How we've evolved! From the Epistles of the New Testament, a literary form of the classic letter which comprise many books in our Christian scriptures... and now to email! A whole new literary form, with rules now just being invented and agreed to in our culture. Hence the occasion to offer a few guidelines as to how we can enhance our community's life through this mode of communication.

Joining the List And Its Purpose

The First Presbyterian Church Yahoo!Groups email list is open to members and friends who wish to be kept up to date or wish to inform the community about late-breaking news of interest to our community. It is, in a sense, an extension of our prayers and calls to act. If you would like to be on the list, send a message to the church webmaster.

What's Appropriate

Only list members can send messages. A good test of whether your message is appropriate is to ask yourself four questions:

1. Would this be something that would get printed in the bulletin or 1st Pres Press?
2. Would this be appropriate to raise in our prayers or calls to act during Sunday worship?
3. Would you be comfortable if someone else in the circle raised a similar issue with which you had some or even strong disagreement?
4. Are you keeping it brief and to the point, letting people know where they can get more information or where they can join in further discussion, if they desire?

What's Inappropriate

1. Internet Jokes
2. Entire newspaper/magazine articles (please just share a summary and a link to the entire story)
3. Chain letters
4. Attachments (see note about attachments below)
5. Virus warnings (often end up being hoaxes)
6. Conversations (replies to other people's postings)

Conversations

Generally, please reply directly to the original sender of a message. Our Yahoo!Groups list was not intended for carrying on a conversation or debate. If you disagree with something someone has said, or even if you want to clarify or add more information, please consider contacting the original sender directly. Leave it up to that person to decide if a follow-up message is needed.

Before clicking "send" please look carefully at your "To," "CC," and "BCC" fields to make sure that fprespa@yahoogroups.com is not one of the addresses to which you are replying.

Political versus Partisan Topics

Some of the sensitivities that are often raised are around what's "political" and what's "partisan." The theological understanding this congregation teaches is that the former (things that are "political") are of course integral to our faith and our work, and so we often talk about political issues in church (e.g. advocating for the rights of children, fighting poverty, promoting affordable housing, concern for the environment, etc). What is less clear, however, and what often causes offence, is when there is advocacy for a given candidate or party as a part of our involvement in the faith community.

It is less clear that this or that candidate is the one who most fits the Christian values and issues for which we advocate out of our faith commitment. We have condemned this practice when it has been used by the so-called religious right, which frequently backs certain candidates who supposedly are running on “Christian” values.

Attachments

Please do not send attachments to the entire congregation through the YahooGroups. The danger of spreading viruses is high and our daily digest readers don't get attachments. If there is a document that should be shared with many people in the congregation, please send it to the webmaster and it will be posted to the web site. Then, you can send a link to the document in your YahooGroup message. This is much more convenient for the congregation and the document will be scanned for viruses before it is posted.

Inbox Too Big? Try the Daily Digest!

You can cut down on the amount of email you receive from this list by changing your preferences. You can receive a daily digest of all messages, rather than a separate email for each message sent. Click here to e-mail the moderator so that your preferences can be changed to daily digest.

Please note that if you receive the daily digest, you should always be careful that if you wish to reply to one part of the digest, you must carefully enter the recipient's email address into your email TO list, rather than just clicking reply to the digest itself. If you do reply directly to the digest, everyone on the list gets your reply (not a good thing).

Moderator

Yahoo!Groups membership is controlled by the moderator, but messages are not controlled at this time. We would like to keep it that way. The best way to ensure the easiest flow of information is for each person to think before posting. Use the "Prayer and Calls To Act" test. If you wouldn't say aloud to the entire congregation in the sanctuary what you are about to send via Yahoo!Groups, click cancel! We hope that these thoughts and suggestions will help us to use this forum as a means of enriching and deepening our life as a community of faith.

We hope we can work together to faithfully and prayerfully accomplish that end.

Peace,

Rob Martin, Jeff Vamos, and Craig Wiesner