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 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 protest 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 First Church GREEN TEAM invites you to participate in decorating the "Faith in Action for the Earth" Tree during Lent and Easter.

You will see the tree in the Welcome Table area with cards, markers, and clothespins to attach the cards to the tree. Please tell us what you and your family are doing to support our Earth, its Environment, and Creation. You can sign your name or be anonymous. We will read these cards on Creation Sunday, April 27. Look for suggestions of what you can do each week in First Things First and the Sunday bulletin. Please feel free to make suggestions, too! Contact Kathleen at kjbradley123@gmail.com for those good ideas.

This Week's Suggestion: Compost your food scraps to reduce landfill waste. You can do it here at First Church! Contact Martin Buck for instructions (440) 225-7160.

On March 23rd after worship, we’ll be talking about how to have Courageous Conversations with others - how to speak our truth in an assertive but loving way, and how to listen deeply to the people we disagree with. Who knows? We might even find some common ground! We’ll lay the ground rules for these discussions, and then role-play having challenging conversations with our neighbors. Join us for a time of building our courage and our compassion!

Concert THIS Tuesday, March 18th at 7:30 PM!

Thomas Bandy and Conservatory vocal students and faculty will present a concert of cabaret, musical theater, and show tunes on Tuesday, March 18, at 7:30 PM in Stull recital hall on the third floor of Bibbins.

Help our Confirmands help others!

Our Confirmation class (Hiro, Micah, and Molly) will be building CWS Disaster Relief Hygiene Kits for their unit this May on "Faith in Action." They are inviting members of First Church to help them collect items for the kits.  

Cards listing enough items to make 10 kits are strung up on an easel in the gallery - please take some, buy the items, and return to the bin under the easel by April 26th.  If you'd like to buy all the items for one kit, you can see a full list at the link below. Any leftover items, or items that don't fit the kit's specifications, will be donated to Oberlin Community Services. 

We thank you for helping our youth help others!

Disaster Relief Hygiene Kits

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.  

The Guatemalan Fundraising Dinner will be April 05 starting at 5:30 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of First Church! 

For over 20 years SEPA (Santa Elena Project of Accompaniment) has sponsored the Guatemalan Dinner. Our speaker will be Steven Volk, Emeritus Professor of History from Oberlin College. The menu will offer authentic Guatemalan cuisine along with the famous dessert auction. The money raised by this event will go directly to an elementary school in Santa Elena, Veinte de Octubre and a middle school in Copal AA La Esperanza. Both of these communities are rural and Indigenous. They are indigenous in that the people of Santa Elena are of the Qeq' chi' linguistic, cultural group while the people of Copal AA are from three different linguistic, cultural groups: Mam, Qan' jobal', and Qeq' Chi'. Tickets are $15.00 dollars. To purchase tickets see Lori Taylor or John Gates. Lori and John will be selling tickets after church on Sunday.

Lori Taylor: 440-213-7991 or taylorlori@oberlin.net

John Gates: 440-320-1623 or jfgates@oberlin.net

It's time to register for camp!  

Templed Hills has closed, but Outdoor Ministries and Church Camp live on! Please explore the QR Codes and links below, and see if there's a camp that is right for you. First Church has a discount code available: If you are signing a child up for camp, please contact the office, and we'll make sure you receive it. You will then only need to pay the $75 registration fee. Thanks to all at First Church for your commitment to our kids! 

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!