You are invited to the in-person Worship Service on Jan. 21 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 or 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.
Third Sunday after Epiphany
Sunday, January 21, 2024, 10 am
This Sunday is Sunday School with Joan!
First, children will be in worship. Following the Special Music,
the teacher, Joan Culbertson, will lead our children to the Nursery Room
Children’s Time “God Loves You Just the Way You Are” Dr. Haley Feuerbacher
Special Music If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out Eden Edell
music by Cat Stevens
Human After All
music by Eden Edell
Eden Edell grew up in the Bay Area, has been playing music for over twenty years, performing for ten, and has written more than a handful of songs. People are often moved when they hear Eden sing and the stories she tells in her music. Her musical style is Indie Folk but she also sings Blues and Jazz tunes. Her music is described as ethereal and grounding at the same time.
Message: Holy Disunity: What Separates Us Can Save Us Part 2) “Bad Christians and Good Christ-Followers: Queering Our Christianity” by Dr. Haley Feuerbacher
The story of the interaction between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well is a “queer story” – a story about love that breaks rules, barriers, and divides, about wild creativity and life-giving liberation, and about awakening to our true, authentic sacred selves and prophetically telling the truth about who we are and the world we live in. From this powerful story, we are guided courageously towards breaking up with our ideas of what it means to be a “good Christian” and embrace what it means to be a great “Christ-follower,” following our LGBTQ+ siblings as they lead us into awakening to the goodness and Godness in and around us and living towards the most loving, liberating, and life-giving world and Church we can imagine.
“Hope will never be silent.”
~ Harvey Milk
“Love is never wrong.”
~ Melissa Etheridge
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
~ E.E. Cummings
“When all Americans are treated as equal,
no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.”
~ Barack Obama
Dr. Haley Feuerbacher earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies, concentrating in Religion, Culture, and Women’s and Gender Studies, and taught in the Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology Departments of Southern Methodist University and the Graduate Counseling Program at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. She was the Campus Minister and Executive Director of The Denton Wesley Foundation, a student ministry at the University of North Texas, where she led her community to become a Reconciling Community in 2019 on the night after the fateful February Special Conference vote, becoming the largest and one of only two queer-celebrating student ministries serving over 40,000 students in Denton, TX.
But most of all, Haley is a survivor of religious abuse and spiritual trauma who loves the Bible fiercely for the ways it liberates and transforms her in this world! A recovering evangelical Christian and a queer Christian herself, Haley pours her experience and passion for Christ, theology, sacred texts, and joy into building survivor-centered community, post-traumatic faith, and embodied liberation on earth as it is in heaven with other survivors of trauma through her nonprofit organization, The Rewilding Ministry!
