September 30, 2011


Missouri Conference News High-Tech Chat Staying safe on Facebook


By United Methodist Communications Social media doesn’t have


Gary Moreau cleans up litter out of a small pond in a neighborhood park for Serve 2011. Serve 2011 continued from page 1A


with the church. The planning of the event


has been in the works since last spring by the staff of the Office of Creative Ministries, but many churches just started considering it in the last couple of months. Rev. Virginia Barnes pitched the idea of participating in SERVE2011 to the administrative council at Rocheport UMC, her new appointment after Annual Conference. They liked it, and decided to turn it over to the whole church. They collected ideas for mis-


sion projects during worship one Sunday, and had 15 ideas sub- mitted on pieces of paper in the offering plate. The church chose two: host a community picnic and pick up trash along the highway into town. The day of service on Sept. 10 was just the beginning for them. “The church has decided to


adopt the highway, so we’ll pick up trash along it four times a year,” Barnes said. “They have also said they would like to accomplish all 15 of the ideas submitted over the course of the next few years.” To invite people to the com-


munity picnic, they put out door- hangers and hung fliers. “The most meaningful part of


this for us may have been going out door-to-door, meeting all the people in our community and inviting them to our church,” Barnes said. In Columbia all of the United


Methodist Churches in town participated in a day of service on September 11. Fairview UMC participated in the group proj- ects with the other churches in


Columbia, but also wanted to do something that would have a visible presence in their immedi- ate neighborhood, so they spent Saturday cleaning up a nearby city park. “I think we might stay with


this park and keep it as one of our regular service projects,” said volunteer team coordinator Gary Moreau. On the morning of September


11, a few minutes before 8 a.m. the church bells at Wilkes Boulevard UMC rang, as they did at churches across the nation, commemorating when the first of the Twin Towers was struck by the high-jacked airlines. Six times that morning bells rang and a moment of silence was observed, represent- ing each of the four plane crashes and the times that the towers fell. That morning at


the church, Rev. Meg Hegemann told the 200 volunteers that they had two tasks before them. “The work we’re doing


is importance, but of equal importance are the relationships that we build,” she said. “Take time to visit with the homeowners and chat with the neighbors.” Later that day, one


of the homeowners, Charlotte Hughes, was very grateful to have a large, dead oak tree removed from her front yard. “I’m very grateful,


because it would have cost a lot of money that I don’t


A member of Rocheport UMC picks up trash along the highway into town.


have if I had needed to hire some- one to take it down,” she said. Woodlandville UMC went to


nearby Harrisburg elementary school after church and spent the afternoon painting, planting flowers and assembling shelves. The Woodlandville church and many of its members are in the Columbia Public School district, but the Harrisburg school is closer, and they know that it has financial difficulties. The sup- port they are giving to the school extended beyond the weekend. “We told the school to let us


know what they need, and we’ll do whatever we can to help,” said Rev. Karen Alden.


to be intrusive or dangerous. With internet safety and privacy concerns mounting, Facebook has created privacy options for personal profiles designed to safe- guard your information. We’ve put together a short list of the most important of these features. If you are debating about join- ing Facebook, or you just want to protect the account you already have, check out these tips. Keep in mind, these settings do not apply to pages for organizations, only personal accounts.


Keep a low profile. Revealing too much informa-


tion about yourself to the wrong people can sometimes lead to sin- ister results, but on Facebook, you can control who sees your basic information by simply clicking on “edit profile” under your name on the main page (top left). From there, you can select who sees each bit of information you’ve posted—from your hometown to your birthday and everything in-between. There’s a small pull- down menu on the right side of each listing. Click on the menu to select who you want to have access to the info.


information You may want some of your


Safeguard your contact


Facebook friends to have access to your private email address or phone number—especially if someone at the church really needs to get in touch with you right away. You can publish this info on your Facebook page and still keep it hush-hush to those you don’t want to have access to it. Again, click on “edit profile.” From the menu on the left, click “contact info.” That gives you the ability to select who can see the information. You can even choose “custom” to hide the info from specific people on your friends list.


Monitor groups. If you want to see the news


feeds only from a specific group, click and hold on the group name


(now appearing at the bottom of the left column) and drag it to “news feed.” Going forward, you’ll only see those news-feed posts from the people in that group. (You also can use this feature to create a broad group with all your friends you want to know about.)


Stay off the radar. Some website search engines


will allow people to see a preview of your Facebook profile if they’re looking for you. To protect your information and disable this feature, go to the main privacy settings page. Click on “edit set- tings” next to “apps and websites.” Then click on “edit settings” next to “public search.” To keep strang- ers from seeing a sneak preview of your page, make sure the box is unchecked.


Protect your image. For various reasons, you may


want to protect photos of your children and family. You can configure privacy settings for each photo album you upload to your profile to make sure they are viewable only by the people you actually want to show. Click on each individual album and click “edit album” to access a pull-down menu where you can indicate who may see the photos. To make sure no one tags a photo or video of you on their personal page with- out your consent, go to the main privacy settings page and click on “edit settings” next to “how tags work.” A menu will appear where you can turn on the “tag review” feature. This ensures that you will be able to approve any tags before someone else posts them to their personal page.


the beholder. A great safety feature that


Facebook is in the eye of


allows you to view your profile as each of your friends would see it is the “view as” option. Simply click on “profile” at the top of the page and then choose “view as.” From there, you will find a box where you can type a friend’s name. Select each friend in ques- tion to make sure your privacy settings are adjusted accordingly.


3A


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17