Hello fellow Live Oak-ers,

As part of the Live Oak membership ministry, we started a Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Congregation group on Facebook in early October (in less than a week, the group grew to 15 members!). After discovering a Facebook group called UCSB Unitarians with almost 60 students, your Membership Ministry (a.k.a. "committee") decided to launch our own online group to provide another welcoming face not only to the local UCSB community, but also to Live Oak friends and fellow travelers at greater distances. (For instance, Evan Sherman is a member of our Facebook group even though he's currently a student at UC Berkeley.)

We are also hopeful that this virtual community will be yet another opportunity for connection among local Live Oak members who can post pictures, suggest a cool website or start an online discussion.  Already two great videos have been posted about what it means to be a UU.  However, if you don't feel comfortable with an online presence, remember that it is just one of many ways that we can explore our interconnectedness at Live Oak.

Personal Privacy:  

If you choose to join Facebook and our group (see details below), we encourage you to look closely at the Privacy options. When you register with Facebook, you can click on the Privacy link and set exactly what information is available to the general public, to your groups, to your friends or only to yourself.  If you set up your profile for maximum privacy, the general public would only be able to see your name. Also, you can decide who specifically to designate as a "friend" and give access to more information about you.  

And remember you can always say no to Facebook. This social networking tool sometimes suggests new features, for instance, to search for new friends through your email contact list. You can always decline these options and still maintain a Facebook profile totally under your own control.

Here's a link to more details on the Facebook Privacy Policy.

Group Privacy:  

To ensure the privacy of our online discussions and sharing with each other, our Live Oak Facebook site is currently designated as a "closed" group. This means that only members can see the bulk of the content on the site such as pictures, videos and links.  Nevertheless, the group site still maintains an outreach function because the general public can see the description of the group and request to join. An administrator (Rev. Erika or Eric Martinsen) can then approve their membership in the group before they could access our Discussion Board or other posted items.   

How to join:

Everyone can join Facebook. To register, go here.

Once you've registered, click on the "Groups" link in the left column. Then type "live oak unitarian universalist" into the "Search for Groups" box and, finally, click on "Join."  Voila! You're a member, and you can start adding other Live Oakers as friends. [Special thanks to Catherine Weinberger for the more detailed directions.]

We hope to see you soon at Live Oak either in person or online :-)

 
Cheers,

Eric Martinsen, Live Oak Membership Ministry 

and Rev. Erika Hewitt