Watsonville First United Methodist Church

Watsonville, CA

Join us for in-person worship this Sunday, September 6, 2026 at 10:00 am

You are invited to the Worship Service with Holy Communion on September 6, 2026 at 10 am. The bulletin for this Sunday is available for viewing HERE.

You can worship live on ZOOM by clicking the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9658816441      Meeting ID: 965 881 6441

You can also watch Sunday services at your convenience by going to our website “watsonville1stumc.org” and click YouTube or Facebook. Each Sunday worship will be uploaded on Sunday afternoon for your viewing.

Ordinary Time
with Holy Communion
Sunday, September 6, 2026, 10 am

Children’s Time         “What Happened with Adam & Eve?”         Pastor John

Message                             The Magnificent Defeat;                       Rev. John Song
Part 3) “How Shame Is Healed”

Shame is universal. Shame is the Rosetta Stone, a hermeneutical key, to unlocking the mystery of human behavior. No human has escaped the experience of shame. Shame disconnects you from God, yourself, and others. Shame creates separate self. And at the same time, shame is the portal through which you enter and find yourself that the universe has been waiting for. Either you live in shame or you live in grace.

“Understanding shame is the key to understanding humanity.”
~ Gershen Kaufman, American clinical psychologist

Sermon Series on “The Magnificent Defeat” 
Aug. 23:  Part 1) “What Is EGO?”
Aug. 30:  Part 2) “How Shame Was Introduced”
Sept. 6:   Part 3) “How Shame Is Healed”
Sept. 13: Part 4) “How EGO Is Transformed 1.0”
Sept. 27: Part 5) “How EGO Is Transformed 2.0”

Join us for in-person worship this Sunday, August 30, 2026 at 10:00 am

You are invited to the Worship Service on August 30, 2026 at 10 am. The bulletin for this Sunday is available for viewing HERE.

You can worship live on ZOOM by clicking the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9658816441      Meeting ID: 965 881 6441

You can also watch Sunday services at your convenience by going to our website “watsonville1stumc.org” and click YouTube or Facebook. Each Sunday worship will be uploaded on Sunday afternoon for your viewing.

Ordinary Time
In God’s Eternal Time

Sunday, August 30, 2026, 10 am

Shiyazh Pete Speech following the Cowboys preseason game

Children’s Time                “Who Are We?”                         Pastor John

Shiyazh Pete is a 6-foot-9 undrafted rookie offensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys. Born on the Flathead Navajo Indian Reservation, Pete grew up in Missoula, Mont. When he joined the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent, he became the first member of the Navajo Nation to sign with an NFL team. Yet on Saturday night, in the moments after a 34-13 victory over the Arizona Cardinals, Pete provided one of the indelible moments of the preseason, delivering a postgame locker room speech that lasted just 59 words and succinctly distilled one of sport’s oldest ideas about shared identity and shared sacrifice.

Special Music                           Wise Old Hills                    Brandon & Trisha Kett
By Richard Smith
(Richard, friend of Brandon and Trisha, wrote this song
about the hills above Aromas where he lives.)

Message                          The Magnificent Defeat;                   Rev. John Song
Part 2) “How Shame Was Introduced”

Shame is universal. Shame is the Rosetta Stone, a hermeneutical key, to unlocking the mystery of human behavior. No human has escaped the experience of shame. Shame disconnects you from God, yourself, and others. Shame creates separate self. And at the same time, shame is the portal through which you enter find yourself that the universe has been waiting for.

“If you put shame in a Petri dish,
it needs three things to grow into every corner of our lives:
secrecy, silence, and judgment.”
~ Brene Brown

“The other’s gaze has power to determine who you are.”
~ Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), a French existential philosopher

Sermon Series on “The Magnificent Defeat”
Aug. 23:  Part 1) “What Is EGO?”
Aug. 30:  Part 2) “How Shame Was Introduced”
Sept. 6:   Part 3) “How Shame Is Healed”
Sept. 13: Part 4) “How EGO Is Transformed 1.0”
Sept. 27: Part 5) “How EGO Is Transformed 2.0”

September 2026 Pastor’s Corner

Dear friends,

I write this column not particularly spiritually centered but deeply troubled. We are less than 70 days away from the most important midterm election in our lifetime, possibly as significant as elections in the time of Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I am deeply troubled and angered by policies that dismantle clean-energy initiatives, open pristine lands to further drilling and fracking, pursue seabed mining, weaken voting rights, and seek to erase or distort American history in our parks, museums, and public institutions. I am troubled by the turning away from longtime allies and by the imposition of 50% tariffs on our Canadian neighbors. I am angered by what I see as a “war of choice” driven by the pursuit of power and wealth. Meanwhile, we are faced with $40 trillion national debt and growing. At $40 trillion, the debt would be roughly $117,000 per U.S. resident, using a population of about 342 million.

The acts of violence and cruelty carried out on our streets from this administration without accountability. Earlier in the year we saw in the streets of Minneapolis where a woman and a man, both U.S citizens, murdered by ICE agents. Recently, we saw on TV the street corner of Main where a young man, a husband and father working two jobs to support his family—killed while on his way to work, shot in the face in his car, dragged out dead and handcuffed on the street. The effect of indiscriminate arrests, most of whom are not criminals but people legally working to become citizens, is to numb us by normalizing once unthinkable actions. And this is happening in our community.

We are at a critical juncture where the far right has been emboldened to use government to destroy government while building a grand ARCH to celebrate the takeover. Each year is more brutal and the silence permits the oppression to widen and deepen. Everyday. the truth is violated more profoundly from this administration.

Today, the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer in wealth and political power. The World Inequality Report came out with the finding that 0.001% of the world’s population holds 3X the wealth of poorest half of humanity. That number is staggering and obscene. Such inequality should trouble the conscience of anyone who believes that every human being bears the image of God. Ordinary and lower middle-class citizens are deprived of health care, childcare, assistance with food and decent housing. Our church served as a distribution site for Second Harvest, providing food to families with children. That program ended following cuts in government funding.

Meanwhile, the President and his family members make billions through insider information, graft and corruption in a scale we have not seen before. The very heavens must cry out in the name of the poor and powerless.

The prayer of the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, is being silenced. Mary proclaimed a God who hears the cries of the lowly, brings down the mighty from their thrones, and lifts up those who have been cast down. Her song is a prophetic declaration that God stands with the poor, the vulnerable, and the powerless.

Where is the Living Christ in us emerging as prophecy? Where is the voice of John the Baptist exposing the evil and wicked deeds of the king and pointing to the light in the darkness? Where is the turning over of tables in the temple by the scandal that we have no money for childcare and yet we support a form of capitalism that give more tax cuts for billionaires at the expense of cutting aids and programs for the poorest on the planet.

The biblical story of Exodus reminds us that God does not remain indifferent to human suffering. The enslaved Israelites groaned under the weight of oppression and cried out for help. Their cry rose to God, and God heard their groaning and took notice of their suffering.

“The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out.
Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery. 
God heard their groaning… and God took notice of them.” (Exodus 2:23–25)

It is time for us to practice “Holy Impatience.” Patience is indeed a virtue. But there are moments when patience in the face of injustice becomes complicity. There are times when impatience at injustice, corruption, and cruelty to the oppressed must be called out and pushed back. This is that time.

As we approach this consequential election, I encourage you to ground yourselves in the work of prophetic witness. Whatever our political affiliations, we have a moral responsibility to be informed, engaged, and attentive to the choices before us.

Talk with one another. Listen to one another. Share your growing understanding and concerns. Encourage family members, friends, and neighbors to register and participate in the election. Bring people together for honest conversation—not simply to persuade one another, but to illuminate the moral and civic choices before us. Most importantly, resist the temptation to believe that your vote does not matter.

This is a time for courage.
This is a time for conscience.
This is a time for Holy Impatience.

May we refuse indifference and passivity. May we listen for the cries of those who suffer. And may the Living Christ within us give us the courage to speak truth to power, seek justice, and become a light in the darkness.

In Christ,
John

Join us for in-person worship this Sunday, August 23, 2026 at 10:00 am

You are invited to the Worship Service on August 23, 2026 at 10 am. The bulletin for this Sunday is available for viewing HERE.

You can worship live on ZOOM by clicking the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9658816441      Meeting ID: 965 881 6441

You can also watch Sunday services at your convenience by going to our website “watsonville1stumc.org” and click YouTube or Facebook. Each Sunday worship will be uploaded on Sunday afternoon for your viewing.

Gooseberries

Ordinary Time
In God’s Eternal Time
Sunday, August 23, 2026, 10 am

Children’s Time            “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain”              Pastor John

Excerpts from Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov, 1898

Ivan Ivanovitch went outside, plunged into the water with a loud splash, and swam in the rain, flinging his arms out wide. He stirred the water into waves which set the white lilies bobbing up and down; he swam to the very middle of the millpond and dived, and came up a minute later in another place, and swam on, and kept on diving, trying to touch the bottom. 

“Oh, my God!” he repeated continually, enjoying himself thoroughly. “Oh, my God!” He swam to the mill, talked to the peasants there, then returned and lay on his back in the middle of the pond, turning his face to the rain. Burkin and Alehin were dressed and ready to go, but he still went on swimming and diving. “Oh, my God!” he said again. “Oh, Lord, have mercy on me!”

“That’s enough!” Burkin shouted to him.

Special Music                  Carmen’s Habanera              Solmaaz Adeli, mezzo-soprano
from the opera CARMEN by Georges Bizet

If I Can Help Somebody
by Alma Hazel Androzzo

American mezzo-soprano Solmaaz Adeli is consistently praised for the luster of her timbre, vocal agility, and her impressive vocal range, her repertoire thus ranging from Baroque to 21st Century music.

She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Earth Sciences from UC Santa Cruz, and after beginning a career in the sciences moved to Austria to study voice. Ms. Adeli received a scholarship to attend the Opera School at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz, Austria, and studied privately in Vienna and as an apprentice under Italy’s esteemed director Davide Livermore in Turin.

Ms. Adeli made her operatic debut in the role of Flora in Albinoni’s Baroque opera Il Nascimento dell’Aurora under the baton of René Clemencic at the Vienna Chamber Opera (2011). She has performed in Austria’s most prestigious concert houses. Her broadcast performances include the Special Olympics 2015 from UCLA, the American National Anthem for the US Embassy of Vienna’s Commemoration Ceremony of 9/11, and a live performance of White Christmas alongside members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Message                            The Magnificent Defeat;                     Rev. John Song
Part 1) “What Is EGO?”

Sermon Series on “The Magnificent Defeat” 
Aug. 30:  Part 2) “How EGO Is Transformed”
Sept. 6:   Part 3) “The Power of Shame”
Sept. 13: Part 4) “Coming Home to Yourself”

Ego doesn’t have its own innate sense of worth. It’s a bottomless bucket of never enough and never good enough. Ego defines the self from outside-in. It relies on external markers for self-definition: What I have. What I do. What others think of me.

The kingdom of Caesar (the world) operates out of ego centrism and narcissism: What do you possess. What do you do. What I think of you… based on What you have and What you do. It is driven by comparisons and competitions.

“Ego is driven by Fear, Attachment, Control, and Entitlement.”
~ Don Bisson, Jungian Christian teacher

Luke 9:23-25
“Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
For those who want to save their life will lose it,
and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.
What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose their souls?”

Join us for in-person worship this Sunday, August 16, 2026 at 10:00 am

You are invited to the Worship Service on August 16, 2026 at 10 am. The bulletin for this Sunday is available for viewing HERE.

You can worship live on ZOOM by clicking the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9658816441      Meeting ID: 965 881 6441

You can also watch Sunday services at your convenience by going to our website “watsonville1stumc.org” and click YouTube or Facebook. Each Sunday worship will be uploaded on Sunday afternoon for your viewing.

Ordinary Time
In God’s Eternal Time
Sunday, August 16, 2026, 10 am

Children’s Time                     “Forest Understory”                      Pastor John

A forest understory possesses a quiet beauty that is easy to overlook. Beneath the towering canopy, ferns unfurl, mosses soften fallen logs, fungi weave hidden networks through the soil, and young trees wait patiently for light.

Special Music: Marina Thomas

Sermon Series on “Inner Work” 
July 19: Part 1) “The Shadow Knows!”
July 26: Part 2) “Befriending Your Shadow”
Aug. 16: Part 3) “Deep Dive”

Message                                Inner Work;                           Rev. John Song
Part 3) “Deep Dive”

Your shadows are parts of yourself that you have disowned because you’re ashamed or even afraid of them. The Shadow has power precisely because it remains in the dark below our awareness. Only when we face and acknowledge the Shadow’s presence and integrate them into our whole selves can we turn the shadow into gold.

We will examine what the “Shadow” is and why doing Shadow work is so important for your growth and wholeness — especially at this chaotic and dangerous time in human history. Unconscious people elect unconscious leaders. Conscious people elect conscious leaders.

Matthew 21:42
‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

“All that is human, I own it.”
~ Juliane of Norwich, the 14th century English woman mystic

“People who don’t confront their demons are destined to be confronted by them.”
~ Michael D’Antonio, Trump biographer

“A way to God is not ascent but descent.”
~ John Song

“Things that sailors have no use going out to the sea:
Fear of going down.”
~ Robert Bly