Scam Alert. Scammers continue to make up emails with pastor Matt’s name AND they are now also pretending to be various members of our church. Do not respond to emails from members asking for money. Anyone asking you to buy gift cards and scratch off the pin and take photos is a Scammer! There is no way to stop people making up these emails that look like they are someone else so you must be wary of all strange emails asking for money.
Our pastors and staff have a @1stpres.org email address. We do not use gmail or other addresses for church business. Always make sure the reply to email matches the 1stpres.org domain and matches the actual email of the person

The way email servers work is that the from line can be changed to any email, even legitimate ones. It’s not actually from that email.  If you click reply it will not reply to the same email that it is from and that is the tip off that you are being scammed.  The “reply to” email will be an email that may look similar but will be different.  The scammers may use the first part of the actual email but use hotmail or gmail instead of the actual service that person uses.  You CANNOT TRUST THE FROM FIELD in emails.  Always check the “reply to” email.  In general, lets all agree we won’t send emails asking for money right away and we can all be confident that these are ALWAYS a scam.

The church will always direct giving directly to the church or to the organization we may be partnered with.