How to adequately get the word out about Conference programming has always been a challenge. Your Conference staff spends countless hours developing events - webinars, workshops, trainings and gatherings - designed to equip church leaders to effectively carry out their ministries. Add to that the events that our covenant partners offer, and the list of opportunities becomes very, very long. We include a sampling of the events in our Wednesday 5 Things to Know & Share Newsletter, and in other newsletters, but we know not everyone who could benefit from these opportunities is hearing about them. 

In an attempt to address this, the Conference is launching a new email newsletter strictly focused on listing upcoming events sponsored by the Conference and our partner organizations. It will be published twice a month, on the first and third Sunday evenings, and will be sent to current 5 Things and former Weekly Digest subscribers and anyone else who signs up. 

You are no doubt familiar with the difficulties in this day and age of being heard above the noise. We are all inundated by so much email that newsletter editors like myself are told that when 35 to 40 percent of readers - yes, way less than half - open the email, that's reason to celebrate. And that's just opening it. In addition, attention spans in our culture are shrinking, which means the percentage who will actually read an email newsletter top to bottom, who will click on links to "read more;" those numbers are much lower.

Here at the Conference setting we've tried to work within these realities in a couple of ways:

1. We do not rely solely on email to get the word out. Social media - Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn - is an important part of our communication strategy. We encourage you, if you are on one of these platforms, to not only follow our pages but to share posts that you think will be of interest to others in your congregation.
    
2. We don't rely on a single email newsletter to distribute information. We send a variety of email newsletters and updates to specific audiences. We target some emails to people engaged in particular types of ministries: faith formation, stewardship, justice ministries. We target others to the region in which our churches are located.  Still others receive a weekly devotional, and our camp enthusiasts get updates from our Silver Lake Camp & Retreat Center. We recently launched a clergy-specific newsletter, and we are now launching our event listing email. 

I encourage you to review your email subscriptions, and make sure you are receiving what is of interest to you. Do so by entering your email address here: www.sneucc.org/subscribe. You will receive a link to a page where you can check your current subscriptions and see what else is available. (And if you aren't receiving anything, you can sign up!)

We are always trying to strike a balance between getting the word out effectively and not overwhelming people with too much email. It is a delicate dance, and I welcome your feedback as to how we are doing.

In the meantime, I would ask you to help us get the word out in your congregations. Forward our emails. Copy and paste items of interest from our newsletters into yours. If you are a church pastor or administrator, log in to your Church Dashboard to make sure we have contact information for the leaders in your church. We will keep doing our best to spread the word about resources and programming available through the Conference. But we'll only be successful with your help.