An Annual Congregational Meeting is held in April, May or June each year to adopt the budget for the next fiscal year beginning July 1, elect members of the Board of Trustees, hear reports from the President, the Minister and staff members, and conduct any other business specified in the notice of the meeting.

May 19, 2024 Annual Congregational Meeting

The 2024 Annual Congregational Meeting was held after worship at noon on Sunday, May 19, 2024. Business conducted at the meeting:

• Members voted to co-ordain our former Intern Minister, George Grimm-Howell.
• The 2024-25 operating budget was approved.
• Andrea Baka, Ryan Carter and Kim Wade were elected to three-year terms on the Board of Trustees – see their biographical sketches and photos below.
• Rev. Molly summarized her Annual Report on Ministries.
• Kevin Fritsche, who leads the Facilities Team, was given special recognition for his many hours of work restoring the Lower Level of the church after it was damaged by a burst water pipe last January.

Following are the new board members whose terms will begin July 1 this year and end June 30, 2027:

Andrea Baka

Andrea Baka grew up at UUCC, attending the R.E. program in the 1990s and 2000s and working in the nursery throughout her teen years. In 2022 she married Travis, whom she met in YRUU when they were teenagers. She currently volunteers her time running workshops for middle and high school groups and being an advisor for YRUU. She’s only been an official member for a year, but she is excited to raise Iggy at the church where she grew up and where mom Elaine Martin and in-laws Julie and Greg Baka still attend. Outside of the church she is a business analyst.

 

Ryan Carter

Ryan Carter has been a member of UUCC along with his wife Cara since October 2022. Almost immediately after joining, he was asked to take part as the youngest member on George Grimm-Howell’s internship team. Before joining UUCC Ryan’s only religious leaning was a membership card with The Satanic Temple to show his support for bodily autonomy and separation of church and state. Ryan enjoys acting every summer at the Maplewood Barn Community Theater and hosts a book club podcast called “Functionally Literate.”

 

Kim Wade

Kim Wade joined UUCC in 2017. She is a hiker, a writer and a portrait photographer whose pictures have been spotlighted on Oprah and Entertainment Tonight. She received a bachelors in American Civilization from Brown University and a masters in Environmental Education from the University of Michigan.

An eighth generation Missourian and a trained Climate Reality Leader, Kim has organized national environmental conferences and led Missouri’s first statewide Office of Environmental Education while working for the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Kim now writes on the essential and everyday joys of noticing, community-building, and finding meaning in the midst of precarity. She and her husband, David, have two adult children, Elliot and Atlas. Their family is rewilding 10 acres south of Columbia. Kim loves road trips, fantasy fiction, campfires, kayaking and seafood (the rawer the better). She walks whenever and wherever she can.