Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Contact Info & Communications
|
Page
Contents
|
While you're here, be sure to subscribe to The
Bishop's Roadshow.
Pre-Internet Communications
Phone
304-363-4030 (for both voice and SMS/text)
Mailing & Physical Address
West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod
℅ St. Paul Lutheran Church
309 Baldwin Street
Morgantown, WV 26505
Fax
We dropped our fax line, which seemed to be good for little more than unsolicited solicitations. If you have a document that you would like us to receive, scan it to PDF and email it to us.
Internet Communications
The Bishop's Roadshow
The Bishop's Roadshow is an e-newsletter
published irregularly—in other words, if there is
something that seems important to share, we send out a Roadshow.
The Bishop's Roadshow is in the process of
migrating from Mailchimp®, following reduction
by Mailchimp® of its quotas on both the number
of recipients and the number of total sends per month.
This will be the third move of The Roadshow since
its inception as a LISTSERV on the WVNET network. The Roadshow
employed Yahoo! Groups® for thirteen years
until its discontinuation of that service on 15 December
2020. the move from Yahoo! Groups® to Mailchimp®
was difficult. This transition appears to be going more
smoothly, but it is too soon to tell for sure.
In searching for a new platform, these are the things we looked for:
- the platform not sharing subscription information with
other entities;
- folks being able to subscribe and unsubscribe
themselves; and
- ease of use by synod staff.
After due consideration, we've decided to give ZOHO
Campaigns® a try. We've used ZOHO Campaigns®
in the past for Synod Assembly communications with
acceptable results.
How to Help Us Test This New Delivery Platform
You can help us test ZOHO Campaigns® by
checking your spam folder to see whether any issues of The
Roadshow have ended up there rather than in your
inbox. If this happens, please mark the issue as not
spam, and send us an email to let us know this
happened. Check again in a week or two to see if any other
issues have ended up in your spam folder. Let us know when
this happens too.
Subscribe
Subscribing to The Bishop's Roadshow is easy: click here for the form. Once you subscribe, you will receive an email for confirmation. If you don't see one, check your spam folder.Unsubscribe
You can unsubscribe from The Bishop's Roadshow by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any issue.
Past Issues on Mailchimp®
You can also check out the more recent back issues published on Mailchimp®: click here.Synod Website: WV-WMD.org
The West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod maintains a website with the URL, "WV-WMD.org."
Synod Website Updates
We've moved the list of updates to the WV-WMD.org to a
page of its own. Click here
(or on the pic at right) to find out what has been
recently updated.
eMail Directory
| Synod Office |
Office@WV-WMD.org |
| Bishop (The Rt. Rev. Matthew Lynn
Riegel, S.T.M.) |
Bishop@WV-WMD.org |
| DEM (The Rev. Sherri Schafer) |
Sherri.Schafer@elca.org |
| Secretary (Dave Finney) |
Secretary@WV-WMD.org |
| Treasurer (James "Jim" Nichols) |
Treasurer@WV-WMD.org |
| Mission Support |
MissionSupport@WV-WMD.org |
| Synod Assembly Registrar |
Registrar@WV-WMD.org |
| Parliamentarian |
Parliamentarian@WV-WMD.org |
Don't Fall for Spoofed eMails
At the beginning of July a spoof email went out under a
poorly rendered version of the Bishop's name. Since then,
we've received word that others are also being spoofed,
including pastors of the synod and staffers of Camp
Luther.
Typically, these spoofed emails attempt to solicit money,
as you can see in the example provided.
| From: Rev. Matthew
F. Riegel <personalmail103@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Jul 1, 2020 at 3:02 PM Subject: ARE YOU AVAILABLE THERE To: ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Hello Rev. ▒▒▒▒▒. Are you available now? I have an important payment to be done today. Email me back i will be busy now. Regard Rev. Matthew F. Riegel |
Some things to note:
- +Riegel's middle initial is not "F"
- The synod sends email via its WV-WMD.org domain
- The adjective reverend requires a definite
article when used as an honorific
- The Bishop is simply not going to solicit this way
Emily Pilat, Communications Director of the Virginia Synod, put it well,
In the past year this has happened with more frequency in synods and congregations across the ELCA.This is not a hack to our email system, but rather a common scam tactic. Often times, scammers like this can make convincing looking emails. The key is to look at the from address carefully to be sure it is from the individual it claims to be. This is especially important to stay vigilant as we are increasingly working remotely and rely on electronic communication.
The Southeastern Iowa Synod has put together a very nice
flyer (in PDF) on how to spot email and texting-based
scams. We recommend it. You can download it here.
Feel free, should you ever get something like this, to ask a challenge question, preferably one involving the Four Uses of the Law or the genera of the communicatio idiomatum.
Pages
 |
 |
 |
Groups
 |
 |
 |
