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1. Tree Trimming the route – 200 to 350  per tree. So maybe 0, maybe 5000.
   
2. Contacting , paying, and working with the electric company to disconnect service wires that would be in the way of the church. – No idea.
   
3. Temporarily removing or deconstructing the bell/steeple/dome/onion, then reattaching – 850 to rent a lift for a week and take it apart in house ORhire a contractor, 3,000 to 5,000
   
4. Building/pouring a new crawl space/foundation – 15,000ish
   
5. Disconnecting utilities at current site – 10,000? Not sure about this
   
6. Installing and connecting utilities at the new site – 10,000 to 30,000 (maybe cheaper if we can piggyback off of current site)
7. Permits 100 – 1,000
8. Other costs/Prep for move – Lots of labor and at least a 500.00 dumpster.

Check this out:

http://religiousrealestate.com/property/litchfield-united-methodist-church/

Disadvantages:  not in Albion, increases driving time for most.   Hideous roof line, would need some work to orthodox’ize it.   Too expensive for us to do anything about right now ($400K). We’d have to get a fund pretty well advanced to afford the mortgage.

Advantages:  seems like the right size and has parking and handicap and classrooms and a hall, but the hall is only slightly larger than our current one.   Less money than the building-new option.  Everyone who drives from Hillsdale would love this.  🙂

Who could we get to buy those pews??

What does it look like financially for us to buy this now?  The downpayment will take out a hunk of our savings, and then the monthly costs will make it a little tighter once Fr Joshua goes full time (1/1/2021).   So doable but not with a huge buffer.  As far as building anything after that, we’re no where near that yet.  That’s the part where we wait for a few small miracles.

Using our current 2020 income and expenses, Wendy/Mary Cline say we’d be able to pay me and make the payments and still have some to spare.  See the other article on “short term costs of new property and hall” for more on what those expenses would look like.  Of course our income and expenses vary wildly, so who knows?   But seeing that this is at all possible is a good sign that most of us have stepped up and started to tithe more generously and regularly!

Affording the new property/building: 

Until we build a new building, which could be some time away, we’d have the building/land to take care of while not being there, with its plusses and minuses. There are also possible ways to mitigate the expenses: logging, hall-rental, etc,  all of which need a little research, and also ways we might want to use it ourselves.  See the post called “new property details”.

Initial expenses:  The price is $160K.  We would put down 20% (to avoid PMI), so $32K.  Pluses there’s all those closing costs, $3K??  We’d also need a “site-plan” (see process overview”) before buying so that we know we could build, which is $2K, and then $400 application fee from the township.  Architect says we don’t need a survey (whew! that’s $3K).  But we’ll need some inspections yet (septic/well), so $800?  So I think that brings our initial expenses to 32+3+2.4+.8 = $38K’ish? (did I forget anything?)  We have about 100K in savings, so that would take a nice chomp out of it.

Ongoing Expenses: Then we’d make $6-700 monthly payments.  Luckily we’re at record low interest rates right now, so if we’re going to borrow, this is the time.

We’d also need at least minimum utilities, like heat and electric, and lawn mowing, and so on.  Insurance premium.  So another $200-$300 per month?

And then we have to decide if we want to put a little money into it to make it a worthy place to rent out, such as windows and a new drop ceiling, etc.  So maybe another couple thousand of initial investment.

I’ve never really wanted to be that parish (or that priest) that thinks that growing our numbers or our facilities is some sort of sign of success or that it’s even a good idea at all, and I’ve been glad that we’ve directed our resources toward other things rather than just self-aggrandizing kinds of “growth” strategies that churches are apt to do.  Even now I’m already pretty annoyed at how much leg work is involved in even considering this, and how distracting it is from our true mission, and from the more important work I’m trying to do.   It’s about salvation & prayer, not a building. On the other hand, providing beautiful and prayer worship in an appropriate and beautiful space, for all who want to participate, has always been for me THE thing we can provide our modern and confused world.  The only reason I’m thinking and praying about it particularly right now is because, even though our space issues have been getting worse for a while, I’ve always kind of thought to myself: if God wants us to move, He’ll have to drop some kind of opportunity on top of me.   So here we are. Sorry!

There’s a lot of back-and-forth in my head about this as I think about it. A sizeable chunk of me wants to have nothing to do with any of this.  Moving & building obviously means spending lots money, and going into debt, a financial crunch, and more chains around our ankles, and no small amount of stress and work to do, and so on.  And shouldn’t we just put up with it and give more money to build homes in Mexico or whatever?   Yes, but I also think, Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh either.

Disagreements and divisions over church building projects are so common that it’s kind of a trope.  The fear of people acting divisively over this sort of thing is perhaps THE main thing that’s kept me from doing anything until now.  What sane person would want their community to be stressed out with Covid and start a building project in the same year?  But, I also think to myself, should fear of having to work out our salvation with each other, painful as it will be, immobilize us?

This seems like an objectively bad time to do this.  But I also don’t think there’s such a thing as a good time either.  The idea that there will always be the next better deal and the less stressful time in the future doesn’t hold much sway with me.  On the other hand, seems like only fools jump on any opportunity that happens to pass by, taking too little time to appreciate their situation.

I would rather stay put.  But it’s the same way I wanted to stay put and not go to seminary. In spite of the luxurious lifestyle it offers, I went to prepare for priesthood because I felt I had to, and that it was my responsibility to do so.

So, if this all falls through for some reason, or we just decide against it, then that’s fine, we’ll get to stay where we are and focus on our spiritual growth.  All the preparation and thinking we’re putting into it now will come in handy when the next opportunity comes along.  We’ll be better mentally and spiritually prepared, and maybe we’ll have set aside some money for it by then.

But it we decide for it, then I think we should all somehow accept it, even if begrudgingly, and find our salvation in the work God has given us to do.

Meanwhile, I think this is worthy of some extra prayer.  Matushka and I are going to pray the Akathist to the Mother of God for extra discernment for the next couple months.  We’re going to do it Tuesday evenings, in case you’d like to do the same thing from your location.  Here is a nice one online, but there might be other translations you like better:

http://www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/Akathist.htm

Add your ideas in the comments.

You can read the listing for the technical details.

https://www.realestateone.com/home-for-sale/13526-29-Mile-Rd-Albion-MI-49224/53020022127-MIRC

The location is pretty great, not far from the highway or the town, but also in the country.   It’s 10 acres and mostly covered with woods.

The realtor insisted we could make a bunch of money by selling some of our trees to loggers.  Sounds optimistic, but would anyone like to research this?

The building is right in the middle of the lot, so we wouldn’t be bumping up against anyone, and we’re not near the road either.    There’s enough land that we could consider maybe our own green cemetery in the future.  Would someone like to research this?  (but don’t ask the township about it yet, not until they approve of our building plans.)

The building that’s there is not pretty, but it’s functional.  It was built in the 80s and hasn’t been updated since then I’d guess.  Mike C, Luke, and Billy D and I inspected it and found most everything to be in working order, but there are a few repairs we’d have to make.  If we decide to buy, we should order a septic and well inspection  before going through with it, besides whatever else the township makes us do for a building permit.   I’ve already discovered that there is no official map for the septic on file, so we have to find it and dig it up.  It’s right outside the kitchen door somewhere, you can see the pipe for it.  Would someone like to go over there with a shovel and find the lid? Talk to me and I’ll set it up.

It could use a thorough cleaning.  The kitchen is nice and big.   All the chairs and tables and fridge and stove (and bar!) are included. But the place could really really use some windows though.  Are there restrictions on what kind and how many windows we can put in? Do we need a permit to do that? What would that cost to buy them?

Would we want to spruce it up and try to make some money off of renting it out?  Is there still a market for that?  What would we have to do legally to have a business like that?  Someone want to research that?   Would we have parishioners who want to help with this? The current manager of the hall, Frank, said that, even in its current state, he rented it out 25-30 times last year, at $400 per rental.  If that’s true, say it’s 25, and we did likewise, that would be 10K per year, ie, a good bit more than our mortgage payment would be.  Would someone want to look into this?

Would we want to use it ourselves?  Seems unlikely that we’d all want to drive over there for lunch on a typical Sunday, but maybe at Pascha?

Comments???

I’m filling in the details as I understand them. I’ll probably update this section many more times.

Pre-purchase.

Apparently, first you get an architect to draw you up a “site-plan”. The site-plan is the first of three phases. It’s a general overview of where the building would sit, what its size/height would be, foundation, with a rough rendering. etc. That’s the part we’d use to do rough planning, and it’s what we submit to the township for building approval. So it has be done in order to have the township approve us which is what we’d need to have before we buy the property.

update 8/5/20: This township meeting is scheduled for Thursday Aug 13th.  

I’ve set Jeannette Woodard (architect from Jackson who built the monastery church) on this task. It’s about $2K for this. Using her for this part does not lock us into using her for the rest, it’s just the first bureaucratic hurdle.  I’d be up for having this done even if we vote against buying the property, then we’d have it all ready for if this comes up again. (update 8-5: parish council agreed, we commissioned her to get this done for us.)

Then I guess you pester township officials to deal with you, even though they’re open only 1 day a week and can’t seem to locate their own zoning records. I’ve started this, waiting on return calls from them. On one hand they seem utterly friendly to me and these plans, on the other they seem a bit disorganized about follow-through.

Parish Meeting:

Anyway if the township says yes, then we are free to buy the property pending our own decision.   Or we could vote before that approval and simply make our vote depend on the township’s approval.  The parish as a whole has to vote on it.  Buying property is specifically required to go to a whole parish vote by our bylaws, which is a good idea since you’d want most people to be on-board before doing such a thing.   And it requires 2/3 (not just a majority).   We’ll need to schedule that when enough bars have been cleared.   Given the current covid stuff, we’ll do it outside so that everyone can attend whether or not they’re back in church yet.  We also have approval from the bishop to vote remotely. (update: see upcoming meeting).

Post-purchase

We could have the same architect (or a new one) do the “second phase”, a more accurate rendering with a floor plan etc., and we’d use that as our preliminary plans while we figure out funding, etc. Or we get different plans from different architects and compare? Not sure how this part works.  I imagine we’ll have a lot of design decisions to make here, a whole new topic.

If we get to the point of building, whichever architect we have draws up final plans that have all the details for the builders and they start to dig.

No idea how long that might take.

Meanwhile, we’d have a building to take of that we wouldn’t be using (much).  Just to be clear, I don’t intend for us to have church services in that building, I wouldn’t want to move over until we had a church to move into.  There’s another post on what to do with building meanwhile (new property details).

How much would it cost to build a new building?
I got some answers on this today (Wed, Jul 8th). We had an architect come over and talk it through with Matushka and Katie and me. Jeannette Woodard built the Monastery Church so she was well-informed. She said we should do our calculations using $150 per square foot.
Our current church footprint is 1900’ish square feet. Let’s say we want to double it? (do we?) Let’s say we want it to be 4000 square feet, that means $600,000.
Throw that in with the property and we’re at $760K. Plus all the stuff I certainly forgot about.

Lots of ways to look at that. Compared to what others pay to put up churches and halls, it’s a good deal.

On the other hand, it’s also so far beyond our current means that proposing it seems utterly ludicrous to me. So if it needs to make financial sense to you, you should run from this idea screaming! 🙂

The only reason I even consider it is because I’ve been told by many others who’ve done this already, that this is how churches are built: the parish takes a leap in good faith, and it all somehow comes together. But don’t ask me how. It might take 3 years or 10. Worse case scenario: we’re totally wrong, we ditch the idea after a few years, sell it again, and probably lose several thousand in the process.

Add your (polite) comments below.

Not really sure, this will take some research. It will be some years off yet, so not the most urgent of problems. I think most of us agree that we wouldn’t want to sell it to be used as anything else, the idea of selling it and then it ends up as a tattoo parlor or something is just too much to bear. If we do ever move out of it, after we’ve all taken the pieces we want, we would need to find some worthy way to deal with. Perhaps the fire department would burn it down for us? Or perhaps we tear it down and haul it away?  Would someone like to research those, or other, options? 

The best idea we’ve had so far is that we make it into a small monastery where Katie could be the Abbess!

If you have any ideas, leave a reply below.