Songs of Grace on Green Valley Road
About 35 miles east of Sacramento, in the foothill community of Rescue, Foothills United Methodist Church gathers every Sunday morning at 3301 Green Valley Road. For more than four decades the congregation has been a steady presence in the Cameron Park, Shingle Springs, El Dorado Hills, and Rescue corridor, a place where longtime members and first-time visitors worship side by side at 10 AM. The motto "To Love God With Everything" captures what Pastor Linda Burson describes as a place where it is okay to be real, where every person's journey is honored, and where the doors stay open.
Average Sunday attendance hovers around one hundred, and the church's ministry framework rests on three pillars: Compassion and Service, Spiritual Formation, and Congregational Care. Each Sunday the worship focus is anchored in a lectionary, prayer concerns lifted up by name, and the choir offering a choral anthem. For those who cannot attend in person, the service is livestreamed on YouTube at 10 AM and recordings are available afterward.
Sunday Morning Worship
Worship at Foothills follows a familiar rhythm. Laity worship leaders set the tone with a story or idea that connects the theme of the day. A Call to Worship draws the room inward. Hymns are sung, often with responsive readings woven between them. The chancel choir offers an anthem, sometimes joined by brass, woodwind, or strings. A children's moment brings young hearts to the front, and the sermon - about twenty minutes long, not an hour - grounds the morning in scripture. Communion follows on the first Sunday of every month, an open table where individual cups and pieces of bread are passed, hands are sanitized, and anyone who feels led is welcome to receive.
Dress is casual or traditional, whichever a visitor prefers. The greeting time is intentionally flexible, with options ranging from hugs and handshakes to fist-bumps, waves, and non-touch signs of peace. Children are always welcome in the sanctuary, and professional childcare is offered for infants through age four during the service, so parents can settle into worship without distraction. Masking is left to each person's own choice.
Worship runs roughly one hour, occasionally stretching to seventy minutes on special Sundays, because the singing, quiet time, responsive readings, prayer concerns, and special music are considered just as important as the message. The lectionary moves through most of the Bible over a three-year cycle, so the congregation hears the breadth of scripture rather than a narrow set of favorite passages.
Music That Holds Together Hymn and Choir
Music is one of Foothills' defining features. Music Director Amy Van den Boom plays piano and keyboard, leads congregational singing, and coordinates special music that often features bass, guitar, and soft drums alongside her. The chancel choir, roughly two dozen singers strong, anchors the choral anthems under the interim direction of Doug Rose while the church searches for a permanent choir director.
Rehearsals are held Thursday evenings from 7:30 to 9 PM, late August through mid-June, and new singers are always welcome, no prior experience required. Special music for offertory is typically a soloist on piano with bass, acoustic guitar, or soft drums. From time to time the choir is joined by ensembles from community bands, orchestras, and choirs the musicians belong to, filling the sanctuary with brass, strings, and woodwind. The choir's reach extends into the wider community, hosting occasional concerts that draw audiences from across El Dorado County.
The aim is not a loud band but a worshipful sound: hymns sung to great piano playing, choral anthems that are sometimes contemplative and sometimes joyful, and an openness to whatever blend the season calls for. Soloists from within the congregation often take a turn at the offertory, and small vocal or instrumental groups gather for special Sundays.
Children, Youth, and Families
Children's ministry is led by Katie Curtin, who coordinates the church's children, family, and youth programs under the simple verse from Matthew 19:14: "Let the little children come to me." Beyond the Children's Moment during worship, Foothills offers Praise Pals, a cross-generational pairing program that matches adults in the congregation with individual children or youth for friendship. Sunday School is offered on Sundays. Each summer the sanctuary is transformed for a week-long Vacation Bible School, a half-day camp of skits, music, games, crafts, and stories where older youth and parents are invited to volunteer alongside the children.
Youth Group brings middle school and high school students together around service and fellowship, with no church affiliation required to join. Confirmation class is offered every other year for ninth graders and older, leading to a personal affirmation of faith. Each summer the Senior High youth travel for a week of the Sierra Service Project, working alongside other United Methodist teams to repair homes in Native American and other underserved communities. Families Serving Together projects weave parents and children into the congregation's outreach throughout the year.
Parents of children and teens gather every other month at a member's home for a potluck dinner that lines up with Parents' Night Out. During Parents' Night Out, grandparents in the congregation host the children with dinner, games, and crafts so parents can enjoy a few grown-up hours. Scouting BSA, sponsored by the church, offers young men and women hiking, arts and crafts, leadership opportunities, and service projects, an extension of family ministry that reaches into the wider community.
Adults in Conversation and Service
Spiritual formation for adults takes many shapes at Foothills. United Women in Faith gathers women to share interests, beliefs, and experiences while supporting global ministries. United Methodist Men, the men's fellowship arm of the denomination, meets the third Tuesday of each month at 6 PM for study and connection. The Doorkeepers Men's Group meets Tuesday mornings at 8 AM in the church facility for an hour of Upper Room devotional discussion, followed by an optional hour of small upkeep work around the grounds.
Bible Study happens in several settings: a Wednesday evening Bible Study, a Sunday morning Adult Study, and a Lent study group led by the pastor on Wednesdays at 3 PM during the season. An Evening Book Group gathers the first Tuesday of each month at 7 PM, rotating among members' homes. Merry Widows, a loosely organized fellowship for women who have lost a spouse, meets for lunch and outings. Super Seniors Women's Lunch convenes the last Friday of each month at 11:30 AM at China City Restaurant in Cameron Park. Saturday mornings at 7:30 AM, men gather year-round at the Train Station Coffee Shop in Shingle Springs for breakfast and conversation.
The Knitting and Prayer Shawl Group meets regularly to craft shawls that are blessed and given to people moving through traumatic life experiences. Once a month the group also teaches homeless women how to make prayer shawls of their own, an outreach that quietly pairs a hands-on craft with pastoral care. Cross-generational events, holiday celebrations, and outings fill the calendar alongside these smaller gatherings.
A Campus Built for Neighbors
The church grounds are part of what makes Foothills distinctive. The community playground sits alongside the building, and picnic tables are scattered around it so families can read, eat, or share a morning coffee. A Free Little Library, built and maintained by a local Girl Scout Troop, lets visitors take a book or leave one. A prayer labyrinth is laid out across the campus for a meditative walk, and the parking lot holds two basketball hoops where teenagers and young families gather. Volunteers tend the roses and flowers each spring, and the campus is also a stop on the Pokemon Go map, a small reminder that the neighbors come in every age.
The sanctuary, which was dedicated in 1985 after the building's completion in 1984, and the adjoining educational wing, completed in 1989, anchor the campus. Together they host worship, the choir, classrooms for Sunday School, nursery space, and the fellowship hall where hospitality teams lay out doughnuts and coffee on Sunday mornings.
Faith in Action
The congregation's calling is spelled out in three phrases that appear throughout Foothills' materials: Compassion and Service, Spiritual Formation, and Congregational Care. A Prayer Chain circulates prayer requests by email among a team that lifts concerns and praises. Hospitality and Fellowship teams - greeters at the front door, ushers in the pews, hosts making coffee and laying out doughnuts - shape the Sunday morning welcome, while Memorial Hospitality volunteers organize funeral and memorial receptions. The church also lends its facilities to outside groups through the calendar office.
Beneath these quieter ministries runs a wider stream: support for missionaries, participation in disaster recovery, grocery card fundraising tied to Nugget and Forklift stores that benefits the youth group's Sierra Service Project, and the ongoing care extended by the prayer shawl group. The church's online giving, managed through Vanco, sustains a budget that funds pastoral leadership, staff, worship, youth programming, and outreach beyond the local congregation.
Methodist Roots and Open Doors
Foothills United Methodist Church is part of the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church, a network of more than three hundred faith communities across northern and central California and northern Nevada. Methodism traces its roots to John Wesley, an 18th-century Church of England pastor whose small groups met for prayer, Bible study, and accountability. Wesley's emphasis on scripture, tradition, reason, and experience - what he called "thinking and letting think" - shapes the congregation's approach to belief. Grace, in Methodist teaching, is God's unmerited favor, present even before one is aware of it.
The church's three values - Honor Each Journey, Authentically Belong, and Serve the Greater Good - turn that theology outward. Worship is offered in a voice that is neither stiff nor showy, with a sermon that tries to ground life for the week ahead and a communion table that is genuinely open. The congregation numbers about one hundred on Sundays, the staff is small, and the building is in its fifth decade, but the welcome is broader than those numbers suggest: whoever walks through the doors is meant to feel at home.
Visiting and Joining In
Anyone curious about Foothills is invited to drop in on a Sunday at 10 AM, try a small group, or reach out to the church office. The office is open Monday from 10 AM to noon and Tuesday through Thursday from 9 AM to 1 PM, reachable at Office@FoothillsUMC.net or by phone at 530-677-4910. A weekly newsletter keeps newcomers connected, and a Get Involved form on the church's pages makes it simple to be matched to a ministry. Worship livestreams on YouTube at 10 AM each Sunday, and giving is available online, by mail, or by check placed in the Sunday offering plate. From the playground to the prayer labyrinth, from the choir loft to the Wednesday Bible study, Foothills United Methodist Church has built a steady rhythm on Green Valley Road - one Sunday, one small group, one neighbor at a time.