Several church members have contacted us to report that they have received scam emails impersonating First Corpus staff members. Here are some guidelines to help you recognize which communications from First Corpus are genuine and to help you avoid getting scammed by fake emails.
- First Corpus staff members will never ask you to send money, gift cards, or donations directly to them. All donations to First Corpus should only ever be given through our secure giving portal. The official and only giving webpage, firstcorpus.org/give, displays the online giving form powered by MinistryLinq. This page is also where you can go to set up recurring gifts and retrieve your giving records. You can also give in-person on Sundays or during the week at the church office. No First Corpus staff members should ever solicit you for a personal check or donation. There are occasions where the church body has been encouraged to bless staff members (pastor appreciation month, new employee poundings), but these requests will be shared from First Corpus's official announcements, and the donations for these things will always be collected on campus.
- First Corpus employees will also never ask you to give directly to them urgently in order to help someone else. The staff has access to benevolence funds if needs arise. There have been occasions where First Corpus has asked the church to give to a specific cause, but these donations will always be collected through our secure giving portal listed above.
- If you are not sure if an email is truly coming from a First Corpus staff member, check the actual email address that the message came from. Any emails claiming to be directly from an individual staff member will be from an @firstcorpus.org email address. Every staff member has an email address with their first name followed by @firstcorpus.org. If you are ever unsure about the source of an email, start a new email (not a reply to the message from the uncertain source) and email a First Corpus staff member directly to ask if the message is actually from them. You can find a list of the staff and their email addresses at firstcorpus.org/leadership.
- Occasionally, First Corpus will send emails to people directly from ShelbyNext, our church management system. If these emails are genuine, they will be from an @firstcorpus.org email address.