Fall-A-Palooza Has Something For Everyone

By Misty Cryer

The 15th Annual Fall-A-Palooza will be happening on Saturday, October 4, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Beach Bandshell area. This fall festival is well known in the community as a free family event that many look forward to.

Jeni Dugan founded the event. This year her son, Davis Dugan, who recently took the role as Youth Minister for Catalyst Youth Ministry at First Methodist Church Carlsbad, shared the details.

“I’ve been attending it for years. It is an amazing event. I was excited to attend as a kid. It was something I looked forward to literally for the whole year,” said Davis. “Now I’m just excited to be on the backend of it, doing some of the planning and being more involved in facilitating the event itself.”

“Fall-A-Palooza is an event for people of all ages,” added Davis. Kids, middle schoolers, high school students, adults, young adults, and grandparents are welcome, he said, adding that there are things for all people.

Davis described it as a fall festival in the way it is imagined to be with food trucks, games, candy, with music going on, and giveaways.

“It’s just a really cool event that’s geared toward all the churches in Carlsbad kind of uniting, as like a big sea church community, to just love on the community well,” said Davis.

For the community, he said it is an opportunity to get to know people not just as ministers and leaders in the churches, but as people and members of the community.

“We’re facilitating the fun but are also facilitating the relationships with the different churches,” said Davis.

This fall festival is hosted by seven local churches with First Methodist Church, First Baptist Church, St. Edwards Catholic Church, Sunset Church of Christ, Church of God of Prophecy, Grace Episcopal Church, and Oasis Church participating this year. The sponsors of Fall-A-Palooza are many, Davis said.

Something new this year, Davis said, the participating churches are having a tabling event where each church will have a place where people can come and talk with representatives from different churches and form relationships.

“A ‘Church Search’ is kind of a cute language that we would use for it,” he said.

“If you don’t have a church home, you can have a conversation where people can kind of find a place that would be right for you to begin going to church,” said Davis.

Davis shared the impact that attending Fall-A-Palooza as a child had on him in understanding that he can experience fun and Jesus all in the same day. “A lot of people associate church events with being a bit more boring. This is a way that you can encounter Jesus in a really fun way,” he said, adding that he thinks a lot of children would really love.

As the new Youth Minister at First Methodist Church Carlsbad, Davis said, “I’m excited to be back at this church I grew up in.”

When his family came back to Carlsbad, Davis said he was about four years old. He said he went to ECEC, Riverside Elementary, and attended Sixth Grade Academy the first year that it existed at Alta Vista back in the day. “I graduated from Carlsbad High School, and loved it,” he said.

As a recent graduate from Texas Tech, Davis said he studied Human Development and Family Sciences. which he recognized as “a bit of an odd major” while sharing that being in a such a public university, a Christian-style major wasn’t as possible.

Through talking with pastors, he said he learned that seminary is really great about teaching about theology, bible knowledge and all of that, but it doesn’t do a really great job teaching about the people - how to love people and to encounter people where they are. He chose to find a major at Texas Tech that would teach him how to do that.

“I majored in – literally - humans and how they develop, how families work, how families are oriented – basically, I studied how to love people well,” said Davis. “It set me up for huge success in knowing about people and how to love them well,” he said.