Category: Announcements

Giving Options at Calvary
Recently, we added the option of giving online through our website! It can be accessed through the main page of our website (on the top bar).

In our electronic age, fewer and fewer people are actually using paper checks, and so we thought it was time to provide this service. Many of our congregants also appreciate the ability to give in a recurring (weekly or monthly) fashion in an automated way.

However, online giving does come with a small fee, of course, so it may not be the right choice for every individual. So we thought it would be useful to some of you to recap some of the ways it is possible to give to the church and their benefits. Here are 3 ways:
1. Option 1: Putting cash/ paper checks in the offering plate every week/month.
  Description: This how people have been doing in for decades, and it still works! ‘Nuff said.
  
  Benefits: Simple, Low-tech, but you have to remember to bring your checks and giving envelopes.
  
  Transaction Costs: $0
2. Option 2: Billpay through your bank
  Description: Most banks allow you to “pay bills” online, many without charge. You can also schedule recurring payments, e.g to pay your pledge weekly or monthly. To setup this capability, contact your bank or check their website. The bank will mail a check on your behalf to the church for the amount and frequency you desire. You can designate the desired giving category in the check memo. A number of people in our church already use this option as their preferred option, because its free and easy once you set it up. To set this up, you will need the Church’s mailing address, which is:
  
  Calvary Community Church
  PO Box 2117
  East Millstone, NJ
  08875
  
  Benefits: Can be completely automatic and recurring in both monthly and weekly frequencies, you can give to any category (general, missions, etc.)
  
  Transaction Costs: Usually $0 (included as a benefit from your bank, sometimes has to meet certain account qualifications)
3. Option 3: Online Giving through ACH, debit, and credit cards through Tithe.ly (NEW for 2017!)
  Description: We just started offering this option earlier this year! You can set this up online (link at the top of our main website) to give both recurring and/or one-time through bank transfer/Debit/Credit.
  
  Benefits: Fast, convenient, easy to use and set up. One time gifts can be easily given through your mobile phone, and recurring gifts are also easy to set up online. Cancel or modify anytime. You can give to any accounts (missions, general, etc.) and it gives you automated, emailed receipts. (For example, I set up for myself one weekly recurrance for my general offerings and one monthly recurrance for my faith promise giving supporting our kingdom workers around the world). Pretty much takes any payment option you can imagine. Works great especially for those for whom Billpay is not an option.
  
  Transaction Fees: Here’s the rub: unlike Billpay, there are transaction fees. Note that there is an checkbox to enable the option to cover the transaction fees yourself, which we would encourage you to consider. Here are the fees:
  
  ACH/Bank Transfer: 1% of gift+ 30 cents per transaction
  Credit or Debit card (NOT Amex): 2.9% of gift+ 30 cents per transaction
  AMEX: 3.5% gift + 30 cents per transaction
Regardless of how you choose to give, thanks to all who give to support the Lord’s ministry at Calvary, and more importantly, your partnership in helping us use the funds faithfully to advance the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in the church and the community!
October 27, 2017
New Church Admins

After 13 years of faithful service, Denise Defalco will be stepping down from the Administrative Assistant position for Calvary, due to changing life circumstances (although she will still be around in the church!)

Denise began serving as the administrative assistant for Calvary (a part-time, paid position) in February of 2004. Upon taking the job from her predecessor, she successfully made the job much more efficient by fitting all the work that was previously done for 30 hours/week into just15 hours/week, while not sacrificing any quality!

Denise has been an exceedingly faithful and cheerful worker for Calvary. I can testify after working with her for many years that she is very pleasant to work with, a hard worker, and as reliable as they get!

Among her many, many responsibilities (we counted…there are like 72 of them!), Denise creates the bulletins every week, updates the calendars, creates the membership packets, creates Sunday School material, sends out bouquets for weddings and funerals, answers emails for the church, takes care of billing and reimbursements, and processes the blue guest cards.

Throughout her work, she has demonstrated faithfulness, thoroughness, care, and love. She has always been willing to do what it takes to get the job done.

Please join me in thanking Denise for all her years of service! Her experience, dedication, and passion for the job will be sorely missed.

The New Church Administrative Assistants

And now … the new administrative assistants!! Da da da!

For now, we’ve decided to split up Denise‘s job into two new jobs. So there will be two new administrative assistants to fill the large void left by Denise.

The two new administrative assistants will be … Sherrian Crumbley and Shae Bibbo!

Both Sherrian and Shae have been faithful servants to the church for many years, and we know they will do great in this new role.

Sherrian brings impressive technology skills, and has already been working as a virtual administrative assistant in her secular job for some time now. She will be using her skills to look at modernizing and optimizing the church admin role with electronic record keeping, etc.

On the other hand, Shae brings a bachelor’s degree in Christian Ministries, and has already been serving as a volunteer capacity in managing various projects in the church, including communications with outside vendors. She has done a great job, and we look forward to expanding her role.

For more about Sherrian and Shae (and the rest of the leadership/staff at Calvary), please see our website page here.

Would you please join me in welcoming both Shae and Sherrian to the staff at Calvary? We’re super excited about them and I know they will both do great for us!

June 16, 2017
New Speakers

Last week was the grand debut of the long awaited speaker and sound system installation!

Many hours of work went into this project. Countless hours were spent researching the proper equipment, trying to figuring out what would be best for the unique design and acoustics of the church sanctuary.

Aside from the months of research for this, the actual days of putting it in was incredible! You would never know because by Sunday everything was back in tip top shape. It required crawling into dirty spaces and places and removing heavy wiring and cables. It was a massive amount of work.

We just wanted to send a quick thanks to all for their hard work. We hope you are able to enjoy better sound quality!

Many many thanks for using your freedom to serve us humbly in love!

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” -Gal. 5:13

June 14, 2017
Our Newest Deacon Candidate: Brian Gussis

Please join us in welcoming our newest deacon candidate, Brian Gussis.

Brian, Natalie, and their two children.

Brian and has wife Natalie began attending Calvary in 2010. Brian has been active in our Missions ministry and he and Natalie currently administer our Child Protection Policy. They have been a blessing to our congregation and we are thankful that he has prayerfully accepted to serve Calvary in this way.

1 Timothy 3:8-12 (NASB) Deacons likewise must be men of dignity, not double-tongued, or addicted to much wine or fond of sordid gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. These men must also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons if they are beyond reproach. Women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. Deacons must be husbands of only one wife, and good managers of their children and their own households.

June 1, 2017
New Bulletins!

As many might have noticed, the church has recently adopted a new bulletin design. It’s something that we’ve wanted to do for awhile now, since the old format has been static for many years now. It’s also a celebration of the name change we are doing to Calvary Community Church.

The basic idea and goal of the redesign was to convey information more efficiently and more beautifully/professionally while ultimately saving paper. This new bulletin format will have a “special announcements” section in the back. Many of the things we are currently using bulletin inserts for will be in this section, more concisely and sometimes with a nice icon.

We believe this will be more modern and streamlined while also saving on paper. Special handouts can still be made for truly special occasions, but for the most part the world has moved on from clip-art based bulletin inserts, and we think that we can put them behind us while conveying their information in a more consumable format.

We are especially thankful that God has provided Sherrian to work on this project!

May 20, 2017
Membership At Calvary
There’s been some changes in the last year or so in our church’s membership process, so I thought a blog post might be helpful to clarify.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so basically it goes like this:

Here are some reasons we wanted to change things up from the old way:
- We’re always looking for ways to do things better, and a bit more efficiently in general.
- We wanted to eliminate the possibility that someone could be baptized at our church, but not be a member. This creates a weird “limbo” status that we don’t believe is Biblical. In the past, people have gone years in this state, and we’re still working to fix that problem. In this new scheme, you’re a member as soon as you’re baptized.
- Membership class used to be 10 weeks, followed by several months more while people waited to be interviewed. This seemed too long. We’ve shortened it to 4 weeks, with a subsequent 4 week new-members class where you can get to know the church more. (We toyed with the idea of making it even shorter, but we decided we enjoy the process of getting to know people through multiple-week interactions. But we’re open to further change in the future.)
- Having separate Baptism and Membership classes seemed to create a situation where we were teaching some of the same material twice (and certain people had to go through the same material twice). Combining baptism and membership class allows us to move people through more efficiently.
- In the past there has been confusion over whether people who have already been baptized become members after their membership interview, or if they have to wait for the Baptism service.. We wanted to clarify that people who have previously been baptized become members right after their membership interview, so they don’t have to wait until the Baptism service. Of course, those who need to be baptized must wait until they are baptized, and they will emerge from the water as members!
We’ve been in the process of transitioning to this new way (and refining as we go) in the past year or so. However, not all of this has been implemented yet … we are still working on some of the details. Here are some of the things we’re still working on that hopefully we’ll get in the process soon.
- We’d like to welcome new members in a more formal way after baptism services, and to have a welcoming email sent out and their names listed in the bulletin. Up until now, we haven’t done a great job communicating when people actually became members (this blog post is supposed to be a step towards fixing that!)
- We’d like to have new member testimonies publicly read in service. We’ve done this a few times last year, but we haven’t been consistent with it. Though its ‘optional,’ we’d like to do them more often as a way for us to get to know our new members.
- We’d like to have new members over to an elder or deacon’s house for dinner to discuss where they can get plugged in.
Church membership is simply a way to publicly declare our commitment, responsibility, and accountability to our church body. We’re grateful to be a part of a church that values church membership!
February 7, 2017
Plugged In
As a way to help the church become more familiar with the various ministries in the church, we are scheduling something new, called “Plugged In” presentations. These presentations will be held directly after the service on certain Sundays and will take about 5 to 10 minutes. Each presentation will highlight one ministry of the church and be led by that ministry’s leaders or their delegate.

The goals of these presentations to the entire church are to:
1. learn why each ministry exists
2. how it functions
3. blessings that have come out of the ministry
4. how you can help,
5. what to pray for.
We hope and pray that “Plugged In” will help the church body feel more connected to what we are accomplishing here at CBC and to step in and serve in areas that have need!
December 22, 2016