The Mountain Sky Conference of The United Methodist Church will live in God’s grace and abundance as we lead a re-energized peaceful and compassionate movement to claim the life-changing love of Jesus Christ for ALL people.
The Mountain Sky Conference of The United Methodist Church will live in God’s grace and abundance as we lead a re-energized peaceful and compassionate movement to claim the life-changing love of Jesus Christ for ALL people.
Every Mountain Sky Conference (MSC) Church must recreate a login, even if you used EZRA last year. All logins have been reset to accommodate changes in appointments as well as church staff changes.
It would be appreciated if this new login is done by Jan. 24, 2020 (but earlier is better!). This allows us to send registered users notes on statistics, and not have to reach church contacts through numerous email blasts.
As a practical matter, the journal information on appointments is not generated from this database, so errors here do not percolate into other MSC databases.
Please notice that I am now available via email at stats@mtnskyumc.org. Please use that to reach out to me. Also please text me if you want some personal coaching at (801) 889-7013. Let me know your church and a Mountain Standard Time we can talk about.
Please plan to be finished with your statistics by Feb. 21, if at all possible. Grace will be granted in emergency cases, but following this deadline for registration will help in knowing each church's status for communications and assistance.
Responsibility: Please note: Senior pastors may delegate the authority to complete the stats to another person, but they are responsible for data accuracy and mission accomplishment.
Manual input: Manual input must be approved by your District Superintendent and their District Administrator must put the data into EZRA. Forgive me.
Notify the responsible agent: If you are reading the MSC News and are not the person responsible for statistics at your local church, if you would be so kind as to call this news item to the attention of the responsible person at that local church, I would be most appreciative. Thank you.
Please, all money is whole dollars: Ezra is only looking for money accuracy to the dollar. You do not need to put in numbers to the right of the decimal.
I am having trouble getting all three tables completed at one sitting, what do I do? Remember, clicking on the Save button on each table does not submit the data. Save as you go. You can change entries up to the time you submit the completed tables using the Submit Stats Process option.
What’s wrong with my addition? Ezra has, in my opinion, been improved to show some of the running totals for you. It used to just say your number was wrong, figure it out. That said, it will not proceed if your numbers don’t cross check. It will tell you where the error is. e.g. Number of males and females must equal the total membership. Number by ethnicity and race must also equal total membership.
I am trying to log on and the screen comes back blank. What is happening? Ezra must "drop a cookie" on your computer. If your security/privacy mode is set to reject all cookies, you won't be able to use Ezra. You have two choices: You may change settings to accept all cookies, or you can allow only Ezra to place its cookie. While you are at it, disable the pop-up blocker; otherwise, you may have trouble printing reports.
Grand Total isn’t changing when I type in new expenses! (font change as above) No. For reasons I can’t explain, I must tell the system to calculate the Grand Total at the end of Table II.
May we have a second user and password at our church? Yes. Look under ACCOUNT there is an option called CREATE ACCOUNT. You can do it there.
Can I have a different user name than the GCFA number? Yes. Any name not claimed by someone else is potentially yours.
What happens if we are not done by Feb. 21? Send me a note and I will allow you some extra time. We do want to get this done as soon as practicable.
A LOT of Table II data will be done by the conference treasurer's office. Fill in what is there, and know that the treasurer’s office will do the rest based on treasurer’s office data. There is an option that allows me to turn on (for all) what is filled in at the conference so you can see the cell but can’t update it. My experience is that option is too confusing, so I didn’t turn it on.
Grace and Peace,
Dennis Shaw
Email me
Statistician
Mountain Sky Annual Conference