New Email System at South Calgary

It seems like a contradiction, but we have never faced so many challenges to put out news from our church despite the many ways to communicate nowadays.

Many apps, social media platforms or new technologies give people so many options to choose from that each one has adopted their own favourite communication tool. Some have adopted mainly Facebook, some others Instagram, some do not read emails anymore, some others do not have access or interest in technology and would like to receive news in paper. That means, if we want to communicate effectively with our members, we would have to produce the same article in many different ways.

Also, we have a privacy issue challenge. Before COVID, we could easily announce names, request prayers from the pulpit, and still, keep this information within our local church members and regular attenders. The only thing posted on the web was the audio of the message preached every Sunday. Also, bulletins were distributed only to those who were present on Sunday mornings.

Today, since we have started broadcasting our services online, we have to be extra careful with our members' privacy. Once we have published our Sunday Services on YouTube through our website, the whole service becomes public, not just to Calgary or Canada, but to the entire world. Even emails are not a safe way to communicate private information.

Once public, this information can be used for scams, frauds, identity theft, and other malicious ways to deceive people. For this reason, we do not want to mention names, prayer requests in the service, or any personal information that could compromise your privacy.

So, how can we bring important personal information to you without risking your privacy?

We are going to adopt a new email system. Whenever we have private information that needs to be mentioned, we will add to the email message a link to a secure and password protected webpage, as we have done with our AGMs. Therefore you will be able to access some more sensitive information without having to worry about privacy.

If we want to communicate private information with you, we will add a link on our 'South Calgary Updates' emails to a password-protected web page entitled Inside News.

Our super-secret password is Psalms133 — which 1s a good reminder for us of "How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity!"

Through this new system, we hope to keep us connected and informed with all important information related to our local church.