Special Musical Guests this Sunday

Carol Longsworth, Margie L. Flood, and Marian Thomas will be with us for worship on Sunday, featuring the flute, violin, and organ, respectively.

A Lovely Thank You from Our Friends Last Week!!

You may be wondering how to help Venezuela!

On June 29 Venezuela experienced devastating earthquakes, especially in the city of Caracas, with over 2500 people killed with homes and city services in ruins. The United Church of Christ has representatives on the ground assisting with aid and recovery. UCC is asking for a special donation to assist our efforts in Venezuela. Outreach & Service Committee has made a donation to this effort from our discretionary budget.

You can also help with a donation through UCC. Use this link to donate ONLINE:

https://www.ucc.org/ucc-issues-emergency-appeal-following-venezuela-earthquakes/

Or CHECKS may be made payable to United Church of Christ with a note, “Venezuela Earthquakes 2026” on the memo line and left at the church office or in the offering on Sunday.

You may also mail them directly:

United Church of Christ

P. O. Box 71957

Cleveland, OH 44194

OR if you want to help out by delivering 2 dozen homemade cookies or pastries packed for the freezer in the kitchen, we will happily accept those donations!

Thank you in advance!

First Church is once again participating in the Oberlin Community Services Annual Jaqui Willis Back to School Supply Drive!

Look for the Gray Tote Box the next time you come to the church and drop off some of the following materials, if possible!

Thanks for your consideration!

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!