You are invited to the in-person Celebration of the Independence Day Service on July 2 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.
Celebration of the Independence Day
Sunday, July 2, 2023, 10 am
Children’s Time Summer Children Music Festival Mike Locke-Paddon
Choir Anthem America, The Beautiful
Lyrics by Katherine Lee Bates. Music by Samuel Ward. Arranged by Ruth Elaine Schrarm
Message “Radical Joy” Dr. Haley Feuerbacher
This message will be about how joy is a form of justice-work, a (re)claiming and re-rooting of our birthright as God’s beloved and as intrinsically sacred, and our seizing of and practicing of joy balks against the fundamental essence of oppression and trauma, which is to separate us from our sacredness, from goodness, and from love. Therefore, joy is radical and transformative!
We will be reading the story of Jesus turning water into wine as God’s fierce endorsement of joy in the midst of a system of classism that would have shamed the bridegroom on the very day that was meant to be all about joy, love, and celebration. Then, we will be looking at what is required of us to follow in Jesus’ footsteps in choosing joy and making it a radical and transformative feature of our life and world.
“Let us be the ancestors our descendants will thank.”
~ Howie Morningstar
[Dr. Haley Feuerbacher is a storyteller, creator, adventurer, facilitator, spiritual activist, and theologian. She attended Vanderbilt Divinity School and Brite Divinity School for her Master’s in Theological Studies and completed her Ph.D. at Southern Methodist University in Religion and Culture and Women’s and Gender Studies. A recent transplant to California from Texas, Haley was a faculty member at SMU and The Seattle School for Theology & Psychology and served for several years as a youth minister and then as campus minister for a United Methodist Reconciling college ministry. Passionate about the power of joy and compassion for personal and systemic transformation, Haley is currently the founder and executive director of the Center for Courageous Compassion, which is creating a movement of fierce survivor-centeredness and transformation of trauma in which our helpers, caregivers, activists, leaders, and ministers engage in courageously compassionate work, life, and being that yields sustainable joy and resists systems and patterns that lead to vicarious trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue. Haley is also a running coach, yoga facilitator, surfing and outdoor enthusiast, partner to SB and mother to son Christian.]
