Pleasant Valley Church of the Brethren, Shenandoah District

Pleasant Valley Church of the Brethren, Shenandoah District Pleasant Valley Church is a home for everyone to come experience God’s love, grow in faith, and support one another through life’s ups and downs.

Join us Sundays at 9:30 am for Sunday School and 10:15 am for worship.

To say I’m impressed with these kiddos is an understatement!We started our morning by looking at James 2:17 and talking ...
06/13/2026

To say I’m impressed with these kiddos is an understatement!

We started our morning by looking at James 2:17 and talking about what it means to put our faith into action. Then we got to work right here in our church yard, clearing leaves and debris and helping take care of the place God has blessed us with.

After that, we headed to Camp LIGHT, where we helped get things ready for next week’s campers by cleaning up from the previous week. It was a great opportunity to serve others and show our faith through our actions.

And of course, we made sure to have a little fun along the way by spending some time together and hitting a few golf balls!

So proud of these young people and their willingness to serve with joyful hearts. I know they are exhausted because they worked hard.❤️

However, we wouldn’t have been able to do any of that if it weren’t for a faithful cook! It doesn’t matter what crazy things we decide to do, she always shows up with food to nourish our bodies and we are so grateful!!

Thank you to Camp LIGHT for allowing us the opportunity to be a part of your wonderful mission!

Great day spent with our youth as we loaded buckets and essential goods at the District Office for delivery to those in ...
06/11/2026

Great day spent with our youth as we loaded buckets and essential goods at the District Office for delivery to those in need. It's inspiring to see young people stepping up to serve our community with such enthusiasm and compassion. Thank you to everyone who volunteered their time and energy to make a difference today.

Then, we finished off the day with some kickball, swimming and fellowship, making great memories while enjoying time together. Together, we're building a stronger community, one act of service at a time!

Our first Co****le Tournament was a great success! 🎉 Although I sadly missed getting a picture of our second-place winne...
06/07/2026

Our first Co****le Tournament was a great success! 🎉 Although I sadly missed getting a picture of our second-place winners, it was a wonderful day filled with friendly competition and fun.

A big thank you to everyone who helped prepare lunch, shared their co****le boards, participated in the tournament, and helped make the day such a success.

Watch out for a return match this September—we're looking forward to doing it all again! 🌽🕳️🏆

A huge THANK YOU to our amazing tractor drivers who took us through the parade! It takes some of the very best drivers t...
06/06/2026

A huge THANK YOU to our amazing tractor drivers who took us through the parade! It takes some of the very best drivers to get us into the lineup and positioned just right so we can make it back through and still enjoy watching part of the parade ourselves. We appreciate all your hard work and willingness to help represent our church!

Thank you as well to all of the kiddos and families who rode along with us as we promoted our upcoming Vacation Bible School. We loved seeing everyone having such a great time!

Don't forget—VBS is coming up June 23–25 from 6:00–8:00 PM. Dinner will be served for all participants beginning at 5:30 PM each evening.
We can't wait to see everyone there!

Everyone is welcome—come join us for food, fun, fellowship, and learning about God's love!

Day 5 Becoming a Moses PeopleAt the end of all three of these texts, the community has to decide what kind of people ...
05/29/2026

Day 5 Becoming a Moses People

At the end of all three of these texts, the community has to decide what kind of people they are going to be. The Spirit has moved. The gifts have come. The outpouring is real. The question is not whether it is happening. The question is what kind of community we are going to be when it happens outside our expected places.

We have seen the options laid out across the week. There is the Joshua response: make them stop, they didn't earn it, they didn't follow the process, the Spirit should respect our structures. There is the crowd's response: bewilderment and dismissal, they must be drunk, this doesn't fit our categories. There is the Corinthian response: pride and competition, my gift matters more than yours, watch what I can do. And then there is the Moses response: Would that all the Lord's people were prophets. More of this. Everywhere. In everyone.

Moses could hold that extraordinary generosity because his identity did not depend on being the only one. He had been at the burning bush. He had walked through the parted sea. He knew who God was, and he knew who he was in relation to God, and that knowing was a kind of bedrock that no threat to his position could shake. His security made him capable of a generosity that Joshua, for all his loyalty, could not yet manage.

This is the invitation extended to us, to Pleasant Valley Church of the Brethren, in Weyers Cave, in this particular moment. To become so rooted in who we are and whose we are that we have no need to manage the Spirit's distribution. To become a people who can look at the Eldads and Medads prophesying in the camp and say not "make them stop" but "come, tell us what the Spirit is saying to you out there." Pentecost says the Spirit is being poured out on all flesh. That is not a threat to the community of faith. It is the fulfillment of the oldest wish of the most burdened and most generous leader the people of God ever had.

SCRIPTURE
Numbers 11:29 (NRSV)
"Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!"

FROM THE SERMON
“The invitation of these texts is to that kind of security. To become a community so rooted in who we are and whose we are that we don't need to manage the Spirit's distribution.”

REFLECTION QUESTION
What would it mean for your congregation to truly be a Moses people? What practices, postures, or habits would need to change? Who are the Eldads and Medads around you, the ones prophesying in the camp, and how might you invite their voices into the community? What is one specific step you can take this week to welcome the Spirit's work somewhere you might normally overlook it?

PRAYER
God of Pentecost, you have been pouring out your Spirit since the beginning. You poured it on Moses and the seventy, on Eldad and Medad in the camp, on fishermen and slaves and daughters in Jerusalem, and on us. Make us a people worthy of that outpouring. Root us so deeply in your love and your call that we have no need to guard the borders of your work. Teach us to say, with Moses: more of this, everywhere, in everyone. Would that all your people were prophets. Amen.

Day 4 The Mess After the FirePentecost is glorious. What comes after Pentecost is complicated. The community at Corin...
05/28/2026

Day 4 The Mess After the Fire

Pentecost is glorious. What comes after Pentecost is complicated. The community at Corinth is one of the most gift-rich communities in the early church, and also one of the most fractured. The Spirit has been extraordinarily generous with them: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation. It is an embarrassment of spiritual riches. And they have turned it into a competition.

The Corinthians are ranking the gifts. The flashier ones, the more dramatic public manifestations, have become markers of spiritual status. The people who speak in tongues look down at the people who serve quietly. The ones with the dramatic gifts treat the ones with the ordinary gifts as lesser members of the body. The very thing that was supposed to build the community up is tearing it apart.

Paul does not respond by taking the gifts away or casting doubt on whether they are real. He responds by reframing the entire enterprise from the ground up. One Spirit gives all of them. Every gift is given for the common good, not for self-display. And then he reaches for the image that will define Christian community for centuries: you are a body. A body needs all of its parts. The eye cannot look at the hand and say, I have no need of you. There is no hierarchy here, only radical, beautiful, necessary interdependence.

The Corinthians had Moses's abundance and Joshua's competitive anxiety at the same time. They had received the gifts of Pentecost and were using them to sort themselves into winners and losers. Paul is writing to give them Moses's eyes: to help them see that abundance was never meant to produce rankings, but community.

SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 12:7 (NRSV)
"To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."

FROM THE SERMON
“The Corinthians had Moses's abundance and Joshua's competitive anxiety at the same time.”

REFLECTION QUESTION
Why do communities so often turn gifts into status markers, even in the church? Can you think of ways that happens in your own experience of faith community? What does it mean to use a gift for the common good rather than for self-display? What would change in your community if every expression of the Spirit were evaluated by the question: is this building the body up?

PRAYER
Lord, you are generous beyond what we deserve, and we confess that we have sometimes used your generosity to make ourselves feel more important than others. Reorient us today. Let every gift we have, every moment of clarity, every ability, every word we speak, be offered in service of the whole. Remind us that we are members of one body, not competitors in a performance. Amen.

Day 3 Pentecost: Moses's Wish at ScaleSeveral hundred years pass between the camp in the wilderness and an upper room...
05/27/2026

Day 3 Pentecost: Moses's Wish at Scale

Several hundred years pass between the camp in the wilderness and an upper room in Jerusalem. But something of Moses's wish has been traveling through all that time, carried in the words of Joel, whispered in the prayers of the faithful, waiting for the moment when God would answer it at a scale no one could have imagined.

The disciples are gathered, waiting as Jesus told them to wait, for something they could not fully picture. And then it arrives. Wind, like the breath of God moving over the deep. Fire, settling on each person in the room, not just the recognized leaders, not just the men, not just the elders. Everyone. And they begin to speak in languages they never studied, in the mother tongues of people from every corner of the known world.

Peter steps into the bewildered crowd and gives them the only framework large enough to hold what is happening. He reaches back to Joel: in the last days, God declares, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Sons and daughters. Old men and young men. Slaves, both men and women. Notice who is on that list. Not just the powerful. Not just the educated. Not just the people who had access to the official religious structures of their day. The people at the very bottom of the social order, people who owned nothing and controlled nothing, are included in the outpouring.

Moses wished it for all the Lord's people. God poured it out on all flesh. The circle has been drawn wider than any institution could have drawn it, and Pentecost is not a one-time event. It is a description of how the Spirit works. The outpouring has not stopped.

SCRIPTURE
Acts 2:17-18 (NRSV)
"In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy."

FROM THE SERMON
“Every boundary the Spirit used to respect has been dissolved.”

REFLECTION QUESTION
What is significant about the specific groups Joel names: daughters, young people, old people, slaves? What does it tell us about the direction of God's generosity? Where do you see the Spirit being poured out today on people who are outside the boundaries of what we typically recognize as religious or official? What barriers might your faith community be maintaining that this passage challenges?

PRAYER
Holy Spirit, you were poured out on all flesh at Pentecost, and you have not stopped. Forgive us for the moments we have treated your work as the property of the institution. Remind us today that you move where you will, that you have always included the ones we overlooked, and that your generosity is the shape of your love. Make us willing to be surprised by you. Amen.

05/26/2026

The Bible mirrors our own family experiences. Watching your children discover their own voice and calling brings a mix of awe and unease for everyone involved. It's a familiar, yet profound, journey. Have you experienced this mix of wonder and anxiety?

Day 2 Two Kinds of LeadersWhen word reaches Joshua that Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp, his response is ...
05/26/2026

Day 2 Two Kinds of Leaders

When word reaches Joshua that Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp, his response is immediate and instinctive: "Moses, stop them." It is worth pausing here before we judge Joshua too quickly. He is not a villain. He is a loyalist, a man who has given his life to following Moses, investing in the structures Moses built, honoring the process God prescribed. He understands, perhaps better than anyone, that healthy communities depend on people respecting the boundaries that hold them together.

Joshua's fear is legitimate. If anyone can receive the Spirit without showing up, without being in the right place at the right time, without going through proper channels, then what is the process for? What does it mean to be chosen? The question underneath his alarm is one that every institution eventually asks: if we don't manage this carefully, will the whole thing come undone?

Moses's response cuts through all of that anxiety like a knife through tent cloth. "Are you jealous for my sake?" There is almost a smile in it. Moses is not threatened. He does not feel diminished by what is happening in the camp. He looks at two unauthorized prophets and his first feeling is not alarm. It is delight. He wants more of this, not less. Would that all the Lord's people were prophets.

What makes the difference between these two responses is not intelligence or even faithfulness. It is identity. Moses had been at the burning bush. He had walked through the sea on dry ground. He knew who God was and he knew who he was in relation to God. That security did not depend on being the only one. And because his identity was rooted so deeply, he could hold power with an open hand. Joshua was not there yet. Most of us are not there yet either.

SCRIPTURE
Numbers 11:28-29 (NRSV)
"Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, 'My lord Moses, stop them!' But Moses said to him, 'Are you jealous for my sake?'"

FROM THE SERMON
“Moses is not threatened. He is not worried about his position or his authority or the integrity of the system he built.”

REFLECTION QUESTION
What makes the Joshua response so understandable, and even reasonable? Where in your life, your work, your faith community, do you notice yourself reaching for the Joshua response: protecting structures, questioning credentials, managing who gets access? What kind of security would it take to hold Moses's posture instead? How do you find that kind of security?

PRAYER
Father, we are honest with you: we are often more Joshua than Moses. We love our structures because they give us a sense of control. Loosen our grip today. Give us the security that comes from knowing who we are in you, so that we can hold our systems and processes lightly and welcome what the Spirit is doing, wherever it appears. Amen.

Address

91 Valley Church Road
Weyers Cave, VA
24486

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 2pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Thursday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Friday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Sunday 9am - 12pm

Telephone

+15402349921

Website

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