Stewardship Pledging

December is moving quickly forward. If you haven't yet submitted your Stewardship Pledge for 2025, you may still do so. Remember our church's mission statement: "As followers of Jesus, we aspire to minister to our church, our community and the world." The Stewardship Committee encourages you to honor this mission by faithfully pledging. Thank you!

Office Closed and Pastoral Care

The office will be closed and Jen, David, and Miranda will be away from Wednesday, December 25th - Saturday, January 4th. Additionally, Miranda will be out of the office through Wednesday, January 8th. David and Jen will return to the office on Sunday, January 5th, and Miranda will return to the office on Thursday, January 9th. If you are in need of pastoral care during this time, please contact the pastor on his cell phone at (440)935-3398.



Our Guest Preacher for Sunday, December 29th, will be Barbara Blodgett.

Save the Date! February 15-16 is our Winter Retreat!

You’re invited to the reimagining of our Family Camp event, on Saturday, February 15th and Sunday, February 16th - right here at the church!  

As you know, Templed Hills has closed, and so we needed to find a new venue for our beloved Family Camp Winter Retreat. After looking at several venues and surveying the congregation, we’ve decided to experiment, and hold the retreat at First Church. Think of it as a Winter Retreat “Staycation!” We’re hoping that this will allow more people to participate in the unique fellowship experience that Family Camp provides.

The event will start at noon on Feb. 15th - and most of your favorite activities will still be there: We’ll have board games in the Fellowship Hall, snacks in the kitchen, Crafting in the JFO Room, and Foosball, Ping-Pong, and air hockey downstairs in the Rocket Room. Maybe we’ll set up cornhole in the hallway - we’ll see! Come play with us, or just settle in with a good book in the Reading Room, or spend a quiet moment in the meditation space or the Meeting House. Dinner will be catered by one of our local restaurants, and then the fun continues into the night! We’ll bring the church’s air mattresses downstairs, and you can bring your sleeping bag and stay the night if you like, “church lock-in” style. (Or you can go home and sleep in your own comfy bed, and return for breakfast.) A pancake breakfast will be served Sunday morning, and the event will end with Sunday’s worship service.  

A sign up sheet will be posted in the Fellowship Hall hallway in January, so we can get an idea of how many people will be attending, and how many staying overnight. For now, mark your calendars, and we’ll look forward to spending time with you in February! 

WE HAVE HEAT!

Our new boilers are up and running and heat has been restored to the Meeting House. Other areas of the church facility are in process. Many thanks to Gene Matthews for his diligent oversight of this project and his efforts to ensure the building remained habitable as the weather cooled.

Thank you to everyone who loaned the church space heaters. You may pick up your heaters at your convenience. All the heaters are in the alcove directly across from the office entrance.

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!