Youth Group Thanks

Thanks to the youth group for weeding and planting flowers. The two pots of flowers on the steps to the Parish Hall are their creation.

The youth group meets every other Thursday at 4 PM.

Parking Lot Business

Tomorrow we are getting new lighting for the parking lot, which will make winter meetings much safer and more pleasant. The old lighting system was about 40 years old and simply didn't work. Every time someone tried to turn on the lights, the circuit breaker would trip. A local electric contractor is putting in new lights and wiring, the whole thing to be paid for by Capital Campaign funds donated by the members of the Parish.

A little later this summer, the parking lot itself will get repairs and new paving. If you have come by in the middle of the week, you probably have noticed that we gave our next-door neighbor permission for their staff to park on our lot, and the Montessori school in our basement has a regular parade of parents dropping off children and picking them up later. Both groups have agreed to help with the cost of the lot because they get benefit from it and we will make up the balance from the Capital Campaign.

New Floor in the Parish Hall

By Sunday, the new floor will be installed in the Parish Hall. It's quite a change. Instead of tan tile, falling apart and leaving gaps, we will have a nice dark brown floor that looks like polished wood. It was about time for a change. As far as we can determine, the original tile was installed in the 1970s and had a predicted service life of about 10-15 years.

Money for this came from the "Planting for Tomorrow" Capital Campaign and from a special donor. The Capital Campaign has enough left over now that we can ponder some other improvements.

Where the Money Comes From

Money for St. Matthew’s comes from several different sources, and generally the Vestry must spend money for projects for which it was designated. Here is a breakdown:

Designated Contributions

The people who donate this money specify what it must be used for, so it cannot be used for general expenses such as heat and electricity, and these donations are not part of fulfilling your pledge.

• Memorial Fund. This is money given in memory of a loved one, and often the donor specifies exactly what the money can be used for. In many cases, the money goes to purchase some long-lasting memorial such as stained glass windows or oil candles for the altar.
• Flower Fund, etc. We have two or three other minor funds. Again, money designated for these funds cannot be used for ordinary expenses and does not get counted as part of your pledge.

Capital Campaign Money

These are the funds you are sending to the Diocese for the Planting for Tomorrow fund. Recent uses of this money have included the new roof and the upgraded electrical system. We cannot use this money for paying general bills, and we depend on your continuing support and your fulfillment of your promise. (Our next major project is probably the floor in the Parish Hall.)

Diocese Outreach Grants

This money comes to us from the Diocese in response to grant applications, and is used for very specific purposes. Because they are outreach grants, they must in some way reach out to the community. Many of our outside music groups are funded by these grants, and the idea is that we will advertise the music to the community and invite nonmembers to attend.

Rector’s Discretionary Fund

The loose offering on the last Sunday of the month goes to this fund, which is used to help needy parishioners with extraordinary bills. One example might be a prescription after surgery.

Private Pocket

Some parish needs, for example the coffee for coffee hour, are simply paid by parishioners directly. This money never goes through the ordinary church budgeting process.

General Operating Budget

This money comes from the offering plate. It includes your pledge money plus loose offering from the first three Sundays of the month and $350 monthly rent from the Montessori school. This money goes to pay the daily expenses of running a church: Rector’s stipend, gas, electricity, organist, postage, insurance, and so forth.

How we spent that money

We have seen a lot of changes around the St. Matthew's building, much of it paid for by Capital Campaign money. Here's a list of what we have done recently, and how we paid for it.

Paid with money we contributed to the Capital Campaign

• New kitchen stove
• Rewiring to improve safety
• Exterior door replacement (two of them)
• New roof
• Painting half the church exterior

Paid with money from memorial contributions

• Altar candles (this was a while back)
• New church organ
• Signs directing people to our front door

Paid with specially designated money

• Parking lot repair (David Eisel has been collecting money from people who park here to watch the football games. This fund covered the cost of the first repair cycle.)

Paid from savings

• General landscaping

Yet to do

We are about halfway through the five-year cycle of the Capital Campaign, and contributions continue to come in. Three more building improvement projects need our attention:

• Parish Hall floor (Currently it is made of disintegrating asbestos tile. We need to fix that.)
• Second phase of parking lot repair (The parking lot had gotten really bad, and we need to follow up on this year's patch with a more permanent fix.)
• Remainder of the exterior painting

Organ Dedication

Today the Norma Elizabeth McKinley organ was dedicated with a recital by guest organist David Powers. We had a large crowd that included members of our own parish and a lot of old friends. Most stayed for quite a while at the reception that followed the dedication ceremony.

Mike McKinley, who generously donated the organ in memory of his wife, was unable to attend because of health problems, but the family was represented by his son and daughter-in-law.

The organ is an electronic organ, but if you are imagining something that sounds fake, the recital was quite a surprise. The first thing we heard were chimes. Later in the recital, Powers showed off the clarinet and harpsichord voices. Modern electronic organs get their voices by taking digital samples of musical instruments and storing them, so when the organist calls for a particular sound, it is not a synthetic guess. It is an actual representation of a particular harpsichord. It was all very impressive.

Two big building improvements

Exterior paint

The exterior painting got finished this week. Our excellent, honest Amish painters were able to do the job for less money than their original estimate, so the final bill was substantially less than we expected.

Note on the painting
You may wonder why the church building doesn't look that much better! This is because the whole building did not get painted. (We didn't have the money for that.) The west side of the sanctuary (facing Mifflin Avenue) and the south side of the building got done. Those areas were peeling to the point where bare wood was exposed, but when you park your car and walk up to the building, you don't normally see those sides. The north side of the building (which you do see as you walk in) is showing dirt and wear, but at least it is still protecting the wood underneath, so we postponed doing that painting.

Landscaping

When I went by the building on Thursday afternoon, the place looked a bit like a desert. All the overgrown old foliage had been torn out and Brandon had just begun putting in the new plantings. There was no mulch yet, and the ground was pretty dry, increasing the desolate look. Friday's weather was excellent for outdoor work, and today's looks to be good too, so I expect Sunday morning to bring a really nice appearance. I don't know what his completion date is, but I would be surprised if the project went more than another week.

We got two unexpected little bonuses from this project. Near the Parish Hall door, there is now a small plaque saying that the plantings were in loving memory of a former Parish member. I didn't recognize the name, and there had been no talk of this being a memorial garden, so it was a puzzle. The answer was that the plaque had been buried deep in the foliage and forgotten and Brandon only found it when he began pulling out old plants. So now we have a memorial garden, not just a better looking entrance-way.

The other bonus is that the stained glass windows in the sanctuary, the ones behind the altar, had been blocked by overgrown plants. Now they get full sun all the way to the bottom, giving the room more light and color. It's a noticeable difference.

Changes are starting to get visible

We have made a lot of changes around the church building in the last year:

• Revamped and upgraded electric system.
• New kitchen stove
• New roof on the sanctuary
• Several new doors

A problem, though, is that all of these changes are invisible. Few people go into the furnace room to gaze at (and rejoice in) the new fuse box, and the new roof is exactly the same color as the old one. Even the next big expense item, painting the church exterior, will be invisible because we're having it done in exactly the same brown color as previously. If you don't spend much time in the kitchen, you don't remember the fire-hazard monster that was our previous stove, so you might not even notice that we have a new one. (Fittingly, the old one's name was Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and volcanos.) People who are sensitive to music will probably realize that the new organ is an enormous improvement, but the new one looks pretty much the same as the previous one (and our organists got good at working around the problems of the old one, so a casual listener did not realize that our unique sound came from the organ's inability to play certain notes).

All that is about to change.

The first small visible change is new signs pointing to the church entrance. On Grubby Sunday, the church doors will get a coat of red paint. The big visible change, though, will be the new landscaping, which is scheduled to start appearing this week. Brandon Nardo is doing the work, and his design will give us a continual change of color so there is really no "dead" season for our plantings.

For the future

The Planting for Tomorrow money that is coming in will go toward the paint and the landscaping, but we need to pay attention (and soon) to the parking lot and the floor in the Parish Hall. Once again, unspectacular—we're trying to catch up to years of deferred maintenance.

But why?

Some of the repairs have been very pragmatic. If you want to keep a wooden building, you have to deal with fire hazards (such as the wiring and the stove) and weather hazards (which explains our need for paint and roofing).

There's more, though. If you visit a restaurant that a friend recommended and the place is shabby, with holes in the parking lot and a floor that is falling apart, you might not want to come back. And if the entrance is difficult to find and intimidating, you might not even go in at all. The Vestry is thinking of these things and wants to make St. Matthew's a more pleasant, inviting place.

New organ!

Today was the first day for the new digital organ! (Honestly, there was a question whether the old console would make it another month.)

It sounded fine, and even with a few glitches (there are a lot more bells and whistles to manage) we're sure it will be a great addition to the sanctuary. The ordinary observer sitting in the pews cannot see any difference whatsoever, so the difference is all in the hearing. No more odd moments when a key sticks and the note continues to sound. No more times when the organist presses a key and nothing happens at all.

The Organ Committee is planning a proper dedication and recital, with guest organists and a big invitation to the community. (The date will depend on availability of the artists.) We're also looking into ways to use the new organ at other times, perhaps for such things as guest recitals and evening programs.

Organ First Step

I stopped by the church building on Friday and saw that the organ installers have put up the very first phase of the project. Two very inconspicuous speakers are now hidden behind the beams high up near the roof of the nave. You can't see them at all when you are sitting in a pew, and I assume the console won't be there for Sunday, but the project is beginning.

Landscape Plans

Brandon Nardo, who has been doing our mowing, and who owns Nardo's Landscaping Solutions, presented a complete landscape plan to the Vestry last Sunday. He wants to get rid of dead and overgrown plants, freshen things up, and give the church exterior a colorful display that will change with the seasons but never really go dead.

To tell the truth, we need it. Many of the plants were put in a very long time ago and the general look is sort of withered and dying. Maybe a lot of thought went into the original plantings, but that was in the 1970s, so it's time for some freshness.

Is this a frivolous waste of money? I don't think so. For one thing, the face we would like to present to the community is a welcoming, lively face, and dead plants do not help that image. For another, we worship a God who loves beauty and freshness, and it would be really appropriate for our worship place to reflect God's character. If a third reason is needed, the "Prayers of the People," which we pray each Sunday, includes prayers that we would be mindful of God's created world and take care of it. Yes, we recycle plastic, aluminum, and paper, but "caring for God's creation" should also include planting things and caring for them.

Brandon is set to begin as soon as the weather clears and the soil dries a bit, so if you see trucks and heavy equipment moving earth, it's probably him.

Hosta appeal

Part of the new plan includes hosta plants. (They bloom nicely and require little care.) If you have hostas, any color, they can find a new home in the church flower beds.

Money note

The landscaping and the new floor in the Parish Hall were not part of the original Capital Campaign proposal, but replacing the organ was—though it was a "pie in the sky" kind of proposal. Now that Mike McKinley has stepped forward to generously give the organ to the church, we have Capital Campaign money available for other projects. Note that this means we do have to keep up with the pledges we made to the campaign.

Church Organ News

As Rev. Kay said on Sunday, there is some bad news, some good news and some excellent news about the organ.

The bad news

Kevin Jacques, who plays for the church several times a year, gives the current organ six months to live. An increasing number of notes simply do not work, including one whole stop.

The good news

Our organ committee has listened to several options and has made a decision. The proposed new organ is a digital (electronic) organ that sounds remarkably good and has the endorsement of several of our friends who are organists. We will keep the organ pipes, and it's possible in the future to set up the organ console so the pipes will sound too.

The excellent news

One member of the organ committee, Mike McKinley, has decided to pay the whole cost of the new organ as a memorial to his dear wife Norma. The papers are being signed this week, so a new organ will certainly be in place by summer.

The footnote

When the Capital Campaign was first proposed, organ repair/replacement was part of the plan. We held off on several other needed projects (for example, new floor in the Parish Hall and landscaping) because of the expense of the organ, but now we can use Capital Campaign money for other needed building repairs and improvements.

Church Building Improvements

As a result of our Capital Funds Campaign, we will be able to make several improvements around the property. The money from the Capital Campaign comes in quarterly, so here are a few of the changes you will see over the next few months.*

Landscaping

Many of the plants and bushes around the church have gotten tired and/or overgrown, and nobody ever took a look at the whole property to give it a coherent appearance. We've asked Brandon Nardo to draw up some plans and begin working on them. By the time the weather is hot, you should see some definite changes.

Paint

We were supposed to get a lot of painting work done last summer, but weather prevented our contractor from doing it. He's promised to get on the job just as soon as things are warm and dry enough that the paint will work well.

Door Paint

Church buildings often have red doors. The symbolism goes back centuries, and it's not just Episcopal churches. The reason behind the tradition is a little uncertain: some say it's because of the blood of Christ (and he did say, "I am the door."), while others say it's because churches were traditionally a place of refuge and safety. Whatever the reason, we have chosen a shade of red, we're buying the paint, and we will soon have renewed red doors on the church.

Church Organ

Our pipe organ represents the best technology of the 1970s. Unfortunately, the company that made it has gone out of business, and 45 years is a long time for electrical components, so some of the notes are reluctant to sound, while others simply do not go at all. We've got an organ committee examining several options for replacing and/or repairing our organ. It will be a major expense, so this change will probably not be immediate—but we are working on it.

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*If you have pledged to the Planting for Tomorrow campaign, you are receiving an envelope every month. That is where the money for these projects is coming from. Please be faithful in fulfilling your promise. If you would like to begin contributing, please talk to the church treasurer.

New Roof

As I was reorganizing the posts on the church blog, this one seemed out of place there. All the rest of the material is opinion and thoughts, then there was this significant transition item. So I moved it here.

I did a little inspection tour of the new roof on Wednesday evening. They had the shingles off one side and new sheathing down (and just a tiny bit of new shingles so I could see the color). Yesterday was clear and dry, so I hope they made some progress. Today is heavy rain and more on the way, as usual.

The money for this came from the recent Capital Campaign, so it's all money raised by the parish. As we announced previously, when a member sends money to the capital campaign, the Diocese puts 30% of the total toward the new camp and sends 70% of it back to the parish. These checks arrive quarterly, and the most recent one covered the roofing project.

Monday and Tuesday aren't supposed to get much rain, so I hope the roof makes good progress. Last summer we wanted to get some painting done, but no painters were available. The soggy summer meant that nobody could finish the jobs they already had signed contracts for.