United Methodist Church Westlake Village
Audio of Pastor Darren Cowdrey's weekly message, as we work together toward fulfilling our mission statement: "Setting a Course for a Better Life."
Live-streamed weekly from our campus in Westlake Village, CA. Video of this entire worship service is available for viewing or listening on our home page at http://www.umcwv.org for approximately 3 weeks, and then also available on our YouTube channel at https://bit.ly/4hFmuBZ
All songs used in compliance with our CCLI and streaming licenses.Copyright License # 1291056Streaming License #CSPL075029
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Episodes
516 episodes
Is The Holy Spirit The Sequel To Jesus?
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, promis...
Knowing The Way
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, “...
How Do We Hear Jesus’ Voice Amid Competing Voices?
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’ ...
Surprised By Jesus
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 painfu...
A Different View of Easter: What If New Life Is Already Here?
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 look...
Palm Sunday And The King Who Refuses Violence
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 crow...
The Ten Commandments As A Way Of Love
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...
Bread From Heaven In The Wilderness
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 ...
Out-frog, Out-snake, Out-locust: Our God Goes Big
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 la...
Should We Stop Waiting For Miracles And Start Listening To God?
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...
Finding Eden In A Noisy World
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 share...
Wicked, Good, Or Both?
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 c...
Frankenstein, Faith, And The Monster Within
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 Shelle...
Extremism, Identity, And The Cost Of Conviction
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...
What If Grief Could Grow Something New?
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 slo...
Good News For A Fractured World
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...
What If The Star Is A Question About How We Embody Love?
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...
Jimmy Stewart, John McClane, And Why They Still Can’t Beat A Baby In A Barn
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, di...
Joseph's Surprise And The Courage To Trust
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 m...
What Changes When Faith Becomes Your Daily Behavior?
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 repentanc...
Floods, Thunder, And Advent Hope
The lights are up and the carols are back, but the readings turn us toward floods, thieves in the night, and the unsettling image of two women at work, only one “taken.” That tension is exactly where our conversation begins. We move from the wa...
The Prophet Who Killed The Vibe And Saved The Soul
Collapse makes a lot of noise; real hope often whispers. We walk through Jeremiah’s world as the temple falls and a community scatters, and we ask what faithful leadership looks like when trust is broken. Instead of retreating into despair or d...
Isaiah’s Promise Of A Listened-To People
What if the most radical act of power is to listen first? We step into the closing vision of Isaiah and meet a people who have finally come home from exile, only to find that old wounds can resurface in new forms. The prophet refuses easy comfo...
