Hello McFarland!
It’s hard to believe that June is almost here and, as I write this newsletter article, we are still getting used to not worshipping together. I think that it will be a while before we can worship together in person. In the meantime, we are providing videos of our pared down worship service on our Facebook page at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday and on our website (https://mcfarlandumc.org/sermons/) later Sunday afternoon. Video streaming of our worship service will continue in one form or another in the future.
The challenges that we faced prove that communications are essential. We began to address the communications situation in 2019 when we started phasing in a new church management system. This system provides the ability to communicate with you via email and text message. If you have contributed to the church since January 1 and you have an email address on file with us, you recently received your first quarter giving statement via email (it took a total of three clicks to accomplish).
We plan to move our newsletter to email for most of you. If you don’t have email, don’t worry, we will still print and mail the newsletter for those of you without email. We also plan to introduce some other email communications that will be targeted to those of you who want to subscribe to them. These transitions will take place over the next few months. In addition to being more efficient, we will save money on postage. But for us to transition, we need to make sure that we have your current information. I invite you to visit this link to bring up a Profile Update form that will permit you to update your information in the database. Once we have this information, you will receive an email that will ask you to “opt-in” to receiving the newsletter via email. Please say yes to this email, you can always opt-out at any time.
In the meantime, we are exploring ways to restart our Sunday School, prayer groups, and book study using ZOOM as the platform. ZOOM allows us to see one another when using a tablet, smart phone, or computer. More details will be coming soon.
Our world is changing. We are working to change along with it so that we can continue to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” Continue to follow our website and (if you are on FaceBook) like the McFarland United Methodist Church FaceBook page in order to keep up with the latest news. Thank you for your support.
Blessings,
Pastor Wayne
