linwoodcampbell.com. Our music can be found on Youtube, Facebook and Soundcloud. And hopefully soon, Spotify.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with a friend. See you next time.