Protest Together!

The Outreach and Service Committee wanted to make church members aware of some nationwide economic protests directed at the current federal administration. None are marches - all call for an economic response only. 

On Friday, Feb. 28th, the grassroots project The People's Union is sponsoring a National Economic Blackout. They are asking everyone to refrain from any spending for 24 hours. 

On March 7-14, The People's Union is sponsoring a Boycott of Amazon. They ask that no purchases be made from Amazon that week.

More about the first two protests can be found here.

On Friday, March 14th, there has been a call in many places (starting in Texas) for a National Strike. Workers are to take PTO that day if possible. You can read about the demands of the strikers at https://generalstrikeus.com/ or look at the Facebook event here. 

We encourage you to read up on the projects and decide if you are called to participate as part of your Christian witness.

The class is limited to twelve (12) people and sign up is essential. Email Linda Slocum (lrslocum@gmail.com) or sign up in the hallway leading to Fellowship Hall at Church.

Calling all pie bakers to make dessert! Sign up to bring a pie or two and add a sweet touch to our gathering.

To help make the evening run more smoothly, we could use some help in the kitchen. Indicate on the signup form whether you are available to help with setting up before the meal or cleaning up afterward. Linda Slocum will contact you a few days prior to the supper to confirm whether your help is needed.  

First Church building rental opportunities

The First Church buildings offer numerous opportunities for meetings, rehearsals, concerts, weddings, and family events. After long study, a reasonable rental fee schedule has been worked out to offer fair use of the facility to our members and our neighbors. Large rooms (the Meeting House, Fellowship Hall, or JFO Room) and small rooms (upstairs classrooms, Room 4, Reading Room) can be reserved by the hour or by the half day. Discounted rates for church members and community partners may be available. The city of Oberlin has limited spaces available for events, and we are happy to offer our facility to help fill that need for our neighbors.

There Are Requirements for Making Submissions to our First Things First eNews!

In an effort to make our eNews more readable and shorten the length, we have created new guidelines for submitting posts! The guidelines are as follows.

1. As usual, the deadline for submissions for the upcoming First Things First is Wednesday prior to 10 AM.
2. We will not be putting in any non-First Church job postings.
3. We will not be putting in any full flyers as the submission (however, we will put in a button that links to a PDF of the flyer).
4. There is a word limit of 100 words for the text of a submission.
5. You may insert links into the text post for more information, either by button or hyperlink in the text.
6. You may insert PDFs (accessible by buttons) for more information, a flyer, or anything else that would be helpful for the post, but the document must be in PDF format. Any other document format will not be included in your submission.
7. You may send one picture that you have the rights to use (i.e. a picture that is not subject to copyright, we suggest using the site pexels.com).
8. The submission will run for a maximum of 2 weeks in the eNews. These 2 weeks do not have to be consecutive.

When sending in your submission, you must have

• The title of the post
• The text of the post (maximum of 100 words)
• Which 2 weeks you'd like for your submission to run

When sending in your submission, you could have

• If you'd like, one picture
• If you'd like, PDFs (and what you'd want the title of the button that links to it to be)
• If you'd like, the links for spots in the text post (and which word(s) you'd like to be the hyperlink or what you'd want the title of the button to be)

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we try to make our eNews experience more manageable for our readers!