The Beloved Community
This was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s affectionate term for the larger church that he spent his life working to rally for the sake of so many suffering the injustices of prejudice, fear, and violence at the hands of their fellow citizens and their government. While King’s work across his abbreviated life was often seen as a “Black issue” by Americans, he rightly saw it as a Christian and human issue.
He worked across denominational lines, reminding pastors and congregations of Jesus’ call always to come alongside the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, the stranger – even the enemy – and always with nonviolent love. This he learned from Jesus and Gandhi. Increasingly, King became disappointed that the larger, white churches remained largely on the sidelines as the struggle for equal rights marched forward. “In the end,” he said, “we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
“Will we as Christians be silent now?” King would ask us today.
Sunday afternoon at 4:00, I will be part of a panel discussion with three other faith leaders around Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and the impact of the church – the “beloved community.” It will be at the Robinson Fine Arts Center in Plano. All are invited to attend. I hope you’ll join us.
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,
Matt Gaston
Lead Pastor
When Love Looked New
On Christmas Eve, something quietly magical happened in our Sanctuary.
As the lights dimmed and candles were lifted high, many began to see the glow of candlelight in a new way. Thanks to a thoughtful gift from our Minister with Children and Families Mardi Bowen, each point of light became a heart. Through special “heart glasses,” candle flames shimmered and multiplied—filling the room with floating reminders that love had arrived.
It was a simple idea, and a profound one.
Love didn’t just arrive at Christmas; it changed how we saw something so familiar to us. For a few holy moments, the familiar ritual of candlelight was transformed. The faces around us softened. Children smiled in wonder. Adults lingered a little longer. Light became love, and love became visible.
That’s the promise of Christmas: when Christ arrives, the world doesn’t just look brighter, it looks different. It looks new!
And now, as we move beyond Christmas and into the season of Ordinary Time after Epiphany, we carry that vision with us. Epiphany proclaims that Christ’s light is not hidden or fleeting. Glory is revealed! The same love that arrived in Bethlehem continues to shine—calling us to look again, to see more clearly, and to recognize God’s presence in the familiar.
Those heart-shaped lights were a gift for one night, but the invitation remains:
What if we learned to see the world – our neighbors, our church, our calling – through the lens of Christ’s love?
As we begin our new worship series, Glory Revealed, we’ll explore how God’s light continues to break into our lives. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we begin the series with fresh eyes to the beauty, promise, and presence of God among us.
Love has arrived.
And now, God’s glory is being revealed … sometimes in extraordinary ways, and sometimes as simply as a candle, a heart, and a changed perspective.
By Nancy Bryan-Ellison
Photos by Brook Benavides
Thank You, Lord!
A dear friend of mine who is a Licensed Professional Counselor has shared how he often has clients write down a “gratitude list.” Psychologically, there is something powerful, therapeutic, and reinforcing when we physically write down the things and people for which we are grateful. I cannot think of a better way to begin 2026 than to list a few of mine for 2025:
The array of cards, gifts, baked goods, and well-wishes that you gave to our staff over the holidays. We felt hugged!
The moving and uplifting Christmas Pops Concert and Cantata.
Watching our staff act out The Twelve Days of Christmas.
Tears and smiles at the communion rail on Christmas Eve.
Celebrating 40 years of marriage with my girlfriend.
Burning a mortgage note.
Watching our golden retriever crawl and play ever so carefully with a two-year-old.
Marveling at still pulling cherry tomatoes off our vines … in mid-December.
Watching a small child come RUNNING down for a children’s sermon.
Consecrating a “new front door” and Bird Nest.
Being awed by God’s amazing heavenly colors before sunrise while walking our golden retriever.
A burger with my son — just two guys hanging out.
Baptizing a baby and all of us embracing that child with love and covenant.
Looking at Christmas lights, including those on our church!
Some amazing college football games this season.
The smiles of reunion every Sunday around worship, coffee, and donuts.
Thank you, Lord, for these, your many blessings in my life!
I invite you to write down your own “gratitude list” before you get too far into 2026. See how the writing makes you feel facing forward. The challenges will always be there, but God’s grace and sufficiency outdistance them all. Thank you, Lord!
P.S. The totals are still being tallied, but we did finish 2025 with a deficit. More information will come next week as we prepare annual giving statements to mail out. Your church’s leaders will be meeting to strategize on how to faithfully move ahead with ministry in 2026. Thank you to all who made generous gifts in December to reduce our deficit. That, too, is a source of gratitude for me. Blessings!
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,
Matt Gaston
Lead Pastor
Look to Be Surprised
Our experience of life is largely shaped by our expectations of life.
If our expectation is for things to go poorly, to fall short, to disappoint us, then there is a good possibility that is what we will experience.
If our expectation is for things to go well, to excel, to be at least satisfactory, then there is a good possibility that is what we will experience.
Either way, our perspective tends to paint our reality in appropriate colors. I have been amazed in just this last week, driving around, that the prettiest Christmas lights I am seeing are fall’s very late colors in the middle of a sun-splashed day – bright reds, oranges, and yellows against a lot of still-green trees. I have been surprised.
There are a lot of reasons this year to bring an expectation of dour disappointment to the table. But that is not God’s expectation. The biblical story reminds us again that in the midst of poverty, powerlessness, governmental overreach (Caesar Augustus demands a census of the entire world), a young pregnant woman believes in something better, persists with something better, expects something better, and she is not disappointed. Angels appear to shepherds – the lowest on the food chain – and announce that the good news proclaimed is for THEM. Surprise is the order of the day – something that would come to be Mary’s expectation as she watched her son grow.
As we approach Christmas this year, in spite of the year, what is the expectation you are bringing to the manger? By God’s grace, through faith, as you look at the stars, look to be surprised.
See you in the surprising place this Sunday for our Cantata, Agnus Dei (the Lamb of God).
Matt Gaston
Lead Pastor
A Triple-Header Weekend
The NBA touts annually its triple-header Christmas Day basketball games between great teams; the league wants to command your eyeballs all day and night long (as if you didn’t have something else to do that day). I am not sure we can compete with those offerings, but ours do come 10 days sooner. This weekend, December 13–14, our triple-header will have:
Our Gift Market both days, for that last-minute and one-of-a-kind shopping that graces those you love while helping sustain small microbusinesses in developing countries around the world.
Our famously wonderful (and funny) Christmas Pops Concert Sunday night, which has something for everyone of every age, including free giveaways.
Bishop Ruben Saenz, Jr. of our Horizon Texas Conference preaching at both services on Sunday and leading an infant baptism at the 9 a.m. service. It will be Bishop Saenz’s first worship experience at FUMC Plano, and we are honored to have him and his wife, Maye, as our special guests.
I saw on another United Methodist church’s sign: “Thinking about church again? Start here.” I can’t think of a better time and a better place to extend exactly that invitation to someone you know who would feel cared for by your thinking about them. You will be proud you did—especially if they come and find that what you said was indeed true. Love is arriving this weekend and this Christmas, and my experience says that a lot of people are ready for that good news.
Come on—you don’t even have to play basketball!
See you at the triple-header place,
Matt Gaston
Lead Pastor
If We Want Change, We Have to Be Open to Changing
I know lots of people who want to see change around them.
I know fewer people who are open to change themselves for that to happen.
This is what makes Mary’s “Yes” to the angel so remarkable.
Then, as now, there was so much desire for change in the economically oppressed and militarily occupied land of Israel. Being a teenage woman only heightened that powerlessness and vulnerability. She was more than a little surprised when the angel told her that the change desired by many was indeed coming. About the child the angel promised her, the angel says, “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33).
Mary could have said, “No thank you,” or “Yes, we need that, but please find someone else.” Instead, she said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary was open to the change she and millions of others wanted to see for their country and for themselves. Mary’s only qualification was her willingness to be a servant to the change she wanted to see. It was true then; it is true now.
The first choral song I learned in 7th grade was “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but Mrs. Butler — one of my favorite teachers — was the rare Black teacher (and a Christian) in a predominantly white middle school in Houston, Texas, in 1970. She did not just want change in racial relations and respect; she was willing to be a servant to the change she wanted to see. I appreciate now her choice of that song for our mostly white 7th-grade choir to sing as we approached the Christmas season:
“Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”
See you Sunday at the change place,
Lead Pastor
FUMC Plano
"Give us this day our daily bread …"
We pray it from memory; we pray it without ever needing to look at the words. But how much thought have we given to what we are saying in that clause of our Lord’s Prayer? I think, in this Thanksgiving week, it is worth a moment’s pause.
In the early church’s context, bread was the “staff of life” for the impoverished with whom Jesus’ message of life resonated loudly. You might not have much, but if you had bread, you could subsist; you could get by. So for Jesus to teach his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” he was teaching not just a simple prayer and a simpler diet, but a simpler lifestyle—dependent on God’s grace and one that made room for sharing more with the neighbor in need.
As we gather in abundance this week, might we indeed give thanks for our daily bread—our “enough”—but also for the extra resources that can then be shared beyond ourselves . . . as Jesus always did.
Blessings on you and yours this Thanksgiving week.
Matt Gaston
Lead Pastor
This Is How Church Works
Frances Graves and newcomer Morgan Burks sifting compost for the Community Garden.
Kelly Campbell and daughter Emma clearing the fence of vines so people driving on Parker can see the good work happening for the community.
Sun Cochran and Megan Oh (and family) bagging groceries for food-short families at God’s Pantry.
Ruth Roberson and Linda Welch doing the same.
Tim Hopson representing us as District Lay Leader at Charge Conference.
Newcomers Dan, Ariel, and Matthew Hampton sorting clothing donations at Hope Restored Mission.
Kristi and John Boog-Scott and Mike Bowen doing the same and loading heavy equipment for a donation to meet a need in McKinney.
Debbie Ison organizing water and other donations for distribution.
Children and adults coloring placemats for persons – some with children of their own – who are incarcerated at a state prison.
Joyce Craig and a room full of women cutting wrapping paper and creating decorative bags for children at Dooley Elementary to use for gifts they purchase for family and friends.
Twenty men removing pews so that new Sanctuary lighting can be installed – also by in-house volunteer labor.
Scenes like these – all from this past Mission Together Sunday – are a living testimony to who we are: a church that worships, then serves.
“‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
Then the king will reply to them, ‘I assure you, when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’” — Matthew 25:38–40 (CEB)
This is how church works.
This Sunday, we will burn our mortgage note at both services, celebrating with thanksgiving a now debt-free church that has been doing this for 178 years. I hope you will bring a friend to join in this milestone of faithful service to others and thus to Christ.
Yours ... His,
Matt Gaston
Lead Pastor
The Inconvenience of Love
We hear the grumbles.
“I want my usual worship time; 10 o’clock is hard to remember.”
“I want to be heading home by that time.”
“I want to be finishing breakfast at that time.”
“I want to be in my Sunday School class.”
“I want our kids to be in Sunday School.”
What two words are common to these statements? Exactly.
What if, instead of grumbles, we were to hear:
“One 10 o’clock service? I want to see people I don’t get to see!”
“I want to hear our combined choir.”
“I want to wear casual clothes to church.”
“I want to work on a mission project with my Sunday School class.”
“I want to work with my kids on a mission project for others.”
Eleven days before Thanksgiving, we gather for worship as the one body of Christ to be the body of Christ to the world near and far. Or, as I have also heard said, “Mission is not what we do; it’s who we are.” Twice a year, Mission Together imposes on our rhythms; it feels like an inconvenience. But it really is the inconvenience of love.
With you in Christ,
Matt Gaston
Lead Pastor
What are We Standing For?
This Sunday comes just two days before Veterans Day when our country pauses and honors all those who serve and have served in our nation’s armed forces. Flags will be out, marches made, and commemorations spoken.
Here at FUMC Plano, we have a proud legacy of service to God and country. Over the years, more than 200 members of our congregation have served in our nation’s military with distinction. On Sunday, we will stand with them in heart, even as we ask those present to stand and be recognized.
It is one day in the church when we can agree to mix “religion and politic.” But, as we stand together. what exactly are they – and we – standing for?
Regardless of service, every enlisted person makes the following oath:
“I, ____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
So again, what are we standing for?
Are we standing with them to defend the Constitution?
Are we standing with them to defend the rule of law?
Are we standing with them to defend free speech?
Are we standing with them to defend habeas corpus?
Are we standing with them to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same”?
These are the vows our cherished veterans pledged their lives, on behalf of all of us.
It is certainly why I am proud to stand with them.
So help me God.
Lead Pastor