There are many ways of receiving news about what is going on at Westheights Church. There is info in the weekly bulletin, there are announcements during the service. But, here are the top two ways of receiving news-at-a-glance about what is happening at the church!
Easy Method
If you just want to check all events going on at the church this week or this month, and you want it to always be up-to-date, then just bookmark the following website: http://Calendar.Westheights.org
It contains all general public events, all Student ministries events, all Mens/Womens events, all Childrens/Finders-Keepers events, etc., all in one place, all at-a-glance. And it is always up-to-date, including any last minute changes.
It even includes most of the future events in the September to June period, since their dates are planned each summer for the upcoming year.
Cool Method
The “cool method” includes the same information and features as the easy method listed above, but it has two additional features:
- You can select which types of events you want to see (e.g. only general public events & Jr Youth, or maybe you only want Sr Youth, Womens ministries and public events, etc.).
- All of your selected events show up integrated into your existing online calendar, so you only have one calendar to check (yours!)
Granted, the cool method only works if you are using Google Calendar or another calendar that supports “iCal calendar feeds.” However, it is free to create an online Google Calendar and then you will be able to not only add your own events, meetings and appointments to it, but also your selected events from the church’s various calendar feeds to automatically appear.
How Do I Add These Events to My Calendar?
Here are the instructions regarding how to add any of these event types or categories to your own Google Calendar.
(1) Login to your Google Calendar using http://calendar.google.com or your normal login address
(2) Near the bottom of the left margin, locate the “Other calendars” heading.
(3) Click the small down-arrow which is located either at the end of the “Other calendars” heading or at the bottom of this section called “Add”, then click the “Add by URL” option. You should see a small “Add by URL” pop-up window.
(4) Copy-and-paste one of the following veeeeeery long addresses (called URLs) into the pop-up window (do not click on it, copy it):
Westheights Events (main public events for everyone) – URL:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/office%40westheights.org/public/basic.ics
Children’s Events (also includes school PA days) – URL:
Junior High Youth – URL:
Senior High Youth Events – URL:
Student Ministries (common/parental events) – URL:
Women’s Events – URL:
Men’s Events – URL:
Building Scheduling (committee/room bookings, building repairs & maintenance) – URL:
Canadian Public Holidays:
(5) Leave the “publicly accessible” checkbox empty/off, and click the [Add Calendar] button in the pop-up window.
(6) Repeat steps (3), (4) and (5) for each additional event type that you wish to have displayed within your own Google Calendar.
Your calendar will now be “subscribed” to the event type(s) that you added above. When events are added by Westheights staff and volunteers to these calendar event types, those new events will automatically be displayed within your calendar. You may customize those automatically added events within your calendar, such as add reminders or add extra information about the event, etc., but any such customizations are only done locally within your calendar (i.e. your customizations don’t affect the original calendar entries that everyone else sees).
Suggested Event Types
- Everyone should consider adding the Westheights Events (general public activities) category. These are the events that everyone in our church will want to stay informed about.
- If you have children in the children’s programs, then consider adding Childrens Events (this category includes school PA or PD days).
- If you have kids in, or are a kid in, Jr. and/or Sr. High, then consider adding the appropriate category, plus also add the Student Ministries category for common information and parents meetings.
- Either the Women’s Events or Men’s Events would probably be of interest.
- If you do a lot of booking of rooms or practices, etc., then you will probably want to add the Building Scheduling category so that you know when the buildings are being used versus available.
- The Canadian Public Holidays category isn’t about church activities but is still helpful to have them shown on your calendar.
Enjoy!