United Methodist Church Westlake Village

Send us Fan Mail God says “Go,” and Jonah says “Absolutely not” then buys a one-way ticket in the opposite direction. That blunt refusal is funny on the surface, but it also lands uncomfortably close to home, because most of us know what it feels like to dodge a calling, delay a hard act of trust, or offer God a carefully measured amount of commitment. We start by reading Jonah 1 straight through,...

Send us Fan Mail A single line from a movie sticks with us: “What if empathy is an evolutionary advantage?” That question turns into a faith question fast, because so many of us have been trained to think empathy makes us soft, exposed, or easy to take advantage of. We push back on that assumption and explore how compassion can be real strength, the kind that steadies a community and makes room fo...

Send us Fan Mail Romans is not a calm textbook, it is a pastoral intervention. We start a new series by admitting the real-world challenge of tackling Paul’s most comprehensive letter in the middle of confirmation and graduation season, then we name why Romans still matters: it is written to a community trying to stay together while Jews and Gentiles bring different histories, habits, and assumpti...

Send us Fan Mail The Holy Spirit does not wait for our permission, and that is both thrilling and unsettling. We start with the Pentecost story many of us know by heart, then take a sharp left into Numbers 11 where Moses hits a breaking point in the wilderness and God answers with a haunting question: “Is the Lord’s power limited?” When Spirit gets shared across seventy elders and then spills over...

Send us Fan Mail Unity sounds beautiful until you try to live it with real people. Pastor Darren starts with Paul’s “body of Christ” image and makes it concrete: some of us are eyes who see a path forward, some are ears who listen, some are mouths who speak clearly, some are feet who keep momentum, some are hands who do the work, and some are hearts who keep watch over the community’s wellbeing. T...

Send us Fan Mail Sequels are supposed to continue the story, but they also expose what we really loved about the original. We kick things off by arguing about the best movie sequels, then pivot to a bigger claim: the Holy Spirit is the “sequel” to Jesus, promised in John 14 as “another advocate” who stays with us forever. That word matters. Advocate means we are not alone, not abandoned, and not t...

Send us Fan Mail A sign in Minneapolis says, “The bus does not stop here,” and it exposes something many of us do without noticing: we define ourselves by the places we refuse to go. From the way churches talk about belief to the way we talk about each other, “no” can start to sound like the whole message. We take that moment and turn it into a clearer, more hopeful question: where does the bus st...

Send us Fan Mail A lot of faith language sounds comforting until you place it in real life where attention is weaponized, outrage is monetized, and everybody claims to know the truth. We lean into John 10 and ask a sharper question: how do you recognize Jesus’ voice when so many voices are trained to hook you first? We walk through Jesus’ three self-descriptions in the Good Shepherd: teaching, gat...

Send us Fan Mail Surprise doesn’t happen often, so when a story hits you with it four times, it’s trying to wake you up. We sit with Luke 24 and the Emmaus Road, where disciples stumble through grief, confusion, and the kind of disappointment that sounds painfully modern: “We thought he was the one.” They’ve heard about an empty tomb, yet they still feel detached and disenchanted, and we name that...

Send us Fan Mail Earthquakes, lightning, guards collapsing, a once-in-history moment that feels too big to miss. That’s one way the resurrection story gets told, and it can quietly train us to believe God only shows up when life gets cinematic. We start by looking at Matthew’s dramatic Easter scene, then we slow down and notice who actually stays standing: the women who come in grief, with questio...

Send us Fan Mail A triumphal entry is supposed to end with a coronation, but this one fades out. We follow Jesus into Jerusalem and slow down long enough to notice the strange choices: a donkey instead of a stallion, palm branches instead of fine fabric, a crowd hungry for change but unsure what kind of king they are actually welcoming. That tension is the doorway into a bigger question: what happ...

Send us Fan Mail Freedom sounds simple until you actually have it. The wilderness is where you learn what still owns you, what you keep reaching for, and what kind of community you’re becoming while you figure it out. That’s why the Ten Commandments arrive when they do in Exodus: not as random religious rules, but as guidance for newly freed people learning how to live without Pharaoh in their hea...

Send us Fan Mail Freedom can be terrifying when it doesn’t come with a full pantry and a clear map. We pick up the Exodus story right after the escape through the Red Sea, when the Israelites hit the wilderness and start wishing they were back in Egypt. It’s a startling moment of spiritual honesty: when the future feels uncertain, even slavery can start to look “stable.” We sit with that anxiety a...

Send us Fan Mail What if salvation isn’t a status but a way of standing in the world? We follow the sweep from the burning bush to Passover to the Red Sea and ask how a people learn to live free. Along the way, the commands that once sounded strange—choose a lamb, paint blood on your door, eat in haste—turn into a training ground for trust. The Israelites don’t signal God’s memory; they form their...

Send us Fan Mail A quiet life in Midian, a bush that blazes without burning, and a voice that won’t let go—this is where our journey starts. Not with spectacle for spectacle’s sake, but with an invitation to trade comfort for calling and drift for direction. We walk through Moses’ story to confront our own: the habits that grip us, the fears that stall us, and the excuses that keep us from the ric...

Send us Fan Mail What if the point of Lent isn’t gritting our teeth but finding our center again? We open a new season by stepping into the Exodus story, watching a mother push a basket into dangerous water and trusting a future she can’t see. That basket shares a word with Noah’s ark, a quiet signal that what’s inside is sacred. The connection is more than literary—it reframes us, too, as preciou...

Send us Fan Mail What if the line between wicked and good isn’t a line at all, but a question we keep asking until power loses its grip on appearances? We take Oz’s yellow brick road in a new direction, following Wicked’s reimagining of Elphaba to explore how cultures equate beauty with virtue, power with righteousness, and compliance with moral worth—and how those shortcuts fail the people who mo...

Send us Fan Mail A stitched body asks for love, and a brilliant maker runs. That image from Frankenstein has haunted generations for a reason—because it’s not just a gothic scene, it’s a blueprint for what happens when progress outruns care. We take Mary Shelley’s enduring question—what do we owe the life we create—and bring it into our world of always-on internet and fast-moving AI, where knowled...

Send us Fan Mail A resistance cell burns bright, a family goes underground, and a nation hardens around them—yet the fiercest battles aren’t fought with fists or fire. We take you inside One Battle After Another to trace how extremism feeds on certainty, how it hollows leaders and bystanders alike, and how a long chase can double as a journey back to conscience. Bob and Porfidia ignite the French...

Send us Fan Mail Grief has a way of rewriting us. We open our movie series with Hamnet and step into the raw space where Shakespeare and Agnes face the death of their child, a loss that ripples into Hamlet and reshapes how we think about art, faith, and the slow work of healing. Through a mother’s unguarded cry, the tangle of a strained marriage, and a father who can only speak his pain from the s...

Send us Fan Mail Cold water can wake you up, but grace wakes you for good. We start with a laugh about polar plunges and cinnamon-roll fishing, then wade into why Jesus’ baptism still matters when the world feels torn down the middle. I share what baptism means in our tradition—cleansing, commitment, initiation into community, and the public celebration of God’s unearned grace—and ask a harder que...

Send us Fan Mail A star led the Magi to a house; a deeper light leads us to a question: how does faith take a body? We explore Epiphany through the four Gospels and land with John’s bold, beautiful claim that the Word became flesh and lived among us. Instead of lingering at the manger, we trace why Mark starts at baptism, how Luke centers the overlooked with shepherds, and what Matthew signals thr...

Send us Fan Mail What keeps pulling us back to a manger while our screens glow with holiday blockbusters and beloved classics? We open the door on a 2,000-year-old story and find a fresh surprise: its strength isn’t in spectacle but in how it reframes power, dignity, and love. Instead of palaces, we find a young couple with little to their name. Instead of elites, we meet shepherds from the margin...

Send us Fan Mail A wedding plan shatters, a dream interrupts, and a quiet man chooses trust over reputation. We walk with Joseph through the shock of Mary’s pregnancy and the sober mercy of his first response, then pause at the turning point where a nighttime message names the child Emmanuel—God with us. It’s a short passage with long shadows, inviting us to consider how we respond when our own pl...

Send us Fan Mail A Bethlehem coffee joke shouldn’t hit this hard, but it does: if Joseph could order a venti, what would we order to actually wake up to Advent? We open with humor and move straight into the fire of John the Baptist, who refuses to let repentance be a mood or a moment. His challenge to the religious insiders isn’t for shock value; it’s a wake-up call to bear fruit that proves belie...