Everest Harvey first came to Westwood in Fall of 2023, after finishing a year-long Fulbright teaching grant in Taiwan. They graduated from University of California Santa Cruz in 2022 with a double major in Literature and Sociology.

They have been involved in queer ministries since seventh grade, when they first noticed that the exclusion of LGBT+ people from Christian spaces didn’t make any sense. They have been working to create queer-embracing, intergenerational, justice-centered spiritual spaces ever since. Their ministry work has also led them to facilitate youth programs centered around the radical idea that children and teenagers are people and deserve to be treated as such.

Everest seeks to build communities that prioritize growth, compassion, abundance, and curiosity. Outside of church, you can find them reading, sitting in a park, line dancing, or wandering the streets of Los Angeles in search of a nice place to think. They lead Grapple (the middle and high school group), Queer Group, the Westwood Organizing Team, and other community partnership and service opportunities at Westwood.

Sunday, June 22, 2025Guest Preacher: Everest Harvey

Rev. Karen Clark Ristine loves words, story, songs, music, and sacrament. One of her treasured spiritual practices is walking a labyrinth. Prayer and contemplation have always been central to her faith. She also loves words in the form of research and reporting. Karen worked for more than 20 years as a reporter and editor in newspaper journalism and was a founder of the genre of Solutions Journalism.  She still loved journalism when she left her desk at The San Diego Union-Tribune to answer the call to ministry and attend Claremont School of Theology, where she graduated with a Master’s of Divinity in 2008.

Rev. Karen was appointed to serve as a local pastor in 2007 at San Diego First United Methodist Church as an associate pastor. She served Mission Hills UMC in San Diego for 10 years, becoming the longest serving minister in the neighborhood church’s 100-year-history. Her final appointment before retirement was to Claremont UMC, where she served as senior pastor. She is a member of the Queer Clergy Caucus of the United Methodist Church and helped Mission Hills UMC through the discernment process of becoming a reconciling congregation. She now serves on the new board of the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History that is developing the LGBTQ Archives for the denomination.

Beyond the local church, Karen served on the South and East District Committees on Ordained Ministry. She enjoys helping people of faith discern a call to ministry. She previously served as Cal-Pac Conference Secretary and now serves on the Committee on Corrections and Editorial Revisions for the UMC. In this role, she attends General Conference and is delighted to have her name on the 2020/2024 Book of Discipline free of discriminatory language.

Rev. Karen is married to Dr. Marcia McFee and lives in Kansas City, Missouri. Her son Ryan, a musician and music educator, teaches in Santa Rosa County. Now retired, Rev. Karen holds her charge conference membership at Westwood UMC - we are glad to have her share her gifts in preaching this Sunday!

This Sunday, we also celebrate Promotion Sunday, and will present Bibles to our new 4th grade students. We hope you will stay after worship for a Promotion Sunday celebration reception on the courtyard!

Sunday, June 15, 2025Rev. Karen Clark Ristine

It's Pentecost, and this Sunday we celebrate the birth of the Church and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We get to welcome Senior Speakers, Oz Peterson and Lauren Pang-Le, as well as our youth preacher, Nathan Salyer, who collaborated with Quinn Weatherford to write the sermon. In addition, our Grapple Group wrote prayers, prepared the Time with Children, and will play an anthem on handbells. 

Sunday, June 8, 2025Rev. Molly Vetter

As we come to the end of our journey through Revelation, we hold both the beauty and the discomfort of this wild, hope-filled vision. This last chapter can leave us uneasy—John’s language of insiders and outsiders, of who gets in and who’s left out, forces us to wrestle with how we label ourselves and others. But the deeper truth is this: the invitation of God is radical and wide-reaching. It’s not about excluding people—it’s about transforming all of us, letting what is fearful, harmful, or unloving in us be left at the gate. The river of life flows freely, the tree bears fruit for healing, and the cross stretches its arms to welcome us with love that changes everything. So come—come to the table, come to the feast, come to the hard and holy work of love and justice in this world, and trust that in the coming of Christ, we are all being made whole.

As we near the end of Revelation, the beauty and power of John’s vision continue to surprise usInot as a map of fear, but as a poetic unveiling of hope. Amid our world’s pain, division, and ecological fragility, God’s promise is not to scrap it all and start over, but to make all things new. Not all new things, but a renewal of what already is. In these final chapters, we meet a river and a tree—not as boundaries, but as sources of life and healing for all nations. This river of life doesn’t divide; it nourishes. And as it flows through the city, it calls us to belong, to be transformed, to wade into God’s grace and become people of inclusion, compassion, and courage. From the waters of baptism to the witness of people like one of Westwood UMC's treasured saints, Bishop Mel Wheatley. Just as he stood for justice, this river flows through history and into our sanctuary. It is here, now, calling us to carry hope, heal wounds, and live as if God’s renewing work is already underway—because it is. So come to the river, friends. Step in. Be made new.

Sunday, May 25, 2025Rev. Molly Vetter

The apocalyptic book of Revelation startles us with is vivid imagery. And while preachers and artists have frequently borrowed its images and themes to invoke fear, this Easter season we find someone wildly different: hope. The expansive community gathers to sing a new world into being, under the subversive power of the Lamb. Sunday, May 18, 2025Rev. Molly Vetter

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Sunday, May 4, 2025

The Book of Revelation has been frequently misused, often to engender fear. In this sermon series, we are diving in to give it a fresh look. What we find is not a code for the end times, but a bold declaration from an exiled man that despite the power of empire, God still reigns—Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Revelation isn’t about fear; it’s about resistance, faithfulness, and the transformative love of Christ, the pierced one who turns suffering into new life. On this weekend of anniversaries—of women’s ordination, of long-overdue justice for LGBTQ+ clergy, and yes, Star Wars Day (May the 4th Be With You)—we remember that the systems around us often fail, but our hope is rooted in something deeper, bigger, eternal. This is a call to belong to love, to live like resurrection is real, and to taste that truth again at the communion table.

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Today, as we honor Earth Day, Dr. Carter shares a bit of his own journey—from taking the natural world for granted to experiencing an ecological conversion rooted in deep personal encounters and Scripture. Reflecting on the Israelites’ struggle in the wilderness, we see how fear and old patterns of oppression can linger even after liberation. God calls us to trust in divine abundance, to let go of scarcity thinking, and to build something new rooted in justice and care for creation. Though the challenges are great and we are entangled in systems we didn’t create, it is still our responsibility to hope, to build, and to trust that our children will carry us toward the Promised Land.

Sunday, April 20, 2025

The resurrection of Jesus is a profound symbol of God’s transformative power–not a denial of grief, but a simultaneous embrace of both grief and hope. Drawing from the Gospel of Luke, the resurrection story highlights the courage of the women who first encountered the empty tomb, and how their faith allowed them to remember Jesus’ promise of resurrection even when others dismissed it. Today, we live into the resurrection by creating sanctuary—not in buildings, but in compassionate, inclusive communities that honor every person’s dignity. Looking through contemporary and historical movements of remembrance and justice, from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina to #sayhername, we find courage carry forward a faith that persists in the face of injustice, that insists on the value of every human life, and that dares to hope for a world transformed by mercy, love, and collective care.