Thank you for the warm welcome to UCG! I appreciate everyone who has reached out with their events, needs, and to share about their roles in our congregation.

Tristan and Holden have been working hard to address some of the sound issues we’ve been having with WaveCast and our YouTube live services. We had assistance from volunteers and also Sound Ideas to work on issues with wiring and connections – we appreciate the members who have offered to contribute to help offset the additional expenses incurred in this project. If you have any additional feedback about sound, please feel free to email me and we’ll work to address it – some of our members are connected with us virtually and we want everyone to be able to participate and be included.

Please continue to send feedback and information about our communications, what is working, what is not working, what you’d like to see, and any other thoughts you have so I can incorporate them into the information we’ll review as we work on a communications plan for our church.

When sending information about events, please be mindful of deadlines, for Events email and site announcements, please send materials by noon the previous Thursday, for Sunday bulletins please send in materials by noon of the previous Tuesday.  Newsletter deadlines are listed at the bottom of Events messages and newsletters. Please gather all information into one message rather than spread over multiple ones to help prevent errors or omissions.

I would like to ask our congregation for patience with all of us staff, volunteers, and ministers during this time of reconnection and transition. We have had a larger than normal volume of messages, calls, visitors, and emails and are doing our best to respond in a timely manner and be as present as possible in our communications. Thank you for all your work to make United Church of Gainesville such a vibrant, active church and an inclusive spiritual home for everyone in our community.

Warm regards,

Ligia Ortega