Last Sunday (April 22), our choirs and I finally gave our annual Spring Concert. More than any other year, we encountered some unexpected obstacles during our preparation for the concert. The most shocking one was that our beloved Skinner pipe organ suddenly stopped working a few weeks before the concert. Luckily, I had planned a way to have the concert without using the main pieces that greatly needed the organ this year. But, we still needed our organ for Bach’s cantata and some other pieces, and our digital piano was used as a back-up.

In my personal opinion, we need to get our pipe organ working again as soon as possible, more for our services than our public concerts. The pipe organ deserves its name “the King of Instruments” due to its magnificence and range of sound, but the true value of the organ, I believe, is that it is the best instrument to support our voices with its sustained and rich sound.

Even this historical instrument has its own ups and downs in history. In early Christian churches, they didn’t use the organ because they considered it for secular music. Around the year 800, the organ started to appear in churches, but after the Reformation of the 16th century, many protestant churches in Europe followed the tradition of the early Christian church and didn’t allow the use of any instruments, including the organ. Only human voices were considered good instruments to praise God. But the organ did come back again to church services through history because its important role to support our voices when we sing praise to God.

We started working towards the recovery of our organ, and the efforts have been shared not only by our Worship and Music Team, but also with other teams and their budget plans. We are also asking our church members for their generosity to help. On Sunday, June 3, we will be taking up a special offering to help with the repairs. I look forward to having the full sound of our pipe organ back soon, so we can enjoy the great sound of our organ itself and sing along with it to praise our loving God in one voice.