BUDGET BITES: PLANT & PROPERTY

Plant & Property expenditures are the second largest category of expenses (personnel costs being first) for Union Avenue Christian Church. During our current year, we budgeted $132,000 for "building and grounds" related expenditures, and we’ve increased it to $141,000 for the year ahead, largely to accommodate an increase in insurance premiums raising from $65,000 to more than $72,000. Insurance and utilities historically account for about 75% of the annual P&P expenditures, and in the current year we had almost $12,000 in unexpected elevator repair expenses. 

In a 100-plus year old building there are ALWAYS unexpected issues with the boiler, elevator, or plumbing systems. But there are also untold small miracles when we find just the right parts at the right time for a repair that lowered our expenses or solved a problem. God wants us to use this structure to help “provide structure” for the work we can do in this community and the greater world. 

Working so closely with the operation of the building, I am consistently amazed at the number groups that use our building and the creative ways in which we sometimes have to work with them to make it all come together. We see the amazing transformation that takes place every year to produce a festival season of opera, but we don't often notice what's going on around us with the West End Players Guild, the Urban Mission Inn, the National Benevolent Association, or the planning that goes into maintaining an art gallery in your building! 

More than paying the utility bills, maintaining equipment and structures, sealing the parking lot, and replacing the proverbial light bulb, our Plant and Property ministry enables so much more through the good stewardship and sharing of our building. In the past three weeks alone, we have hosted a production of the WEPG in our sanctuary (for the first time in our 50-plus year history of hosting the group), we hosted more than 300 patrons of the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus in a Advent/Christmas concert, our Chancel Choir performed for the community on the longest night of the year, Pure Catering continues to prepare and distribute meals to children and families in need every day, social workers and case managers from Washington University distributed holiday gift cards and checks from the "100 Neediest Cases" to its clients Christmas week, and then we welcomed the community to our Christmas Eve candlelight service on one of the coldest Christmases in recent memory.

Friends, a very wise man once wrote about Union Avenue that "we are a community in possession of a building who will never see it as a possession to be counted, but, rather, as a place of grace to be shared." That statement has never been more true, and for that we can all be grateful!

Please feel free to email or speak in person with Doug Radamaker, Neil McNeill, Richard Jones (investment chair) and Michelle Mueller (board vice president) with any questions, concerns or ideas to strengthen the budget. The first Town Hall meeting to discuss the budget will be February 12 following worship. Together, with God’s guidance, we will continue to build God’s kingdom right here in St. Louis. — Neil McNeill