Registration is now open for the Virtual Clergy Benefits Webinars. This three-session series delivers safely and effectively the information clergy need for financial wellness throughout their ministry and as they make preparations for retirement. Visit our event webpage for more details and to register for the first webinar by March 11.
Webinars
The Church Responds to Mental Health – Two Webinars!
The Center for Leadership Excellence invites you to the final two webinars in our series, The Church Responds to Mental Health, with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).
First, on March 10, 12pm-1pm, join us for In Our Own Voice, a webinar that changes attitudes, assumptions, and ideas about people with mental health conditions by providing a personal perspective, as leaders with lived experience talk openly about what it’s like to have a mental health condition.
Then, on March 24, 11am-12pm, join us for FaithNet, a webinar that focuses on the church and how congregations large and small can create ministries and inclusive spaces that are welcoming to persons and families living with mental illness.
We hope you will join us for one or both of these webinars as we work together to learn about the struggles faced by those with mental health conditions and strive to create more open and welcoming spaces for all of our sisters and brothers in Christ.
Online Learning Opportunities
We’ve added a new page to the Treasurer’s Office website! As we hear of interesting and useful online learning opportunities relating to church finances, insurance, clergy taxes, etc., we will share them with you on this new page. Check back for registration info and links back to replay videos where available.
Clergy Tax Webinar Video Available
The video from the Clergy Tax Webinar on January 21, 2021, is available for viewing. Handouts of the slides used during the presentations with links to the resource materials mentioned can also be downloaded for your reference. Topics covered include how to do a clergy W-2 and employee classifications. While this video is only general information and is not intended to be tax advice, please direct any questions on the topics covered to our Conference Treasurer’s Office.
Detecting Disinformation Free Webinars
The Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church recently hosted four webinars on Detecting Disinformation. The recordings of those webinars are available to view online for free.
In our era of 24-hour news and social media, it is more important than ever to understand how to know if the information you are receiving is factually true. This engaging, enlightening, and eye-opening series will show you how easy it is for someone to create and spread information that is not true and how easy it can be for you to detect the validity of the information you see online.
Using current, real-world examples, Al Tompkins will walk you step-by-step through how to verify the truth of information online. He will introduce you to many free tools and techniques that make this work take only a few minutes of your time.
The Presenter
Al Tompkins, the presenter for this webinar series, is an Emmy-award winning journalist. He also happens to be married to a clergywoman in the Florida Conference. Here is Al’s bio from the Poynter Institute where he serves as Senior Faculty.
Al Tompkins is one of America’s most requested broadcast journalism and multimedia teachers and coaches. After nearly 30 years working as a reporter, photojournalist, producer, investigative reporter, head of special investigations and News Director, Tompkins joined the Poynter Institute where he is Senior Faculty for Broadcast and Online. He is the author of “Aim for the Heart” a textbook about multimedia storytelling that has been adopted by more than 100 universities worldwide. He has taught in 49 states, Canada, Egypt, Denmark, South Africa, Iceland and the Caymans.
https://www.poynter.org/author/atompkins/
The Series
This Detecting Disinformation webinar series was specifically designed for pastors and church leaders. Al often makes connections between the topic and scripture. He also points out why this information is particularly important for pastors, whether it be using truthful sources for your sermon illustrations or monitoring your own name for lies that may be told about you online.
These are some of the topics covered in the webinar series:
- How to know if an image has been altered
- How search engines and social media decide what you see
- The motivations behind disinformation
- Find the origin of the latest rumor that one of your members emailed to you
- How a claim can be “accurate” but not “true”
- How to verify polls and studies
- How to fact-check using a three-step process
Al also provided a PDF of several of the tools that he demonstrates during the series, but many more are mentioned throughout the presentations.
For Youth, Older Adults & Everyone
The Poynter Institute provides disinformation detection programs for the public that are specifically designed for youth and seniors.
Share the MediaWise page with the youth in your church and they will find a Teen Fact-Checking Network along with social media influencers to follow that will help them learn to recognize truth and combat disinformation.
MediaWise for Seniors offers a self-directed fact-checking course and a live fact-checking seminar for older adults to learn how to tell fact from fiction.
Share the Navigating Digital Information YouTube playlist with anyone in your congregation to help build skills in wise discernment for the digital age.
Our Responsibility
As Christians and as leaders, it is our responsibility to know that the information we are sharing online or in a sermon is factually true. It is also our responsibility as loving neighbors to teach others to use wise discernment in search of the truth.
View these resources, learn these skills, and then teach them to your congregation. We all need to do our part to fight disinformation and bring the truth to light.
Featured Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay