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