Join us Wednesday, August 13, at noon (EDT) for a live interview with Andy Sikora, Director of Church Multiplication. We will chat about the Movement System Training Catalysts that have just launched and set up a series of conversations we will be having with our church planters in the coming weeks.

The conversation will be live at the Church of the United Brethren in Christ Facebook page. Head there now to follow the page so you don’t miss the notification when the conversation begins.

Join us live in the comments during the conversation. We would love to hear from you and take a couple of questions during the stream.

The videos of our evening sessions at National Conference are in high demand and many of you have expressed interest in being able to go back and re-watch a service or peek in on a service you were not able to attend. We are thrilled there is so much interest!

There is good news! We will post the videos and share links so you can view them and share them with your congregation. But with that good news come a little bit of bad news. We do not yet have possession of those videos. As soon as we recieve the content from our production team, we will be sure to post them.

In the meantime, here are a few photos from the conference. Thank you for your patience.

While most of the photos you will see and the stories you will hear of this year’s national conference, it is important to note that one of the primary reasons we gather as a denominational body every two years is to do the business of the denomination. This includes hearing reports presented by national directors, discussing and voting on discipline revision proposals, and electing denominational leaders. 

Director Reports

This year we welcomed Dr. Robert Pepper, President of Huntington University, to the stage to report as the Director of Higher Education. This was the first time many of us had met Dr. Pepper, and he was eager to share what he has learned about HU since he moved to town as well as his vision for what is ahead for the university under his leadership. 

You can read Dr. Pepper’s report along with the reports from other national directors here.

Discipline Revision

In 2024, Bishop Todd Fetters assembled a task force, led by Pastor Gary Dilley, to take a fresh look at how the United Brethren Discipline defines “church.” Historically, it had been defined by a certain number of members living within a specified radius of the church building. However, as culture shifts and the church expands, new expressions of the church are coming into existence that are no longer bound by a physical location or membership from a geographical radius. 

This task force spent months examining and scrutinizing, through biblical, theological, and historical reviews, our traditional definition of a local church. They developed a white paper to present to the conference based on their work along with fourteen proposals for discipline revision. All fourteen proposals passed, some with a few minor wording adjustments. 

Election Results

The final important piece of business of the meeting involved electing the Bishop and four members of the Executive Leadership Team. Tim Sherman, chair of the nominating committee, presented the ballots for those positions, and votes were cast. The results were as follows:

Office of Bishop

Todd Fetters was elected to another four-year term.

Executive Leadership Team

Brent Leichty (east region) and Jason Holliday (west region) were elected as clergy representatives.

Tyler Bates (central region) and Bob Tobey (north region) were elected as lay representatives. 

And one more thing…

 

We took the opportunity to celebrate Cathy Reich, whose love and passion for the church have been evident for the 27 years she served at the United Brethren National Office. Cathy retired in the fall of 2024 but was able to pop back in to help us with a few details leading up to this conference.

We will share more about the conference in the coming days, including photos from the week and videos of the worship sessions.    

Plans are in place and more of the details are coming into focus. As they do, we will continue to post new updates to the National Conference site.

This week you will find two new updates:

  • The business session is now available in the list of menu options. While there is not much yet to share, you will find information related to how many lay delegates your church can send as voting members of the conference.
  • You can now register for the golf outing. The outing will take place on Thursday, July 17, with a shotgun start at 1:00 pm. The cost is $60 per golfer. Visit the event registration page for more details.

There are a few more updates coming soon:

  • We are preparing to launch an online, print-on-demand store where you will be able to purchase 2025 National Conference apparel and other United Brethren gear, and have it shipped directly to your home.
  • For those interested in the UB Youth Camp (for high school students and youth leaders) or the middle school day away (both hosted by Huntington University), keep an eye out for a Frequently Asked Questions link on the Student Events page.

One final update the you will not find on that site:

  • We have over 100 people registered for National Conference already and we hope you can join us. Registration is open until June 30, but why wait? Register now!

 

Terrell Sanders is president of MainStreetOpen, a web development company that played a major role in creating UBCentral.org and UB.org. Last week he sent out a “Website Audit Checklist.” He recommends taking a good look at your church website a couple times a year, and there’s no better time than at the beginning of the year.

  • Verify that your contact information is still accurate. We’re talking church name, address, phone numbers, email addresses, etc.
  • Verify that the content is current. Go through all of your pages. Is there info that needs to be deleted or updated?
  • Verify that your staff information is current. Check names, phone extensions, emails, family descriptions, etc. Is it time for new staff photos?
  • Verify that all links work. This means links to pages in your own site (including all navigation links), and links to other sites.
  • Verify that all programming works. Test functions like contact forms, database lookups, and other bells and whistles.
  • Make a site backup. Store it on a CD or a different server than the one which hosts your website.
  • Check for security updates. If you use a content management system, the software may need some security updates.
  • Most important: Verify that your site still makes a good first impression. Many potential visitors will check out your website before coming for a visit.

Steve Dennie, Communications Director

Since the start of the US National Conference a little over a week ago, the United Brethren Facebook page has gained 75 followers–or more technically, “likes.”

The number of “likes,” as of July 15, stands at 573. So we pretty much obliterated the 500 barrier. A 15% increase in one week.

I posted several hundred photos from National Conference last week. Posting photos, I’ve found, always draws new people to your Facebook page. I’ve seen that with the Facebook page for my own church, Anchor Community Church. I frequently post photos that I’ve taken at Anchor events. When you “tag” someone in a photo–that is, when you identify a Facebook member in a photo–then that photo appears on their own Facebook wall. That makes it visible to all of their friends.

In Anchor’s case, the people who “like” Anchor’s page average 300 Facebook friends of their own. Most of those friends have probably never been to the Anchor page. But when they see a photo of their friend or relative, they click on on it, and suddenly there they are, on Anchor’s page. Some of them, then, tag people in photos who may be on their own Facebook friend list, but who may not be on Anchor’s “like” list…yet. Then those photos appear on other people’s walls, visible to a whole new set of friends–a second degree of separation, if you will.

One or two degrees of separation quickly adds up.  If Anchor’s page has 300 friends, and each of those persons have 300 friends (and that’s the actual average–I checked a while back), you’re talking 90,000 people…each of whom have 300 friends. Sure, lots and lots of duplication. But still.

That no doubt explains the surge in “likes” for the UB page. I’ve tagged United Brethren people in many of the photos. So, for instance, when UB persons see a photo of their pastor at the conference, they click on the photo to see what it’s about, and find themselves on the United Brethren page. And they think, “I didn’t realize there was a United Brethren Facebook page.” They click the “like” button…and there you have it, 75 new people added just because I posted some photos.

Ah, the power of Facebook!

Steve Dennie, Communications Director

Facebook has reached critical mass–over 600 million users worldwide. Lots of people in your church probably use Facebook–far more than you realize. Which begs the question: so what?

Email long ago reached critical mass. If someone was connected to the internet, they probably had an email address. So it made sense to create church email lists as a way to contact people.

Now you should consider adding Facebook to the mix. Your people are already using Facebook–young and old alike. It’s just a matter of going where they already go.

My own church, Anchor Community Church, has been using Facebook for nearly four years. We’ve had our own Facebook Page for two years (a growing number of UB churches have their own Page). Anchor has an attendance of about 130, but have 312 people who “like” our page. We don’t actively promote it. We don’t encourage people to create a Facebook account and come “like” our page. It has just blossomed naturally.

But for me, the benefits of Facebook have little to do with the church page itself. Rather, it’s about people interacting outside of church. Facebook helps promote community, even if it’s only in superficial ways (and on Facebook, there is an abundance of superficial). People who may seldom talk to each other at church may connect regularly on Facebook.

As a layperson at Anchor, I learn a great deal about my fellow Anchorites from Facebook. By reading people’s status messages–things they write which tell something about what’s happening in their life or what they’re thinking about at the moment–I catch numerous glimpses into their life. And that gives me opportunity to interact with them on Facebook and at church.

I learn when people are sick or in the hospital, and how they’re doing as the days pass. I learn about financial hardships, relationship problems, new births, jobs lost and jobs found, myriad concerns, car problems…you name it. I can then respond directly on Facebook, giving encouragement or congratulations or whatever is appropriate.

I learn about hobbies, extended family, favorite sports teams, books they’re reading, TV shows and movies they’re watching, vacation plans, and much more. I can then use this information to strike up a conversation at church, perhaps with someone I don’t know well. Or I can simply comment right on Facebook.

When someone misses church, I send them a note on Facebook saying that I missed them. I compliment people for this and that. Other Anchor people do the same. It’s neat.

When we have special events, I take lots of photos. I post them on the Anchor Facebook page. This draws not only people from the church, but their friends and relatives and distant acquaintances.

And I’m only touching the surface of what you can do with Facebook. Like plugging upcoming events.

It’s not something we officially promote or encourage. It just happens. You don’t see this kind of thing happening with email, Twitter, a church website, or most anything else (young people avoid email, and older people, me included, don’t care to learn all the insider terminology and techniques of Twitter).

With Facebook, you don’t need to goad people into signing up for something new. They’re already signed up. Just go join the conversation.

We continually increase the number of people who receive UB information electronically. Here are the latest numbers.

Facebook: 446 people now “Like” the United Brethren page. We add new persons every week. Last March, the number was 230, so we’ve just about doubled in a year. Go to: facebook.com/unitedbrethren

Feedburner: 204 subscribers. Feedburner is the best way to keep current with UB news, since the news comes to your email every day. People who subscribe to Feedburner love it. Subscribe here.

Connect Email: 1100 subscribers, including people from most of the countries where we minister. Connect is an occasional, as-needed email (the last one was sent out March11, 2011). It would be great if you collected subscriptions from others in your church. We don’t use this list for anything else. Subscribe here.

WAVES: 277 subscribers. This is a fairly new quarterly email from the Women’s Ministry Leadership Team. It’s designed as a resource for women. Two editions have gone out so far. Subscribe here.

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You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm the subscription. All you need to do is click on a link.

Every day, not long after 11 a.m., you’ll receive an email containing the news items posted during the previous 24 hours on UBCentral.org. The emails look like this.

Steve Dennie, Communications Director
Last Thursday I attended a Communications Roundtable in Indianapolis. It’s a bi-monthly group of people who do communications for large churches. The sponsor is Fishhook, a really wonderful Christian communications/branding firm in Indy.

The topic for this meeting was “Media Relations.” We had several speakers, including a religion reporter for the Indianapolis Star newspaper. Here are some of their comments and suggestions:

  • Newspapers are in a time of change. They are trying to do more (like adding websites) with fewer people.
  • If you want them to cover an event, give two weeks of lead time.
  • Be understanding if they can’t cover your church event. Newspaper people aren’t able to get out as much as in the past.
  • Newspapers are reducing the size of their printed papers, and writing shorter, more tightly-written stories.
  • Understand that editors and reporters get scores of phone calls, emails, and voice messages while working on strict deadlines. It’s easy for things to slip through the cracks.
  • Leave short voice messages, and identify yourself and your church clearly.
  • They like photo features.
  • They are always looking for digital material, such as video and photos, that they can use on the web.
  • They appreciate when you suggest stories and story angles.
  • They prefer stories about people, rather than about institutions.
  • Understand that their main responsibility is to their readers. They are looking for the angle that will make the story most interesting to the bulk of their readers.
  • Develop a relationship with reporters and editors. Don’t just pitch them information to get free publicity. Relationships will serve you much better in the long run.
  • Don’t bombard them with information about every little church event. We get excited about what’s happening in our church and want to throw it all out to the public. But before long, they’ll just begin ignoring your submissions. Be strategic in suggesting stories. Once a quarter is good.
  • A good story angle: how something your church does ties into trends, topics, and issues of interest to the entire community.
  • Help the reporter by providing people who can talk about the issue or event, and suggest visuals (like photos).
  • What reporters see as fair and objective may not seem that way to you. Trust their judgment. They’re not out to get you. They’re just ordinary people who probably attend a church near you.