Unity Day!

“As the most culturally diverse city in the nation, we want to celebrate our differences and also what makes us the same which is the desire to have a thriving and peaceful quality of life.”

-Maria Guevara of Vallejo Together, the host for Unity Day (From the Vallejo Times Herald Article)

Unity Day, scheduled for 9/9/18 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at City Park in Vallejo, is an annual event celebrating our city’s diversity. The event’s 2018 theme is "United, We Stand". 

Vallejo Together has added new things this year, including the IntegriTea Chill Zone, with music and poetry on the Millennium Stage. Vallejo’s poet laureate D.L. Lang will host the festival’s UpBay poets, while the Unity Day Open Mic will allow people to speak about important issues in the city. The open mic will feature community builders speaking about what they are doing in the Vallejo community and the issues that face Vallejoans today like homelessness, gentrification, gun violence, immigration, and so much more. Additional cultural events are scheduled are martial arts demonstrations, belly dances, and international foods for sale. The festival will also feature vendor booths with crafts for sale and organizations passing out information about local services.

That is where First Christian Church come in...

Last year at Unity Day we celebrated our love for this community, by painting and crafting. This year will be a little different (and a lot less messy!). We will be creating peace ribbons. Long ribbons of different colors that we can write our names on, and the names of people in the community. These ribbons will then be placed on the fence outside our Johnson Garden. I think it will be a great and meaningful way to bring a piece of the community back to our home. While ribboning, we will also have fliers, and other items to hand out to the community as they pass through the booth.

Please plan on stopping by to say hi and check out all the other wonderful organizations!

Worship Planning Retreat

On Saturday, September 15, from 10:00-2:00, we will have a Worship Planning Retreat, which will be an opportunity for anyone—and everyone—to come together to help envision and chart a course for our worship services over the next 3 months, including Advent. We will read scripture together and brainstorm themes, songs, poems, prayers, and ways we might structure our worship time. Everyone is welcome! So, bring yourselves, your ideas, a lunch, and snacks to share. We will share a refreshing and life-giving time together, while doing the work of the church—it is a retreat, after all!