Upcoming Worship Services

To live joyfully, we must learn to be our own Joy Advocates: clear in our intentions, steady in our choices, and grounded in joy through every twist and turn life tosses our way. Shannon Diffenderffer shares testimonials and insights from her pickleball students—real-life examples of how joy can be discovered through play, connection, and intentional practice. With gentle encouragement and personal reflection, we are invited to stop waiting for joy to find us—and start creating it ourselves.

Shannon Diffenderffer, M.Ed., is the founder of Joy Crazy™, a joyful learning community built around pickleball, kindness, and connection. A certified IPTPA Pickleball Instructor with a Master’s in Adult Education from Michigan State University and a B.A. in Political Science from UC San Diego, Shannon began teaching pickleball after the COVID-19 pandemic and a medical condition changed her path from nursing to joy advocacy.

Born with microtia atresia—without a right ear and jaw development—Shannon has spent her life navigating the healthcare system. She’s undergone multiple surgeries, lived with undiagnosed ADHD for years, and experienced conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome and sciatica. These challenges have deepened her empathy for her students, many of whom are learning new skills while managing their own health concerns.

Why pickleball? Pickleball is a sport that is fun, easy to learn, and naturally social. It brings people together across generations, backgrounds, and abilities. Shannon sees pickleball not just as a game, but as a powerful antidote to the loneliness epidemic—helping people laugh, move, and feel seen. You can find Shannon teaching Pickleball classes at PCC Community Education or through her Joy Crazy™ company at Friendly House.

Shannon believes that joy takes effort—but it’s absolutely worth it. Through Joy Crazy™, she creates experiences that brighten days, build community, and lift people up. Whether she’s coaching on the court, hosting events, or growing her online community for casual players and enthusiasts, Shannon encourages others to become their own joy advocates—one game, one connection, and one smile at a time.

First-Sunday Monthly Potluck after Service!

Multi-Platform Worship (both in-person & online)

Sunday at 10:30 AM

Click here to join the virtual service on Zoom

Meeting ID:  275 194 110

Phone In:  (669) 900-6833

Community is an act of creation. In this heartfelt sermon, Nat M. Esparza (he/they) explores what it means to build liberatory spaces that don’t ask us to disappear. Through personal story, sacred imagination, and a call to collective care, Nat reminds us: design is spiritual—and liberation is something we build together. 

Nat M. Esparza serves as a Southern Regional Administrator for the Unitarian Universalist Association, and is currently earning his Master of Arts in Religious Studies, on the path to becoming an interfaith chaplain. As a Wellstar Fellow, he is conducting research on what it means to age and die as a trans person— work that is equal parts academic and deeply personal. He also serves as an interim board member for the LGBTQ+ Institute at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, where he helps uplift and advocate for the sacred lives in our community.

Online (Zoom) Only Worship

Sunday at 10:30 AM

Click here to join the virtual service on Zoom

Meeting ID:  275 194 110

Phone In:  (669) 900-6833

Micah Young: "PYB is in the business of helping young people build exits into the walls of generational poverty. To build or find a way out, to break through barriers, whatever those might be, we humans need three things. We have to know that barriers have been broken before, that is to say, we have to believe that these walls are in fact, penetrable; secondly, we have to trust that we deserve more than these walls; and finally, we have to have the skills and the strength to get through."

Micah Young has been teaching English Language Arts for 8 years and just began her fourth year at Portland Youth Builders, where she has been Lead Teacher for two years. Micah describes herself as a lifelong learner and a passionate teacher, although her path to the front of the classroom was not direct. After receiving her Bachelor's Degree in philosophy, Micah went on to study theology in Berlin, Germany, where she subsequently worked as a Lutheran pastor for eight years. During this time, Micah discovered a love for teaching and a passion for anti-racist justice work. Upon moving back to the US in 2016, and with a deep belief that to teach literacy is to work for liberation, Micah went back to school in Los Angeles to get her teaching certificate. The question that lit her way was this: If, as Fredrick Douglass wrote, "education is emancipation", then who teaches the approximately 2.1 million youth in the US who have already fallen through the cracks of our "one-size-fits-all" education system? This was the question that led her into alternative education, working with gang-affected youth, youth experiencing homelessness, and trans youth in L.A.; then to get her Master's in Educational Leadership; and finally to Portland and Portland Youth Builders. 

Special Collection

Multi-Platform Worship (both in-person & online)

Sunday at 10:30 AM

Click here to join the virtual service on Zoom

Meeting ID:  275 194 110

Phone In:  (669) 900-6833

In this TED Talk by the poet/philosopher David Whyte, he encourages and inspires us to engage with life, rather than to miss out on all the wakening opportunities it presents. Whyte does this through his vibrant poetry, which he invites us to become grounded in, and illuminates with memorable stories. 

(from Wikipedia): Whyte's mother was from Waterford, Ireland, and his father was a Yorkshireman. He attributes his poetic interest to both the songs and poetry of his mother's Irish heritage and to the landscape of West Yorkshire (in England). He grew up in West Yorkshire and has commented that he had "a Wordsworthian childhood", in the fields and on the moors. Whyte has a degree in marine zoology from Bangor University (in Wales). 

During his twenties, Whyte worked as a naturalist and lived in the Galapagos Islands, where he experienced a near drowning on the southern shore of Hood Island. He led anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes, Amazon, and the Himalayas. Whyte moved to the United States in 1981 and began a career as a poet and speaker in 1986. From 1987, he began taking his poetry and philosophy to larger audiences, including consulting and lecturing on organisational leadership models in the US and UK exploring the role of creativity in business. (He currently resides on the Olympic Peninsula.)

Online (Zoom) Only Worship

Sunday at 10:30 AM

Click here to join the virtual service on Zoom

Meeting ID:  275 194 110

Phone In:  (669) 900-6833

Each church year there are 4 or 5 months that have a 5th Sunday. For the last two years as part of our lay-led ministry, we have been using these Sundays to offer an alternative to traditional worship. In lieu of holding a service, either in-person or on Zoom, we have organized a variety of group service projects we can do together instead.

This final day of August in 2025 is not only a 5th Sunday, but is also the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend. Your worship team invites you to spend it in rest and restoration so that you may enter the new church year revived and ready. 

We will launch our new church year on Sunday, September 7th, with an In-Gathering and Water Communion Service followed by a special Congregational Meeting and Potluck.

There will be NO regular service (either in-person or online) this Sunday.