January 3, 2005: UCG-Italy National Council chairman Carmelo Anastasi (in the photo at his desk in the UCG-Italy national office), UCG-Italy National Council member Angelo de Vita and UCOG President Paul Kieffer meet for the first time in Beramo, Italy for a two-day conference. Among the topics discussed during the meetings were editorial and organizational ideas, questions involving pastoral care and improving cooperation between the German and Italian national councils. Read more »

January 20, 2005: The 24 page March-April 2005 "Gute Nachrichten" magazine will be the first issue to be typeset with Adobe InDesign. QuarkXpress has been used since the first issue was published in 1997. UCOG contributed funds to help purchase InDesign for the "Gute Nachrichten" editorial staff.

February 1, 2005: Outgoing mail statistics for 2004 show a total of 34,036 pieces of literature distributed in the German language. In addition to the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine, over 3000 copies of Intern ["United News" in German] were mailed to subscribers. The circulation of "Intern" has increased by 300% in the last two years. In addition, more than 4000 booklets were mailed during 2004. The most requested booklets were "Das Geheimnis Ihrer Existenz" ["What is Your Destiny?"] and the new Bible Study Course.

February 22, 2005: The spelling reform of the German language implemented by the ministers of culture from Germany's federal states continues to divide the media. The seven-year transitional period for the spelling reform ends on August 1, 2005. However, since the new rules are only required for schools and government offices, most Germans ignore the new rules in personal correspondence. The "Gute Nachrichten" magazine continues to use the traditional spelling rules and is listed on a website promoting a return to the traditional rules.

March 7, 2005: The Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["United Church of God-Germany"] begins recording sermons using the MP3 audio format. The MP3 format for sermons will eventually replace the current cassette tape system, which provides sermon tapes in German for people unable to attend a weekly church service on the Sabbath.

March 15, 2005: The March-April issue of the Gute Nachrichten magazine is mailed to 4057 subscribers in 18 countries in Europe. This issue is the first to be typeset using the new Adobe InDesign software.

March 21, 2005: A new set of comments from readers of the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine has been posted, including reaction to the recent article on Christmas.

March 29, 2005: UCOG contributes funds for the purchase of a 3 to 1 CD duplicator for producing MP3 sermon CDs for the Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["UCG-Germany"]. By the end of the year, the current sermon cassette program will be totally phased out and replaced by MP3 sermon CDs in German.

April 10, 2005: Starting today, UCOG President Paul Kieffer shares his personal insights and news from the German-language region in a new blog hosted on the UCOG website.

April 19, 2005: The National Council of the Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["UCG-Germany"] has approved for the first time a "Member Appeals Policy". The policy requires that member appeals be reviewed in a timely manner. According to the Vereinte Kirche Gottes Bylaws, the proposed policy must be approved by a simple majority of church members. The policy will be submitted to members for approval in May.

April 26, 2005: As part of a regular direct mail program, 989 former subscribers of the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine receive a special invitation to renew their subscription. The program has a 20 percent response rate. In addition, 82 current subscribers receive an offer to receive the monthly newsletter "Intern".

May 1, 2005: The Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["UCG-Germany"] reprints the booklet "The Ten Commandments", making it the 8th booklet to be reprinted since the first booklet was published in 1998. Minor edits in the booklet enabled its size to be reduced by four pages. UCOG donated funds to help reprint the booklet. The original print run for all booklets was 2000 copies, and for this reprinting the print run was increased to 4000 copies.

May 11, 2005: The May-June issue of the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine is mailed to 3801 subscribers in 18 European countries. UCOG President Paul Kieffer wrote a special article on the world oil crisis and its implications for the future.

May 18, 2005: United Christian Outreach Germany announces a special fundraiser to provide $5000 to help pay the printing costs for the German version of the 48 page booklet "The United States and Britain in Prophecy".

June 4, 2005: 30 percent of "Gute Nachrichten" readers who recently received an invitation to subscribe to the the monthly newsletter "Intern" ["United News"] have responded positively. In an ongoing direct mail program, "Intern" is offered to "Gute Nachrichten" readers who have been on the mailing list for four years. Currently there are 317 "Intern" subscribers, of whom 75 percent have no affiliation with the Vereinte Kirche Gottes.

June 13, 2005: 124 people met at four locations in the German-language region for church services on Pentecost, June 12. In Dormagen (near Cologne), the attendance was 48. Guest speaker Gerhard Marx from the UK was in Schriesheim (near Heidelberg), were 29 people met. In Munich the attendance was 15, and in Regensdorf (near Zürich, Switzerland) 38 people met for Pentecost services.

June 16, 2005: The special fundraiser to provide $5000 to help pay the printing costs for the German version of the booklet "The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy" has reached 70 percent of its goal.

June 24, 2005: The offering statistics for Pentecost for the German-language region have been finalized. The offering in the German-language region was 6317 €, a 8.5% decrease in comparison to an unusually high offering in 2004. The total offering for the three Holy Days during the spring festival season (Feast of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost) increased 7.6% over 2004.

June 29, 2005: Members of the Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["UCG-Germany"] have approved a new member appeal policy. 69 percent of registered members participated in the determination process, and the ballot was unanimous. Members of the new appeals committee are Robert Berendt (Canada), Matthew Fenchel (USA), Gerhard Marx (UK) and John and Susan Miller (USA).

July 12, 2005: 25 people from six countries attended a young adults weekend activity hosted by UCOG and the Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["United Church of God-Germany"]. Young adults from Belgium, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States met in Germany from Thursday, July 7th to July 10th in the town Mechernich at the outskirts of the scenic Eifel region. Read more »

July 20, 2005: The National Council of the Vereinte Kirche Gottes has authorized reprinting the "Four Horseman of the Apocalypse" article series as a special booklet. The booklet will be 24 pages in size, including front and back covers, an editorial and a table of contents page. When the five articles were originally published in the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine, they all were edited to be four pages in length, making the special booklet possible.

July 27, 2005: The special fundraiser to provide $5000 to help pay the printing costs for the German version of the booklet "The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy" is now fully funded. The booklet is scheduled to be printed in late summer, and six members of the Vereinte Kirche Gottes are helping out as proofreaders for the booklet in its final proofreading stage. With its 48 pages, the booklet is the largest that the Vereinte Kirche Gottes has printed to date. The forerunner of this booklet was the most frequently requested publication in the German language.

August 2, 2005: During the first seven months of 2005, the publisher of the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine, the Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["United Church of God-Germany"], processed 17,789 literature mailings (a mailing is an envelope, which may contain more than one item). 17,040 copies of the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine and 2030 copies of the monthly publication "Intern" were sent to subscribers. The most requested booklets were Das Geheimnis Ihrer Existenz ["What is your destiny?"] and Die Kirche Jesu Christi ["The church Jesus built"]. In addition, 2083 direct mail promotional letters were mailed to subscribers.

August 7, 2005: 20 children and 9 adults from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland attended summer camp hosted by UCOG and the Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["United Church of God-Germany"]. Camp was in session from Tuesday, August 2 to Sunday, August 7 at a nature hostel in the woods in Oerlinghausen, near Bielefeld, Germany. Read more »

August 13, 2005: The "Neue Westfälische" newspaper runs a short article on the summer camp hosted by the Vereinte Kirche Gottes. Read more »

August 23, 2005: The National Council of the Vereinte Kirche Gottes has approved an ad for the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine in the health magazine "BIO". The ad is a third of a page with a cut-out coupon and will run from October through January 2006. The ad uses a quote from German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and asks the question "Why are you alive?".

September 13, 2005: In a study supported by the Ministry of Science and Research in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Bochum is compiling a survey of Christian churches in Germany not recognized by the state. In his initial contact with the Vereinte Kirche Gottes, professor Gerhard Bleick commented on the church's strong internet presence and the in-depth material available on the Gute Nachrichten website, which he described as unusual for a church not recognized by the state.

September 21, 2005: The September-October issue of the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine is mailed to 3917 readers in 19 European countries. The 24 page issue features articles on DNA and the "Intelligent Design" theme and includes a "Letters to the Editor" section and a letter from UCOG President Paul Kieffer to "Gute Nachrichten" subscribers. The "Intelligent Design" movement has become a topic of some controversy in German news media, being viewed by some as nothing more than an American fundamentalist movement.

October 7, 2005: The Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["United Church of God-Germany"] publishes the 48 page booklet Amerika und Großbritannien: Was sagt die Bibel über ihre Zukunft? ["The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy"]. With the help of volunteer proofreaders, the new booklet took two years to produce and is the largest one among the 15 booklets currently offered by the Vereinte Kirche Gottes. UCOG contributed funds to help pay for the initial print run of 5,000 copies.

October 30, 2005: 195 people from ten countries met in scenic Schluchsee in the southern Black Forest to observe the biblical Feast of Tabernacles. 30 foreign visitors joined believers from the German-language area for the feast. Among the visitors were two special guests from Armenia, Mnazakan Poghossjan and daughter Ani. Mr. Poghossjan and two other people were baptized during the Feast. Read more »

November 3, 2005: The statistics for the fall Holy Day offerings have been finalized. On the Feast of Trumpets, the offering in the German-language region was 5181 € (7.3% less than in 2004). On the day of Atonement, the offering (5266 €) was an increase of 21.5% compared to last year. The offering at the Feast of Tabernacles in Schluchsee was 0.4% less than last year at 8622 €, and on the Last Great Day the offering of 10,649 € was 13.2% higher than last year. Overall, the total offering for the fall festivals increased 6.2% over 2004, and the total festival offerings for 2005 were 6.8% higher than last year.

November 10, 2005: The Vereinte Kirche Gottes has started an internet advertizing campaign using Google "Adwords". Various booklets, the Bible correspondence course and the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine will be offered. The ad campaign is directed to the German-language Google user and is limited to responders in Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The first response came from Switzerland. View a sample ad »

November 26, 2005: The first two weeks of the advertizing campaign using Google "Adwords" brought 50 new orders for the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine. The cost-per-response is 2.40 €, which compares very favorably to print advertizing. The orders came from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. In addition, over 1,000 people using Google viewed the "Gute Nachrichten" website. Currently ten booklets are advertized using "AdWords".

December 6, 2005: 31,512 visitors from 51 countries visited the Gute Nachrichten website during its 3rd year of operation with its new design and complete literature library. For the twelve month period through the end of September 2005, the website registered 575,810 hits. Traffic on the "Gute Nachrichten" website has increased by 167 percent in the last two years. UCOG owns and maintains the domain names for the "Gute Nachrichten" and the Vereinte Kirche Gottes websites.

December 12, 2005: At its final meeting of the year, the National Council of the Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["United Church of God-Germany"] approved the annual budget for 2006. The 2006 budget totals 175,000 € with a projected income of approximately 155,000 €. (The difference between income and expenditures will be made up by using reserves.) Printing costs for literature in the German language will total about 25,000 € in 2006. An increase in internet advertizing was also approved following the first month of Google ads, which brought a total of 125 orders for the "Gute Nachrichten" magazine at a cost of 1.90 € each. Print advertizing will be discontinued for the immediate future.

December 21, 2005: Encouraging words from members of the Vereinte Kirche Gottes ["United Church of God-Germany"] at this year's Feast of Tabernacles in Schluchsee, Germany helped convince the proprietors of the "Schwarzwaldstube" restaurant in Schluchsee to stay in business. The "Schwarzwaldstube" provides catering for several activities at the feast. Take a look at the newspaper article published in the "Badische Zeitung".

December 28, 2005: UCG-Italy National Council chairman Carmelo Anastasi (photo) and UCOG President Paul Kieffer meet for a two-day conference in Bergamo, Italy to discuss editorial ideas, advertizing methods and the organizational structure of the United Church of God. During their meetings, Paul helped Carmelo set up a Google "Adwords" account for internet advertizing. Read more »