News at a Glance

• Treasurer's Report
• Internet Manager Attends Web Conference
• "Share This" Viral Marketing Added to Web Sites
• Ministerial Orientation Held for New Hires
• Top Booklets Ordered Through Online Ads
• Staff Prepares for U.S. Postal Changes
• Greece Tour Video Available on Web
• Transfer Announced
• Springfield 50th Set for Aug. 9-10
• Calendar of Events [See PDF Version]
• What's New on the Web?

Note: For charts and graphs mentioned, see the PDF or printed versions.

Treasurer's Report

We now have the final results in for Pentecost, and we are pleased to report an encouraging 5.5 percent increase over last year for a total of $867,000. In fact, each of the Spring Holy Day offerings this year has been encouraging. The final results for the First Day of Unleavened Bread was a 3.9 percent increase over last year for a total of $856,000, and the final results for the Last Day of Unleavened Bread was a 3.1 percent increase over last year for a total of $828,000.

As reported earlier, the months of February (9.39 percent increase), March (8.78 percent increase) and April (6.8 percent increase) were all trending higher than the 2 percent increase in income that we were experiencing year to date. The last two months, however, have not been as encouraging. In the month of May regular mail income was down 4.9 percent compared to last year; and for the month of June (through June 25) income is down 2.8 percent compared to last year.

While just a month and a half ago, I was confident that we would close the fiscal year with income $23,500,000 or higher, we will most likely end the year slightly less than that—somewhere between $23,400,000 and $23,500,000. Even with the sluggish last two months of the year, we still expect to end the year with close to a 2 percent increase in income over last year, and we can be thankful for that.

—Jason Lovelady

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Internet Manager Attends Web Conference

From June 10 to 13 UCG Internet Manager Aaron Booth attended a Web design conference in Nashville, Tennessee, presented by New Riders publishing. New Riders publishes books for Web professionals, and the conference provided the opportunity for attendees to hear presentations by their expert authors.

Conference seminars focused on improving the overall design and usability of an organization's Web sites. Seminar titles included "Color for the Global Web," "Findability: Design Comp to Code," "Designing for Today's Browsers" and "How to Improve Each and Every Page on Your Site."

Many of the recommendations will be used to make gradual improvements to the United Church of God's Web sites and enhance the Church's presence on the Web. These include:

• Improving our Web sites so our content is accessible to a wider global audience using different types of Internet browsers both on computers and mobile devices.

• Improving our Web sites' content and coding structure to make our Web sites more prominent in search engines.

•Implementing simple design strategies that will guide Web visitors to the content they are searching for on our Web sites.

—Aaron Booth

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"Share This" Viral Marketing Added to Web Sites

Internet Manager Aaron Booth recently applied "viral marketing" techniques to many of UCG's Web pages. "Viral marketing (word-of-mouth) is a process where Web visitors find your Web site content valuable and want to share it with others," said Mr. Booth. "We have added a 'ShareThis' feature to many of our Web pages. If a Web visitor clicks on one of the 'ShareThis' links featured on an article Web page, then the individual can share this particular article with a friend via an e-mail message or post the article link to numerous social networking Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.

"What does this mean? If one Web visitor found our content valuable and shared it with others via a social networking Web site, then that article could possibly be viewed by hundreds of additional people. Then those people could share it with their friends. By using viral-marketing techniques like this, we can increase the visibility of our Web sites to more people on the Web."

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Ministerial Orientation Held for New Hires

Ministerial Services held its second Ministerial Orientation seminar for the two recently hired ministers and their wives, along with the pastors and wives under whom they will be working for the next year or two.

Shawn and Beth Cortelyou and Ed and RaeAnn Dowd (new hires) and Vernon and DeLee Hargrove and John and Merrie Elliott (pastors in whose churches the two new hires will be working) plus the staff from Ministerial Services and other experienced pastors all took part in this employee-orientation seminar.

—Richard Pinelli

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Top Booklets Ordered Through Online Ads

The last six months showed some exciting results for United's online booklet advertising. Here are the most popular booklet and magazine requests for January to June 2008 at Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Please note that if not already a Good News subscriber, a GN subscription is given along with a booklet. Also, many thousands of additional literature requests come in that are not a direct result of our Google, Yahoo and MSN advertising and are not in the request totals below.

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Staff Prepares for U.S. Postal Changes

Connie Seelig (Mail Processing Department) and Chris Stewart (Information Technology Department) attended the National Postal Forum in Anaheim , California , May 16 to 21. These four days included two general sessions (including an address from the postmaster general) and 17 seminar sessions.

The focus of the forum was on the new barcoding system. The Postal Service is moving toward including many of the existing barcodes and information into one "intelligent" barcode that will take up less space on the envelope. For United Church of God mailings, it would include the address change service code and the postnet barcode. If we chose to use confirmation in the future, it would include that as well.

One benefit to the Church would be reduced cost on mail returns and quicker information return regarding changes of address. The new barcode will also help the Postal Service move toward reducing paperwork and submitting postage statements electronically.

—Connie Seelig

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Greece Tour Video Available on Web

The first video edited from the lectures that were presented in April during the Biblical Education Tour of Greece is now on the Web. "The Cultural Background of First Corinthians" by David Johnson was given on the streets of ancient Corinth . Peter Eddington edited in some video footage of ancient Corinth and included scripture references. It is 26 minutes long.

The file may be viewed in Flash format at http://abc.ucg.org/tours and both a .wmv video file and an .mp3 audio file are available for download. These are only at Web resolution. In the future, some of these may be put on high-definition Blu-Ray discs once most of the lectures are edited.

On the Ambassador Bible Center (ABC) home page the lecture is also listed in the right-hand column under "Listen to Classes" at http://abc.ucg.org. Eventually we hope to list all the edited videos there for Church members to view. The next video will be the "Mars Hill" scripture reading by David Register, which will be about five minutes in length when completed.

—Peter Eddington

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Transfer Announced

Tom and Sarah Kirkpatrick will move from the home office to pastor the Birmingham and Gadsden, Alabama, congregations. They should make this move and assume the pastorate before the Feast. In the meantime, David Dobson will continue to pastor the congregations.

The Kirkpatricks served in the U.S. field ministry prior to his becoming treasurer for the Church in 1998.

—Jim Franks

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Springfield 50th Set for Aug. 9-10

The Springfield, Missouri, congregation will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a special Sabbath and weekend Aug. 9-10. The celebration will begin Aug. 9 at the Teamsters' Union Hall, 1850 East Division, Springfield, Missouri. Fellowship and snacks will begin at 1 p.m., with services to follow at 2:30. Members will have time for reminiscing after services, with pictures and stories of the "early days" of the Springfield congregation.

A catered dinner will begin at 6 (cost $5 per adult, $3 per child 4-12), followed by more fellowshipping. We'll top off the evening with music for dancing, as well as table games and cards. Members who have attended in Springfield over the years are invited to bring old pictures (be sure to put your name on the back). On Sunday we'll have a picnic at an area park for everyone who would like to attend.

In order to help us plan for the evening, if you plan to attend, please respond by e-mail to donppir@aol.com or to michael_blackwell@ucg.org or by mail to P.O. Box 4045, Springfield, MO 65808. If you could give us the names of all in your family who attended in Springfield as well as the years you attended, it would help.

Please pass this information on to anyone you know who would be interested in helping us celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Springfield congregation.

—Michael Blackwell

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What's New on the Web?

New ABC Video.

View the new 2008 Ambassador Bible Center video—Gaining Godly Wisdom, Building Godly Character —online at abc.ucg.org/video/.

Educational Tour Video.

Watch a video presentation by ABC instructor David Johnson covering the "Cultural Background of First Corinthians" on location in Greece at abc.ucg.org/tours/.

Beyond Today Commentaries.

Access more than 60 short video commentaries covering topics from after death to the spirit world at www.beyondtoday.tv/programs/commentary/. After you watch the commentary, share the video with friends via an e-mail message or post a link at your favorite social networking site by using the "ShareThis" link.

Featured Link

Singles' Web site for singles in the Church. ucgsingles.org/

If you have questions or comments, please contact: webmaster@ucg.org