Watsonville First United Methodist Church

Watsonville, CA

Join us for in-person worship this Sunday, October 11, 2026 at 10:00 am

You are invited to the Blessing of the Animals Sunday on October 11, 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.

Blessing of the Animals Sunday
Sunday, October 11, 2026, 10 am

Bring your pets to our annual Blessings of Animals Sunday on October 11, 2026 at the 10 am worship service. We invite all animals, whether furry, scaled, or feathered to be blessed during the worship service. We invite you to bring your pets so we can bless them in worship! 

*Children and children at heart who do not have animals may bring their favorite stuff animals. For those who cannot bring their pets, bring a picture of the pet.

Children’s Time       “What We Can Learn from Animals”           Pastor John

Special Music  
Piano Solo Performance by Lee Juszak

First Gymnopedie
by French composer Erik Satie, 1888

Lee is 15 years old. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is currently a Sophomore in High School. He’s been playing piano for 8 years. He also plays viola in his school orchestra. He is the grandson of Joan & Bob Culbertson. He and his mom are staying with the Culbertson’s from October 10 to 17.

Message                     “The Whisper of Reverence”                    Rev. John Song

Simone Weil, the 20th century French philosopher and mystic wrote, “We cure our faults by attention and not by will.” So much attention is being paid to attention these days—how it is being robbed and degraded by the ubiquity of the internet and technology, how we need to reclaim it and retrain it, how we ought to pay attention to what really matters in life. But Weil’s notion of attention was very different from our typical definitions of the word. Attention, for Simone Weil, was not a willful hardening of focus but a softening of gaze — not a closing in but an opening up. I call it a form of “receptivity.”

We will explore Greta Matos’ essay, “The Whisper of Reverence,” where she addresses our diminishing capacity to be fully present to ourselves, one another, and the sacredness of life. Matos shares her discovery of how a herd of wild horses in Patagonia, Chile, taught her the wisdom of reclaiming our sanity, sobriety, humanity, presence, and connection to the Holy.

Job 12:7-10
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you,
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of every human being.

Join us for in-person worship this Sunday, October 4, 2026 at 10:00 am

You are invited to the World Communion Sunday Service on October 4, 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.

World Communion Sunday
Sunday, October 4, 2026, 10 am

World Communion Sunday is held on the first Sunday of October and is a day for Christians to remember their unity in Christ with other believers around the world through the sacrament of communion. 

[The World Communion Special Sunday offering envelopes are available in the narthex. Your gifts support racial and ethnic students in achieving their educational goals while also transforming communities. 50% percent of the offering provides scholarships for graduate students from the U.S. and other countries. 35% percent supports ethnic scholarships for undergraduate students. 15% percent funds in-service training programs for racial and ethnic persons.]

Children’s Time                 “I AM because of WE”                     Pastor John 

Message                       “Who Am I & Who Are We?”                  Rev. John Song

On this World Communion Sunday, I will be examining how we define ourselves. Is it my race, gender, nationality, religion? How should we define ourselves?

Community is medicine.
If we replace the ‘i’ in illness with ‘we’,
illness becomes ‘wellness’.
~ Howie Morningstar, M.D.

“Everything belongs, including each one of us.
No one belongs until everyone belongs.”
~ John Song

“Seeing ourselves as sacred is the beginning of seeing others as sacred.”
~ John Song

Mark 3:34–35
The True Kindred of Jesus 

Then his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mothers and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Galatians 3:28
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

October 2026 Pastor’s Corner

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?”
~ From “Anne of Green Gables” by L.M. Montgomery

Dear friends,

I was moved to tears reading this article this week. It touched my heart. I want to share it with you.

When a Stranger Tucked in Her Son
Anonymous, as told to Katie Cunningham, The Guardian reporter, Sep. 20, 2026

“The simple act of caring is heroic.”
~ Edward Albert

I won’t lie – I was having nightmares before the trip. When my family immigrated to Australia from Europe, my husband travelled ahead to organize a place for us to live. I followed him seven weeks later with our four children, all aged under seven. I was a ball of stress for weeks in the lead-up.

Walking on to the plane with four kids in tow, I could almost hear people think, “Oh my God, I don’t want to be seated next to them!” And I completely understand. I had booked a window row and a seat in the middle row, thinking that I could put all the kids in the window row and then myself in the middle, where I could keep an eye on them. But when we got into the plane, the flight attendant told me that for security reasons we couldn’t do it that way. We had to rejig, my five-year-old son taking the middle-row seat alone, for what was to be a nearly 24-hour flight broken up into two legs.

There was a man seated next to my son. He didn’t display any of the annoyance he must be feeling about being seated next to a small child – a very kind act in itself, and one that brought me great relief. But his kindness didn’t end there.

At some point during the flight, after the cabin lights dimmed, the other three kids and I dozed off. When I woke up, I looked over to see my five-year-old had fallen asleep as well. The man next to him was pulling his blanket up and gently tucking him in. It was an unguarded moment of care and compassion.

I don’t think the man had any idea I saw him do that. We arrived safely and I never saw him again. But it was such a generous thing to do that, 20 years later, the memory remains magical.

She was alone with four children under seven, mid-immigration, mid-flight, mid-panic – the kind of exhaustion that sits in your chest like stone. When the cabin lights dimmed somewhere over the dark hours of a 24-hour journey, she finally dozed off. When she woke, she looked across the aisle to find a stranger quietly pulling a blanket over her sleeping five-year-old and tucking him in – gently, without fuss, with no audience he knew of. “It was an unguarded moment of care and compassion,” she writes, and that word – unguarded – is the one that stays. The man never knew she saw him. They never spoke of it. They arrived, and he disappeared into the crowd as strangers do. Twenty years have passed, and she still carries the image like something small and luminous in her pocket. There is a particular grace in kindness that asks nothing back, not even acknowledgment – the kind that happens when no one is watching, because it simply couldn’t not happen.

What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you? The next time you notice someone struggling quietly – on a plane, in a waiting room, on the street – do the small thing you almost talked yourself out of. Don’t announce it. Just do it and let it be enough.

Breathing love and life with you and all in Christ,

John

Join us for in-person worship this Sunday, September 27, 2026 at 10:00 am

You are invited to the Worship Service on September 27, 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, September 27, 2026, 10 am

Children’s Time             “Story of the Lost Elder Son”                Pastor John

Luke 15:11-32 
The Parable of the Lost Elder Son

“Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ”

Choir Anthem
Come, Christians Join to Sing
Words: Christian Henry Bateman
Music: Traditional Melody
Arr. by John Carter

Message                       The Magnificent Defeat:                Rev. John Song
Part 5) “How Shame Is Healed 3.0”

When I am in shame, I am disconnected from others, myself, and from God. Shame makes me small because I’m hiding from others, myself, and from God. Shame is not something I should run away from. Rather, shame offers a portal where I discover aspects of myself that need healing and find my true self the Universe has been waiting for.

“Dignity is not something an addict earns by getting better.
It’s what makes getting better possible.”
~ Brian Spielmann

“Everything that is an obstacle to the person
is also the potential opening of a new path
in which the deepest self can become more present.”
~ Michael Meade, Storyteller, Author, and Founder of the Mosaic Multicultural Foundation

Join us for in-person worship this Sunday, September 20, 2026 at 10:00 am

You are invited to the Worship Service on September 20, 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.

Milky Way on Convict Lake in Mono County, CA

Ordinary Time
In God’s Eternal Time

Sunday, September 20, 2026, 10 am

Children’s Time             “A Dog Who Found Us”                Marieta Flores

Special Music by Jesse Martinez

Be
by Neil Diamond

From A Distance
Recorded by Bette Midler

Message                         “The Voice of God”                  Bob Culbertson

Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” His answer: “Love God with all your heart, soul and mind and also love your neighbor as yourself.”

Bob will be exploring the voice from God in three parts:

  • Love yourself
  • Love your neighbor
  • Love God

Mathew 22:34-40
The Great Commandment

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”