The newsletter’s gone full-digital
You’ve probably already noticed that the Friday email looks a little different these last few months. First, we cut back to twice a month, instead of every week, to save time in the office, and because it was no longer needed to send a unique link to each service video each week. When we first went online in 2020, services were pre-recorded, and I would compile all the clips into a single, large video on Thursday afternoons, and upload them on my home computer, which was faster at the time. However, it still took all night, and I wouldn’t have the link until Friday morning, at which time the email went out.
When we upgraded our livestreaming system, we were no longer able to have a link to the videos ahead of time. Instead, you now just go to the church Facebook page, or YouTube channel. Now that it’s the same link you go to every week, the need for weekly emails just wasn’t there.
But, over time, we started upgrading the quality if our emails. Instead of just me sending text, we use a service called mailchimp, which allows us to format emails much like a web page – adding photos, links, color, videos, all sorts of things. As time went on we kept adding more and more notices, events, articles on Fridays. I noticed this fall that we were duplicating a lot of the material between the email and the newsletter, but having to spend the labor hours for Angie to format and email, and do all the graphic design and layout for the printed newsletter. As a stewardship issue, it made sense to just make one, really good, Friday email that goes out twice a month, and print out the email in a booklet for those who need it. This is why the Monthly Log-In you find by the front doors looks so different.
The Friday email will come in two versions: the full, beginning of the month, and the shortened, mid-month. The full version is what’s printed, and will include the pastor’s column, council minutes, worship assistant schedules and such. The mid-month version will be shorter, and will focus more on current events coming up, as well as anything that came up and missed the deadline for the big one. I’ve found, over the years, that getting submissions for the newsletter by a hard week-before-the-end-of-the-month deadline is getting harder, and things are coming up on more short notice. This allows us the flexibility to update if we miss anything at the beginning.
I hope you’ll enjoy some of the new features in the upgraded email:
· Embedded videos of meditations, services, special events.
· More photos
· Links at the bottom to synod news, ELCA news, more of our videos and resources, bulletins, and more.
· Ability to read all the news on an electronic device, without having to download a pdf and try to move it around the phone screen to see it all.
One more change is that larger articles, such as my pastor’s columns, will not be on the email in their entirety. Instead, we’ll post the beginning, and put a link to the full article on the church web site (lordofgrace.org/news). Our web template allows us to create as many blogs as we want, so we brought back one for news and events that had been hidden for a couple years. All longer articles will go there, so when you click the “read more” button it will redirect you there. The one exception will be the council minutes, which will remain in pdf format. I have a philosophy that members should have access to the business workings of the church, but visitors and seekers online don’t need to.
So, I hope you enjoy the new format. We will continue to print paper copies and put them by the front door, as well as mail paper copies to the handful or so members with no email access. Otherwise, here’s to a new year and a new update.
Pastor Lars