Open Hearts in the Foothills
Crescenta Valley United Methodist Church sits on Montrose Avenue in the unincorporated community of Montrose, just below the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County. Its welcome is stated plainly: "Open Hearts, Open Doors, Open Minds. All Are Welcome Here." That welcome extends to every race, ethnicity, age, faith history, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic status, marital status, family configuration, and physical or mental ability, and it is also a stand against racism, xenophobia, and homophobia in word and in action. The church frames itself as a sanctuary for people who are new to the area, seeking a justice-rooted faith community, unsure about church, or carrying spiritual wounds.
The congregation runs to about thirty to sixty on a Sunday morning, drawing from Montrose, La Crescenta, Glendale, La Canada, and the surrounding foothill neighborhoods. Members include JPL scientists, local teachers, professional musicians, business owners, doctors, lawyers, and artists, plus three-generation families who have called this church home for decades. As a body they have committed to remain in the United Methodist Church and to continue their practice of welcome in the wake of the 2019 General Conference vote, framing the choice as consistent with the theology of John Wesley and the long practice of the Western Jurisdiction.
Sunday Morning Worship
Worship begins at 10 a.m. on Sundays in the Sanctuary. Pastor Joseph Choi preaches, and a different member of the congregation leads a brief moment each week. The service typically runs about an hour, with coffee, snacks, and fellowship following in the Fellowship Hall. Dress is "Casual Sunday." Families worship with their children in the Sanctuary rather than sending them to a separate classroom. A children's table on the left side of the room is stocked with coloring pages and craft activities, and parents who give notice by Thursday night can arrange for a preschool teacher to be on site for nursery care during the service.
A separate Korean-language worship service meets at 11:30 a.m. at the same campus, organized through a sister site at cvkumc.com. Worship is livestreamed on the church's Facebook page each Sunday and uploaded to YouTube within a few days, so anyone who cannot attend in person can follow along or catch up.
A House Band of Session Musicians
Music is the heart of the worship at Crescenta Valley, and the musicians who lead it are professionals with touring credits that read like a history of popular music. Music Director Barb Catlin is a jazz pianist and former Director of Jazz Studies at Mesa Community College in Arizona who resets classic hymns to modern harmonies and welcomes traditional, contemporary, gospel, jazz, and Taize material into the same service. She is joined by Ricky Cosentino, a vocalist and percussionist out of Omaha who has performed with War, Ambrosia, Gary Wright, The Commodores, and Earth, Wind and Fire; Tim Kobza, a Los Angeles-based guitarist, recording artist, and producer with more than 250 film and TV placements to his name; and Alexis Sklarevski, a Musicians Institute graduate who has played bass with Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Johnny Rivers, and Chuck Berry, and who has performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Show with David Letterman.
Volunteers of all ages and abilities are welcomed into the band and the choir. The aim is for the room to sing with joy, not to be blasted out of it, and the same musicians can be hired for weddings and other events held on the church's campus.
What the Church Believes
Crescenta Valley is Christ-centered and rooted in the Bible as its starting point for every sermon and every action. The congregation understands Jesus as a gentle healer, an incisive teacher, a loving friend, and a radical prophet whose cross and resurrection assure them that Good will ultimately triumph over Evil. The Holy Spirit, in their language, "whizzes unexpectedly through our lives," lighting people up for work they would not have thought themselves capable of. The Bible is read as a library of law, story, poetry, prayer, and prophetic warning, with the prophets especially attentive to the least and the last.
The church frames its calling as radical inclusion and earth-transforming love. More than fifteen Methodist-Catholic families are part of the congregation, and the church has gathered recent Catholic-Methodist dialogue statements on salvation by grace, the environment, and the church's shared mission to make those families' questions easier to live with. The congregation also acts in concert with other faith-based organizations locally and around the world for positive solutions to conflict, generous responses to poverty, and thoughtful care for the water, land, and air that God created.
Walk and Word: A Hiking Ministry
Among the church's most distinctive offerings is Walk and Word, led by Lay Leader and Certified Lay Minister Jeanne Lavieri. The group meets at 8 a.m. on the second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth Sundays of the month in the parking lot of Deukmejian Wilderness Park in Glendale, hikes for an hour, and then gathers outdoors to read a passage of scripture, journal for thirty minutes, and share reflections. There are level paths at the park for those who would rather not hike, and ramps from the parking lot to the gathering field make the second half of the morning accessible to anyone who wants to join.
Lavieri's own spiritual journey took her from a Connecticut Methodist childhood through years in Unitarian Universalist congregations and back to United Methodism. She sees Walk and Word as a way to take faith outside the building, and she quotes John 1:1 at length to anchor the connection between the Word of scripture and the order of creation.
Children, Youth, and the Preschool Next Door
Children are welcomed at worship with their families, and the church operates its own preschool and infant care program under the direction of Erica Patterson. The Child Care Center shares the campus and links out to montrosepreschool.com, with separate contact information for parents who need it (818-249-4048, ccc@cvumc.org).
Janice Burke leads the youth ministry for students in sixth through twelfth grade. The group is open to the church's youth, their friends, and any young person from the wider community, and it meets most Friday nights. Members have traveled with Sierra Service Project on week-long trips to Native American reservations and to South Central Los Angeles, and have helped with home repair days in Watts. Once a month, on the fifth Sunday, the youth lead their own worship service for the congregation.
Learning Together
A small-group program meets Sunday mornings in "Thee Room" after fellowship for Living the Questions 2.0, an open, inclusive, broad-minded approach to faith. Participants can drop in for any single Sunday. Other small discipleship groups meet at other times during the week for prayer, study, and conversation about parenting, marriage, work, and public life.
The church also runs a Read and Practice Peacemaking group that has built a working library on nonviolence, drone warfare, Christian conscience and war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rwanda, and the journalism of atrocity, with titles by Medea Benjamin, Leymah Gbowee, Gene Sharp, Chris Hedges, John Dear, and others. The Gather, Inspire, Act group hosts films, books, and conversations that lead toward action on justice and compassion.
The Wider Mission
Crescenta Valley sees local and global mission as part of its calling. Members collect non-perishable food, empty egg cartons, and clean plastic bags year-round, and on Super Bowl Sunday the collection becomes a "Souper Bowl" for The Bailey Center. A Christmas tree in the narthex holds ornaments for homeless students at Learning Works Charter School, a drop-in center that helps couch-surfing teens get back into school and graduate. The church also runs an Empty Bowls event, serving soup and bread and selling handmade bowls to raise money for the hungry.
The church sponsors a team for the Foothills Relay for Life, walks in the Pasadena Palm Sunday Peace Parade, joins the Montrose Peace Vigil on Friday evenings at Honolulu and Ocean View, and supports Strength for the Journey, a weeklong camp for people living with HIV/AIDS sponsored by the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church and led in part by a former CVUMC pastor. It also supports the food pantry, women's room, and bad weather shelter coordinated by the Ecumenical Council of Pasadena Area Churches, and helps sustain Learning Works through gifts, gift cards, and volunteer time.
Hosting Twelve-Step Recovery
Crescenta Valley opens its doors to Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon groups throughout the week. Meetings include Together We Can Make It for men on Monday evenings, Soul Sisters for women on Monday evenings, a Tuesday evening group in the Fellowship Hall, a fourth-Wednesday Hospitals and Institutions meeting, and Saturday morning and afternoon gatherings in Room 25 and the Fellowship Hall, including Parents Finding Hope For Today Al-Anon.
The Building, the Stream, and the Welcome
The Sanctuary seats 430 people and is equipped with a sound system that can support almost any configuration of musicians, plus brand-new computers and projectors for presentations. The Fellowship Hall seats up to 200 for a sit-down dinner (242 with some outside seating) or up to 334 for a stand-up reception, with a large kitchen, projector system, and ample parking that opens directly onto Montrose Avenue. The whole campus is available for weddings, recitals, birthday parties, and other events.
Worship is livestreamed on the church's Facebook page and uploaded to YouTube afterward. Giving is available online through the church's Zeffy donation form, and tithes and offerings can also be mailed in or given during the in-person service.