Represent First Church at our Spring Festival & The Big Parade!

 As part of First Church’s evangelism and sharing with the community, we are inviting the public to join us in a Spring Fling Open House & Festival (name TBD) on Saturday, May 6, 10:00 am-3:00 pm. There will be indoor & outdoor games, lots of music, food, activities, church tours, a scavenger hunt, representatives from the agencies we support, and anything else fun we can think of!! We will need plenty of volunteers to help that day, to supervise games, answer questions, perform, and lead tours, as well as clean up afterward. We hope to have First Church t-shirts you can order to wear on May 6 as well as April 29 during The Big Parade! We’re planning a church “float,” riding on a trailer, playing music, waving banners and flags, handing out candy and schedules for our festival, and generally being a living, visible presence in the community.

If you want to join in the fun and participate in either of these events or would like to order a t-shirt, please let Moderator Anne Sprague know ASAP. Coming soon we will have sign up sheets for 2 hour volunteer slots for the festival date, so you can enjoy the experience first-hand. Mark your calendars! 

Spring Work Day with the Facilities Committee!

There will be a Spring Work Day on Saturday, April 1st, from 10 AM - 12:00 PM. There are 2 main projects; replace storm windows with screens in the Meeting House and removing old furniture from the Rocket Room. We really need 15 people who can lift and carry. 

- Facilities Committee

Do you feel passionate about the future of First Church? 

At our recent Congregational Meeting, we agreed to embark on a Visioning and Strategic Planning process to determine where we go from here. Of course, the whole congregation will need to be involved in the final plan, but for now, Executive Council is seeking a small group of members to plan how we will begin the process. If this is your calling, please email moderator Anne Sprague. Together, we can ensure that First Church remains a vital part of our community for the next 100 years. 

We invite you to join us for Holy Week and Easter!

Wave palm leaves and engage in a dramatic reading of the Passion in worship on Palm/Passion Sunday, April 2nd at 10:00 AM in the Meeting House, gather for an intimate service of communion on the evening of Maundy Thursday, April 6th at 7:30 PM in Fellowship Hall, and raise the roof with brass and organ on Easter, April 9th at 10:00 AM in the Meeting House.

To all of our young friends, we will be having our Easter Egg Hunt after our Easter Sunday service on April 9th on the front lawn.

Additionally, you're cordially invited to join Christ Episcopal Church for their Annual Easter Vigil Service on Saturday, April 8th, at 7:30 PM where Reverend David Hill is preaching. All are welcome. We look forward to worshiping with you!

Good Friday Services at Christ Church

Christ Episcopal Church in Oberlin (162 S. Main Street) will offer two unique observances of Good Friday (April 7).

At noon, all are welcome to participate in the symbolic pilgrimage of Stations of the Cross, held in the church. During the procession around the nave, we pause fourteen times to contemplate scenes from Christ’s passion (some with a biblical basis, others from later tradition) with scripture and prayer. This service lasts roughly 30-40 minutes.

At 7:30 p.m., we gather for the Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday from The Book of Common Prayer, which includes the singing of the Passion Gospel according to John using the traditional plainsong melody, a sermon, prayers, favorite hymns, and the veneration of the cross. (Communion is not celebrated this day.)

Everyone is warmly invited to attend either or both services.

Souper Bowl Sunday - Thank You So Much!

In conjunction with several churches in Oberlin, we were able to raise $1,875.80! Half of this went to Oberlin Weekday Community Meals and half of this went to Oberlin Community Services. Thank you for all of your support!

Camp Registration is open!

It is time to think about church camp! This year, the UCC camp at Templed Hills is partnering with Camp Christian (run by the Disciples of Christ) to bring you twice the opportunities to take a break and have some fun! Camp scholarships are available from First Church - please contact Jen by April 15th if you're interested. We hope you take the opportunity to explore the camps and what they have to offer this summer!

THANK YOU!



Thank you for responding so generously to the request to increase your pledges for 2023. At our Congregational Meeting in January, we wrestled with the hard realities of our congregation's current unsustainable financial situation. In addition to amending the budget before it was adopted, the Stewardship Committee was asked to urge everyone to consider increasing their pledge. To date, 29 people have responded to the challenge by raising an additional $19,600. Your very generous response will help the congregation maintain its excellent mission and ministry throughout the year while the Executive Council leads us in a process to reevaluate and redefine our most urgent and critical ministry as we prepare ourselves for our future.

Come and be our Coffee Host Buddy! 

We need people to sign up to host Coffee Hour (sign-up is across from the office). To encourage you to do this, the Fellowship Committee would like to invite everyone to work with a Committee member to see how this is done -- and how really easy it is. Afraid of the new coffee maker? Fear no more! Sign up with a Buddy and you will learn how easy it is to host coffee hour. Sarah Colson will train the first group on March 26. There will also be opportunities to train on April 2 and April 9. To sign up for any of these dates, please call Sarah and leave a message at: (440)774-2538. Please specify which date you would like to help.

Congratulations to Gene Matthews who will receive Oberlin College's Distinguished Community Service Award at this year's Commencement (May 22). This award is conferred upon “persons from the Lorain County area who have made significant contributions to the welfare of the community and its residents.” Way to go, Gene!

The Heartland Conference Disaster Network met last Saturday to continue the work of Disaster Response & Preparedness in the Heartland Conference. We prayed with our Disaster Response trailer, before members journey’d to Home Depot in Boardman, Ohio…where they loaded 116 cases of water and delivered them to Mount Olivet UCC, North Lima, Ohio. Mount Olivet members assisted as we loaded additional cases of water into our Disaster Response trailer, and will deliver the cases to East Palestine, Ohio this week.

Disaster Response members also toured East Palestine, to view the train derailment and the work currently being done in an attempt to remediate the contamination. Our hearts go out the the residents of the East Palestine area, many who are members of our area United Church of Christ churches. We continue to hold them in our prayers, and encourage others to do the same. 

Book Group

The First Church Book group meets via Zoom every Tuesday at 4 pm and ends at around 5:30 pm. To join, you just need to let the First Church Office know that you’d like to be on the list and you’ll receive an email invitation to the Zoom meeting every week. 

Have questions? Contact anyone in the Book Group Task Force which (roughly) organizes the meetings: Laurel Price Jones, Anne Elder, Heather Laughman, Lindsay Graves, or Linda Gates. 

Look ahead to see what books are being discussed. One book mentioned by Jeanne McKibben in her reflection on Sunday, October 30 - Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing - will be read and discussed in January. See the attached schedule.

There Are NEW 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!

Open and Affirming Committee Openings

June is Pride Month and a perfect opportunity for growth. (https://openandaffirming.org/ona/why/grow/). The Open and Affirming Committee (ONA) has openings. What is the ONA Committee you ask? It is a committee without meetings. It is a team of committed people supporting the ONA Statement of The First Church in Oberlin adopted in 1995 and amended in 2013. If you want to help make sure our congregation is living up to the welcoming and affirming spirit of the following statement, please contact Marty Buck @mbuck@oberlin.net or 440-225-7160 or a member of the Outreach and Service Committee @ outreach@firstchurchoberlin.org. Let us make the ONA Committee an ONA Team!

We know that as the Church we are many members but are one body in Christ. Each bringing individual pieces and gifts, only together do we find completion. With Christ we affirm that we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that we are called to act as agents of reconciliation and wholeness within the world and within the church itself. Recognizing the presence of ignorance, fear, and hatred in the wider church and in our culture toward specific members of Christ’s body:

We pledge to welcome people of all races, ages, genders, gender identities, gender expressions, abilities, socioeconomic levels, and sexual orientations into the full life and ministry of the church.

We seek actively to include and support those who because of fear and prejudice find themselves in exile from a spiritual community.

We commit ourselves to caring and concern for all.