Midweek Messages – 23 April 2025
Dear Campbell UMC Family & Friends –
What a joy it is to serve alongside you during such a vibrant and spirit-filled season in the life of Campbell UMC. I continue to be filled with gratitude and excitement for all that is happening in our congregation. Whether you’ve been part of Campbell for years or have just joined us recently, there’s something deeply beautiful about the ways we’re connecting, growing, and building community together.
One of the most moving experiences I’ve had recently has been journeying with you through Holy Week. From the solemnity and grief of Good Friday to the joyful shouts of “Christ is risen!” on Easter Sunday (see link to photos), it was a gift to walk through those sacred moments with so many of you. The truth of resurrection hope felt especially profound this year – not just as a historical moment we remember, but as a living hope we embrace together. Whether you’ve been part of this congregation for five weeks or five decades, I give thanks to God for the journey we are on together!
I want to offer a heartfelt word of thanks to everyone who made our Holy Week and Easter celebrations so meaningful. To our clergy, staff, and volunteers – thank you. To our incredible music ministry, livestream team, and every single person who helped with worship (whether by reading, greeting, praying, serving, or just showing up) – thank you. To all who helped with setup and takedown – thank you. And…a special shoutout to our youth for the joyful Pancake Brunch after Easter service – what a wonderful way to continue the celebration! Thank you all for embodying the spirit of resurrection!
As we move through this Easter Season, I am excited for the many ways we’re leaning into renewed life – not only individually, but together as a congregation. One practice we’ve embraced is inviting members of our community to share their story on Sunday mornings – an “offering before the offering.” These short 3-5 minute testimonies have given us a deeper glimpse into the hearts of those who call Campbell UMC home.
Each person is invited to reflect on questions like:
– What brought you to Campbell UMC?
– What did you find when you got here?
– Why do you keep coming back?
– Why do you support this congregation?
– How can others get involved?
The responses have been heartfelt, inspiring, and a reminder of the Spirit at work among us.
If you feel moved to share your story one Sunday morning – whether you’ve just arrived or have been here for years – I’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to email me directly at pastortheon[at]campbellunited[dot]org if you’re interested in participating.
Your story may be the very word someone else needs to hear!
Just this week, I had a conversation with a first-time visitor who came to our Easter service. We spoke on Monday and she shared that her family is connected to one of our local United Methodist congregations and they encouraged her to check out Campbell UMC. As we talked, she spoke of how moved she was by the beauty of the community and the joy of the Easter service. I extended a warm (and hopefully not-too-pushy!) invitation to join us again sometime soon. Before I could finish my sentence, she said, “I’ll see you on Sunday!” It was a moment that reminded me just how close the joy of renewed life truly is. Sometimes it’s in the Sanctuary. Sometimes it’s in a shared conversation. Sometimes it’s as near to us as our next breath. I pray we’ll keep extending that same radical hospitality to all who are searching – for meaning, for hope, for home.
This coming Sunday, is the Second Sunday of Easter and I will be preaching from John 20:19-31. The sermon is titled “Believing is Seeing: Faith that Opens Our Eyes.”
In this passage, we encounter the resurrected Christ meeting the disciples in the midst of fear and uncertainty. Thomas’s story, in particular, invites us to wrestle with our own doubts and desires for proof. Yet, Jesus offers not condemnation, but a blessing:
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
This scripture reminds us that the journey of faith is not always linear or neat. Sometimes belief comes before sight. Sometimes sight leads to deeper faith. Either way, Jesus meets us exactly where we are – offering peace, presence, and the promise that our belief can open our eyes to God’s transforming love in the world.
Whether you are someone still exploring what faith means, or someone who has walked with God for years, know that this Sunday’s message is for you. The resurrection is not something we simply remember–it is a living reality that changes how we see, live, & love.
I encourage you to invite someone to join you for worship – whether in person or online. Easter may be one day on the calendar, but the Easter Season continues, and we want to keep the celebration going! There is new life springing up in this congregation & I’m so grateful to witness it with you all.
Please know that I am praying for you – your families, your joys, your struggles, your hopes – and I invite you to be in prayer as well. May this season continue to bless us with faith that opens our eyes to the love of God at work all around us.
Grace & Peace,
~ TJ3
Rev. Dr. Theon Johnson III
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Come to Sunday Worship in-person! You may also view Sunday’s worship streamed live at 10am on our Facebook Page OR on our YouTube Channel. You do not need an account to view the worship video. If you subscribe to our channel and Like our Facebook page, you will be notified of new videos. You can also view/hear previous worship services and anthems on our website. Check Coming Up in Worship for instructions to view Sunday’s online service (for streaming or viewing later).
We share with you a message written for the Lenten season, by our Pastor Emeritus, the Reverend Dick Corson. He preached this sermon at Wesley UMC in San Jose, entitled: You Can Step Down Now. It is a message for all seasons, and for all people of hope. Read on and be blessed ~
Read the last blog post from Pastor Larry LaPierre,
“The Circuit Writer”
about prayer and speaking with God –
“Giving Up on God”
OTHER MESSAGES WORTH PONDERING
July 19th, 2020
View the online service on YouTube
Music: Horn Concerto – French horn, Brian Holmes; Piano, Shine Kwon
Text: Psalm 135:1-3; 13-21
Sermon: “Abyss, Mystery, and Wonder”
— Rev. Ouk-Yean Kim Jueng Read Sermon
December 8th, 2019
“Bring Us Hope” – Chancel Choir with Zhou Yi, cello
Text: Romans 8:24-25
Sermon: “Miracle on 34th Street – Hope”
— Rev. Ouk-Yean Kim Jueng Listen to Sermon Read Sermon
August 11th, 2019
“I Waited for the Lord” – Abraham Akapo, Samuel Akapo
Text: Isaiah 40:28-31
Sermon: “A Candle Against the Wind”
— Rev. Richard Corson Listen to Sermon Read Sermon
March 3rd, 2019
“Milele (Forever)” – Carillon [Handbell] Choir
“Feed Us Now, O Son of God” – Chancel Choir
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:10
Sermon: “When the Church is Divided”
Rev. Ouk-Yean Kim Jueng Listen to Sermon Read Sermon
June 3rd, 2018 – Music Sunday
“Stand Up & Praise Him” – The Joyful Notes
“Down By the Riverside” – Chancel & African Joint Choir
Text: Acts 16:25-34
Sermon: “Empowered to Praise”
— Ouk-Yean Kim Jueng Listen to Sermon Read Sermon
For more Sermons, click here.
STATEMENTS OF FAITH
“Why I Am United Methodist: Because Of Love” 
– a blog post by Ben Gosden
Precious Pearl ~ Words of comfort (for all) from a Memorial Service of 5 November 2016… Click to read…
BOOKS WE’VE BEEN EXPLORING
“On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity & Getting Old“ by Parker J. Palmer. This book is not for elders only. It was written to encourage adults of all ages to explore the way their lives are unfolding.
Available on Amazon and through Santa Clara public libraries or San Jose Public Library.
Check it out via the “look inside” feature at Amazon.
“Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes: Cultural studies in the Gospels” by Kenneth Bailey.
Beginning with Jesus’ birth, this study of the four gospels examines the birth and the life and ministry of Jesus with attention to the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, Jesus’ relationship to women, and especially Jesus’ parables.
It is never too late to set aside some time for one’s “intentional spiritual development.”
Together we will read and discuss Marcus Borg’s book “Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the Twenty-first Century” as Borg explores the Christian faith and what it means to be a Christian today. (Kindle $10, hardcover/paperback $15.)
The book, “If the church were Christian: Rediscovering the values of Jesus”, by Philip Gulley (a Quaker minister) is a readily accessible, thought-provoking presentation of how focusing on the positive aspects of Jesus’ values can help one to discover their own spiritual path.
The book and e-book are available and can be previewed at smile.amazon.com.
Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most
by Marcus J. Borg
On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, the renowned scholar Marcus J. Borg shares how he formed his bedrock religious beliefs, contending that Christians in America are at their best when they focus on hope and transformation and so shows how we can return to what really matters most. The result is a manifesto for all progressive Christians who seek the best path for following Jesus today.
With each chapter embodying a distinct conviction, Borg writes provocatively and compellingly on the beliefs that can deeply ground us and guide us, such as: God is real and a mystery; salvation is more about this life than an afterlife; the Bible can be true without being literally true; Jesus’s death on the cross matters—but not because he paid for our sins; God is passionate about justice and the poor; and to love God is to love like God.
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Other notable group readings:
In the Shelter, by Padraig O’Tuama
There’s an old Irish proverb: “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live”. In this book much-loved poet, storyteller, theologian, and speaker Pádraig Ó Tuama applies ideas of shelter and welcome to journeys of life, using poetry, story, biblical reflection and prose to open up gentle ways of living well in a troubled world.
The fourth gospel tells of Jesus arriving in the room where the disciples are gathered, full of fear, on Easter Sunday. He does not chide or admonish; instead he says ‘Peace be with you’, which, in the Aramaic of his day, was simply a greeting. ‘Hello,’ he said, welcoming people locked in a room of fear to a place of deep encounter; encounter with themselves, with their fear, with each other and with the incarnate one in their midst.
Interweaving everyday stories with analysis, gospel reflections with mindfulness and Celtic spirituality with poetry, this book explores the practice of welcoming as a spiritual discipline. In particular, Pádraig tells careful stories of welcoming parts of life that are often unwelcome.
and
When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
New York Times Bestseller • For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question, What makes a life worth living?
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
The Active Life: Wisdom of Work, Creativity and Caring by Parker J. Palmer
Vital, down-to-earth wisdom for active people who serve others or work for social change. Drawing from the teachings of Chuang Tzu, Martin Buber, Jesus, and Julia Esquivel, Palmer presents a detailed framework for a spiritual life in the active world–for the uncelibate, unsolitary, and unsilent lives that most of us lead.
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More inspirational reading…
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life
by Marilee Adams
In this new expanded edition of her classic international bestseller, Marilee Adams shows how the kinds of questions we ask shape our thinking and can be the root cause of many personal and organizational problems. She uses a highly instructive and entertaining story to show how to quickly recognize any undermining questions that pop into your mind—or out of your mouth—and reframe them to achieve amazingly positive and practical results. The third edition includes a new introduction and epilogue and two powerful new tools that show how Question Thinking can dramatically improve coaching and leadership.
What Did Jesus Ask?
edited by
As a teacher, Jesus Christ put many of his lessons in the form of questions. The gospels recorded some 100 others. Some are rhetorical, needing no answer, but most were real questions posed to real people. Many of Jesus’ questions are familiar to readers today, yet the context and the potential interpretations of such phrases will offer enlightenment to many.
Organized by Biblical verse, in “What Did Jesus Ask?”, more than 70 of today’s most prominent spiritual writers, religious leaders and artists offer modern meditations on the questions Jesus asks in the Bible. Their contemplations provide telling context, with both contemporary and traditional interpretations to lead readers on an exploration of their own faith and to shape their own meaningful answers.
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