Joshua Noel engages in a profound dialogue with Will Burton-Edwards, a representative from Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders, as they delve into the intricate process of constructing pipe organs. The conversation elucidates how these magnificent instruments are not merely functional but are vital to the worship experience, fostering a sense of unity among congregants. Burton-Edwards articulates the historical significance of pipe organs and their enduring relevance in contemporary worship settings. The discussion further explores the acoustic considerations involved in organ design and the profound impact of music on communal faith practices. Ultimately, this episode of The Whole Church Podcast reveals the essential role that well-crafted instruments play in enhancing the spiritual atmosphere of the church.

A profound exploration of the intricacies involved in the creation of pipe organs unfolds as Joshua Noel engages in conversation with Will Burton-Edwards, a skilled craftsman from Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders. The dialogue traverses the historical significance of pipe organs within worship settings, emphasizing their role in enhancing congregational unity through music. Burton-Edwards articulates the meticulous craftsmanship that underpins organ construction, detailing how each pipe's size and shape correlates with its pitch and tonal quality. This episode not only delves into the technical aspects but also reflects on the spiritual dimensions of music in the church, drawing connections between the act of communal singing and the shared faith experience. Through their discussion, listeners gain insight into the enduring legacy of pipe organs and their capacity to foster a deeper connection among worshippers, bridging the past and present of church music.

Takeaways:

• Will Burton-Edwards discusses the intricate process of building pipe organs and their significance in church worship.
• The interview highlights how the organ serves not only as a musical instrument but also as a facilitator of community and unity in worship.
• Burton-Edwards shares his unexpected journey into organ building, stemming from a background in theater and physics.
• The podcast emphasizes the historical evolution of pipe organs, including the transition from hand-pumped bellows to modern electric blowers.
• Listeners are encouraged to appreciate the role of music in worship, particularly congregational singing, as a means of connecting with one another.
• The conversation reflects on the enduring value of pipe organs in churches despite the rise of digital alternatives, asserting their unique sound and presence.

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Colossians 3, 16, 17 in the new American Standard Bible say, let the peace of Christ, to which you were indeed called in one body, rule in your hearts and be thankful.

Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admin admonishing one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatsoever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him and to God the Father.

In the Book of Colossians. Letter of Colossians, St. Paul is addressing a potential heresy in the church that has to do with, like, synchronism.

Paul emphasizes the sufficiency of Christ throughout the letter, and here he writes about the importance of teaching and making music together. Wilburton Edwards why do you think Paul may have stressed the importance of letting Christ dwell in us through music here? Like what?

I don't know.

What pops in your head when you hear about that?

I think the most important thing that we can do as a community together is to sing is to worship with the full instrument that God gave us.

And throughout Christian history, throughout really the history of religions globally, people have always come together to sing songs together to give thanks for the world that was created around them, to give thanks for one another and to draw one another into deeper unity with one another and with the world that they were given.

Yeah, yeah, Good stuff. Strong stuff. Love it. Hey guys, welcome to the Whole Church Holy Logistics series.

On the Whole Church podcast we're looking behind the scenes of how church gets made, how the sausage gets made comes to be and today is going to be a fun one as we're here with Will Burton Edwards. Will here is works with the Cornell Zimmer Organ Builders. He's going to be talking with us about the process of building pipe organs.

If your church has an organ, you can learn about some of that today.

And if your church doesn't have an organ, you can learn maybe about why it should or if you just think, hey, maybe that's interesting or you general what it adds to the church, we'll go over lots of different stuff that it's going to be a lot of fun. Will, am I missing anything else that you think I should mention introducing you.

Here, man, I think you pretty much nailed it.

Yeah, compliment. I'm Joshua Noel. I'm just here to introduce people. I'm not good at the beginning or end of this podcast. I was like, that's TJ's part. Where is he?

Oh no, man, he's the pod almighty. He's out doing important, you know, podfather stuff. Stuff, you know. No, he's on vacation. I rescheduled at an inconvenient time for him.

This is my fault.

So with that, though, you can go to our website, purchase one of our T shirts, helps promote the show, raise money for our podcasting needs, gets others to know about the importance of our mission to educate and unite the modern church. A lot of good come from just doing that. One thing of, like, buying a T shirt off a website that links in the show's description.

There's a few different options.

My favorite is the Irish Trinity knot on the back, because I just like the Irish Trinity knot and it represents the unity of God and talks about how we also are united as the church. Currently, though, I think I'm wearing the divided Church one. I don't know. There's a few options on there. Check them out. They're cool.

But I'm going to skip all that other stuff. We're part of the Onazole Podcast network. You can see the network down below. There's other shows on there. They're cool. Tj, Mikey.

Call Yada, yada, yada. My favorite sacrament is the sacrament of silliness. We're gonna get be divided when you're being as silly as I like to be.

So, with all that said, we'll start with a question. Perfect. Very important. Very important. Yeah. Which bug or animal do you think would make for the silliest Kaiju monster?

So, like, you know, we have Godzilla, we got King Kong. What would be the silliest one? I love Mothra. Which, you know, honestly, if it didn't exist, I'd be like, oh, moths are silly.

Turns out not Mothra's cool. I'm gonna go. Just because I have, like, the world's sweetest, quietest little dog, and she's a Chihuahua now, I think.

I think, regardless, if you get the sweet, quiet one or the yappy one, Kaiju Chihuahua is gonna be funny either way. It's a minute.

Yeah.

So I'm going Chihuahua, Kaiju monster.

I'm interested in how it sounds like. Would it still, but just loud, just louder, or would it be at a lower?

I hope so. I hope so. I hope. A loud yippee.

Could it growl and cause earthquakes a hemisphere away?

One can dream. One can dream. Will, what about you, man? What is the silliest you could think of for a Kaiju monster?

I feel like a sea cucumber might be kind of fun.

That'd be great.

Just this big amorphous what would it even do? Slowly crawling its way towards shore, but can't quite get there. Can't quite leave the ocean, can't quite stay on land.

For all we know, that monster might be canon.

See it in the movie.

Right.

It might already exist. It might be under there. There are lots of things that can come out.

The director's notes. Specific fault. Yeah, it's in the sub day.

Yeah.

Yeah. Beautiful, man. I love it. I love it.

So it's in the rubrics. Field notes.

Yeah. So let's get to more of the serious stuff in the series. Before we talk about organs, I'd like to know a little bit more about you, man.

What could you tell us some about just yourself, your own journey, your journey with faith, Anything like that? Who is Will?

Sure. Yeah. So I grew up as the child of two clergy people. My father was a Methodist pastor and my mother is an Episcopal priest.

And so growing up, church was always. I mean, church was an important part of my spiritual life, but more importantly, church was what my parents did for work.

And so when it came to forming my own spirituality, that really started when I was away from the churches that I grew up in. And I was at a summer camp that was funded in large part by the diocese. By the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis, where I grew up.

That camp is called Waycross. And if you live anywhere within driving distance of Brown County, Indiana, send your kids there. It's an amazing place.

They will grow into mature, spiritually formed adults and maintain friendships for a lifetime. But that's where I kind of began my relationship with God.

And when I say relationship, I'm not just talking about this sort of personal relationship of an intercessor purely within my brain and within my mind that I can personally commune with through prayer. I'm talking about a relationship with God that includes care for creation and includes care for the relationships that surround and that sustain me.

And my spiritual life has always been about the people that I share the religion with more than a personal relationship with a sort of intercessor in my head.

Yeah, yeah. No, I like that. I like that. Cool, man. So with that, then how do we go from Will at church camp, which also.

It's cool because TJ and I became friends and met at church camp, so that's just cool. But how do we go from Will forming that relationship at camp to Will working with organs, man? How did you get into the organ crafting business?

Sure. Yeah. So I did not intend to do this. This wasn't something that I went to school for it wasn't something that I really dreamed about doing.

A young age, I went to college to study physics and theater arts. And upon graduation, I did a whole bunch of auditions for a whole bunch of different theater companies.

And the company that hired me was in Charlotte, North Carolina. So I moved here, where I still live. And you're over by me, I guess I do, Yes. I didn't know that you were local.

Catch up later. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah.

But that theater company, which is amazing, and I'm not going to say the name, but they, much like a school, will lay you off for about two months over summertime. And so I needed a job that could tide me over for my first summer off. And through connections with.

Actually in my church choir, I met a guy who happened to work for this weird company that makes pipe organs for churches. And because of my theater background, you know, I had some experience building sets and working in a shop, in a wood shop.

And so, you know, I can drive a screw. I can push boards through a table saw. I've got those basic, you know, shop skills. And so he recommended that I be hired.

And I worked my first summer there and never really turned back because the work is interesting, and I get to work with people who are really, really grateful for the work that we do. And perhaps more importantly, because I'm not tied to an actor's salary, I get to have health insurance, which is great. I like having that.

So I just kind of never looked back. And I love the work that I do. It's really, really important.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's so cool. And I know so many churches rely on the organ for that. Morning service, worship. And.

Yeah, I have a few questions I'm trying to feel, like, narrow down. I think the best thing I want to ask right now, though, you went to school partially for physics.

Does that play a role in what you do with, like, organs? Because, I mean, music's weird. Yeah.

I don't know how nerdy you want me to get about this, but. Oh, the nerdiest. Okay.

Yeah. That's what podcasts are for.

So I can tell you that organ pipes are organized by length, and the length of each pipe determines the pitch that it plays at. And obviously, the larger the pipe is, the lower the pitch that it plays.

And if you look at the stop knobs on either side of the keyboards on an organ console, you'll see usually an instrument name that stop that that set of pipes is trying to emulate, and you'll see a number, and that Number is going to be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 or in some cases 64. And what that number means is the length in feet of the longest pipe that that rank of pipes contains.

And so an eight foot stop means that the bottom pipe is eight feet long. A 16 foot stop means that the bottom of that range is played by a pipe that's 16ft long and 32ft long, and so on and so forth.

The reason why those are multiples of two is because an octave, that idea of going from do to do, right, those two notes are a doubling of the frequency between the two, right? You've probably heard of a 440 meaning a playing at 440 hertz. Well, the a, that's an octave below that plays at 220 hertz.

And an octave below that is 110. An octave below that is 55. An octave below that is 25 and a half and so on.

And as you get bigger and bigger and bigger, the frequency gets lower and lower and lower. And of course, as the pipe gets bigger and bigger, it takes more wind, more physical air moving to drive it to make that sound.

So when you're building out a pipe organ, you need to consider having enough air to supply the largest pipes that are going to be contained in it with enough sensitivity in the pressure to not throw the pitch off of the smallest pipes that you're building for it.

Okay, two quick follow ups. Sure, I'll do the quicker one first. Sound like another instrument. Okay, so obviously you don't have them. Try to sound like trumpets.

Like what can you tell me? What do you mean?

Is there a trumpet? There's a trumpet organ, there are trumpets, there are oboes, there are tubas.

What organs can emulate pretty much any instrument that's that is, that's ever been created. And actually there are a number of instruments that are essential to organ stop lists that aren't even made anymore.

Instruments like a gamba, which is similar to a cello, or like an ophiclyde, which is like if a tuba and a saxophone had a baby. There are lots of instruments that we've made over the years.

And the pipe organ is in some cases the only kind of instrument that still produces the sound that those instruments of old used to make. But yeah, so when you're creating an organ, you aren't just cramming a whole bunch of pipes in there at random.

You're creating something that can create the entire sound of a symphony. And some organs even contain percussion units that have drums and cymbals. And triangles and all sorts of stuff.

Okay. So the other follow up, maybe less shorter. I'll try to make it shorter, but I'm just like. My brain is.

When I'm sitting in church, I feel like I see maybe 10 pipes on each side. That's cool. But what you're talking about sounds like all kinds of different thickness and heights.

And like, in order to really get all of that sound, like there's gotta be a lot of pipes. Right. Like, it's not just those 10 I'm seeing.

Yes. Yeah. So the 10 or so pipes that you'll see are part of what's called the facade. That's the front of the organ. That's the pretty part that you see.

And nine times out of 10, the pipes that you see in that facade aren't actually doing anything. They're just standing there to look pretty.

Okay.

We call those dummy pipes because they don't speak.

They do look cool.

They do look cool. Yes. Sometimes the pipes in a facade do speak and they're part of a larger set of pipes that's just contained in a room behind where that facade sits.

But yeah, usually the pipes that you can see aren't ever going to play any music. The remainder of the instrument is behind that facade. And it contain. It contains anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand pipes.

So there's never just like 15, 20.

No.

Or almost never. Okay.

Wow.

That is crazy.

So if you think about the keyboard, right. A piano keyboard has 88 keys on it. And organ keyboards usually have 61 keys on them.

Which means that for every rank that you have, every set of pipes, you need 61 pipes, one for each of the keys that are on that, that, that keyboard. So it starts to take up an awful lot of space.

Yeah.

Especially if you think about like a 16 foot stop.

Right.

Bottom C of that. The, the biggest node is 16ft tall, several inches wide, up to, you know, possibly a foot wide.

And so if, if you think about 61 notes that are that size, it's. It takes up an awful lot of room.

Oh, man, that's so cool. Okay, so. Man. So. Well, yeah, you. I'm glad you have some physics background.

Like, I don't know if it's worth anything, but like, I'm hearing this going. This sounds like a logistics nightmare.

Because what I know of, like, how things work in general is like, if there's one slight dent in something that doesn't quite work. Right. And I'm like, we're talking about like hundreds of pipes. I feel like if one little thing's wrong, it would mess everything up. Right.

Like, doesn't. Does it have to basically be perfect or.

For the most part, yeah, it does, actually. Which is.

I sound like that would cost a lot to maintain that, or is it, like, you just make it so well,.

You're right about that. Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that's something that I think a lot of laypeople don't really understand is that, like, having a pipe organ is not the same thing as having, like, a Casio keyboard. You know, it's not something that you buy once and then you throw away in 10 years when there's something better down the line.

This is an investment that your church community makes for potentially hundreds of years. Right. There are some cathedral organs in Europe that, while the.

Just because it was built well and it was maintained by the church for that long.

Man. That's. Okay. Wow. That's, like, almost overwhelming.

It's. Yes.

Glad I don't have to deal with the logistics of pipe organs at my church. Well, yeah.

I mean, you talk about overwhelming. That's a lot. My job is to build things that are going to outlive me. And I'm. You can see. You can look at my skin.

I'm quite young, and I'm building things that will hopefully last for 100 or more years.

Yeah. How long do you say you've been in this so far?

I've been tinkering away thousands of pipes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome, man.

Yes.

Okay. So, sorry, I got distracted. I. I told you going into this, like, I know nothing about pipe organs. I knew I was gonna do this. Okay, that's. All right.

So for this series, before we get to more. More organs, we have a special segment we're doing called Real or Fantasy? We're just asking everybody a series of rapid questions.

If you don't know the answer, you say, I don't know. Or you can be like, I don't really go to church enough. Know that answer. Whatever.

If you're not in church leadership, because, like, sometimes we're on a package or sometimes people who build organs or pews. So we're like. Not all questions might be applicable, but if you know the answer, that would be cool to learn.

Sure.

So are you ready for trying to see. Is there anything else as far as this?

Yeah, no, just when you say rapid fire, probably talking, like a few words or like a sentence at most, like.

Yeah, all right. Something like that. If you can keep it under two sentences, that'd be great. The last one, I just want, like, one or two words, I think, but.

All right, let's jump into this then. All right, so Will, that's a little bit.

Okay.

What monthly expenses does a church have that many people may not think? Pipe organs, apparently. Well, what. What else?

Yeah. So every about every six months, if you've got a pipe organ, it needs to be tuned, and that's an expense that people don't often think about.

But the biggest one is probably payroll.

Yeah, yeah. People just, you know, God pays them, right?

Nope, the people do, sadly.

Yeah. Yeah.

All the money that the church needs is in that church. It just happens to be in the pockets of its parishioners.

Okay, so what's a struggle that church leadership faces regularly that might shock some people to think about?

Definitely the difficulty of fundraising. It's easy to fundraise for the big projects that you can see.

It's a lot harder to fundraise for things like H vac and roof leaks, things that are really, really important. But you don't get a plaque for it.

Yeah, fair enough, Fair enough. All right, so what's the most interesting room in the church you attend, and how does the layout of that room serve the functionality of that room?

We've got transepts out on either side. And then the nave extends all the way towards the Northex at the back.

And our organ is in the back of the room, which means that the sound of that organ is behind every everybody who is singing in the congregation. And that helps to facilitate congregational hymning.

I like it. I like it. Okay, cool, cool, cool. All right.

Funny, because this, I think you just answered the next question is how important is the layout of the worship area in a church building?

Super important. The purpose of a worship space is to facilitate worship.

And I don't want to poo poo anybody, but I gotta tell you, it disappoints me when I walk into a worship space and there's a basketball hoop on either side and a court on the floor that tells me that this is not the place that worship was intended to be in. Yeah.

Which, I mean, you can worship anywhere.

You totally can. Yes. God is everywhere and always loves us.

Yeah.

I just have preference.

Prefers football to basketball anyway. But so, I'm sorry. So in one or two word answers. So just. Super Avatar, for this last part.

Could you explain who is responsible for each of the following areas of. At your local church? Just got a list of 10 here. So number one is landscaping volunteers. All right. Budgeting rector.

And our treasurer.

And rector is just the head pastor for those who are familiar.

That's our priest in charge. Hospital visits, the rector, and occasionally volunteers as well.

All right. Wedding or funeral arrangements.

That's a volunteer. In coordination with clergy.

Awesome. Theological correction, I guess.

Clergy. But correction isn't really something that we feel they need to do all that often.

Fair enough. Building maintenance.

Mostly volunteers, but we do have a staff person on site for larger needs.

Cool. Creating the worship set list.

That would be our director of music and organist. Cool. Teaching volunteers.

All right. Parking lot traffic.

That would be a company that we contract with to maintain our parking garage.

Nice. Okay, that's parking. That's so interesting. Okay.

We're in an urban last one.

That's last one. Greeting and welcoming people. You know, I'm assuming Sunday morning.

That would be our ushers.

Nice. Nice. Well, we successfully ran through the game. I feel like I know your church better. I would never have guessed a parking lot.

I don't think I've been to a church with a parking lot. Like. Like. Not like lot, but like a garage. I think that's what you were talking about, right? Yeah, I don't think I've been to one with one of those.

That's cool.

I always lived in either, like, suburbs or not directly in the city, I guess.

Our church is right in the center of town, and we used to own a lot of land around our church, and that land has since been sold to a number of banks and museums and lots of places that now hold, you know, they're important fixtures of our city. But we had to park somewhere, so we built a parking garage underneath the banking building across the street from us.

Yeah, yeah. TJ talks about how, like, the parking thing really isn't an issue at this church.

And I'm like, you know, some churches, it's an issue, and I feel like, urban with banks around. It sounds like that's, that could be a struggle.

So there has been, I mean, there has been a decades long painful back and forth forth between our church and the contractor that serves our parking garage. So I, I understand the importance of, of maintaining traffic patterns and, and, and all that. That's a, That's a real struggle. Oh, yeah.

I hate to be the guy that like plugs what he's currently doing, you know, the name of the Sears and all, but, man, talk about your holy logistics.

Yes.

That's why, like, you know, I feel like church podcast instead of getting like the, like snare drums. You gotta.

But I'm gonna.

There's some organ in there.

Yeah, perfect.

All right. So in our emails, you know, talking about getting ready for this episode, you had to like, prep me.

Just did backwards than usual where I'm used to prep of the gas. I'm like, dude, I don't even, I don't nothing. You're talking about how complex the process of crafting pipes for an organ can be.

We've already talked a little bit about that. But like, I know you mentioned like, what was it called? Warping points or something. Like, there's a lot that goes into it.

Could you maybe just break down for those like me who don't know anything, what does the process look like? How many steps are there to creating a pipe organ? Or just like a single pipe even? Like, sure. How much goes into that?

So I'm gonna frame this as, As a, As a conversation of inputs and outputs. So the output that you get is obviously a. Is a. Is a pleasing sound to the ear when you are sitting in a pew.

And the inputs are the organist sitting at the console playing a note with their hand, and the blower in the basement, which is supplying wind to the organ. So from that blower, the wind.

What's the blower look like?

The blower.

Sorry.

You're good. You're good. The blower looks like my brain was.

Like a leaf blower almost. I'm like, that's not right.

It is actually. It looks a lot like a gigantic leaf blower. Yes. It's a big impeller with usually a 10 or sometimes a 15 inch output on it.

And that output is basically a duct which goes through a really large box called a static reservoir, which just sort of levels out, evens out the pressure of the air that's contained within it. And then from there, it goes through a series of other trunks and channels and ducts to where the rest of the organ is.

Those feed these large boxes which are called wind chests. And those wind chests all have the valves in them that control the pipes.

So when the valve is open, it allows the wind from that blower going through the static reservoir to go up through the pipe and make a sound. And when the valve is closed, you hopefully get no sounds at all from the console side.

What we see is like one person hitting a key and we see those like 10 pipes and we're like, wow, so pretty.

But what's really happening is we got this like machine wind blowing thing going back and forth between hundreds or thousands of pipes and valves opening like, like it's a whole like scene behind the scenes. Basically.

It's a, it's a whole mechanism. It's a whole thing.

That's so cool.

Yeah. So when, when the organist plays that, plays that note.

First of all, if you just turn on an organ and you put your hand on the keyboard, nothing's going to happen until you pull out one of the stop knobs which are on either side of that organ of the key desk. And what those stop knobs do is it assigns a certain sound, a certain instrument to a certain keyboard in that keyboard stack.

Each keyboard stack is roughly assigned to one room of pipes or a division. And there are a number of different kinds of pipes that are contained within that division. And each division serves a different purpose.

The four most popular divisions in church organs are called the great division, the swell division, the choir division, and the pedal division. The pedal division is obviously played by the foot pedals. That's the organist using their feet to play the biggest pipes that are in that instrument.

Usually that's the 16 foot or the 32 foot long pipes in that organ are played with the foot pedals.

The swell and the choir division are what are called enclosed divisions, which means that all of the pipes in there are in a box that has a set of shutters on the front of it that can open or close to diminish the amount of sound that escapes. Or in other words, it can attenuate the volume of all the pipes that are within that chamber. And the choir division is one such division.

And it's usually built to help accompany a choir and it's usually placed in the room wherever the choir is. That's where the choir division is set up. And the great division is usually the loudest division.

That's usually where you see the trumpets and the tubas and the kind of the loudest stops in that organ because it is unenclosed and it's usually closer to where the congregation sits. So that's the three main manual or keyboard divisions and then the pedal division.

So when you pull a stop, when you turn on that stop, what you're doing is you are telling the organ, okay, if I hold any of the keys that are on the keyboard associated with that division, then those keys are going to make the sound that's associated with the type of instrument on the stop that I pulled.

So if you pull a stop that says, like cello, 16 foot, right, that means that bottom C is going to be playing a sound from a 16 foot pipe, which is a sound wave that's 32ft long and propagates in your space at that frequency, whatever that would be, which is somewhere in my head, but I can't tell you right now. It's a really, really deep one.

And then you've got 61 notes from there going all the way up to top C, which is probably, in that case going to be an inch or so tall. And you can draw on as many stops as you want to.

If you want a really, really loud sound, you can have them all off, except for just one, if you want something really, really quiet and really intimate. And each of these stops, some of them are really, really loud natively, some of them are really, really soft.

There are some stops, like the tuba stop, for example. That one is almost deafening when you're next to it, really.

And there are other ones called strings, which are meant to emulate the sounds of string instruments. If you've got a viola or maybe a Dulciana, that's a really, really, really quiet sound.

And so that's the kind of thing that you might play intermittently at a funeral or, you know, to, you know, as sort of transitional music between parts of the service. So there are lots of different options for the organist. Obviously, each of these tops has a slightly different color.

And so adding in one stop or one rank of pipes into the orchestra of pipes that you're already playing is going to be sufficient to change the timbre of the whole instrument, really. You have a whole lot of musical flexibility to manipulate sound and make something really pleasing.

Yeah, yeah. I'm a child and my brain is thinking, okay, Beauty and the Beast, he has a castle, maybe that, you know, that was true. Yes.

That Davy Jones scene, like on the ship. There's just no way he had enough room for all this like that. What?

Well, right, like Davy Jones's ship is a little bit magical. You know, he's got.

He's got bigger on the inside.

It's bigger on the inside. Doctor who, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, in the same way that like so much somehow, like these, these 17th century pirates had had access to like three shot rotating cannons, I, I somehow also believe that they, they had access to adequate space.

They're hanging out with gods, like go to the underworld.

Yeah, yeah, they can, they can make it happen.

I can suspend my disbelief still, I guess, but I'm just like, man, they're just take up so much space. So. Oh man, that is, oh man, that's just, it's so interesting. There's so much more than I ever would have guessed. Goes into just a pipe organ.

Sorry, I'm still kind of like, wow, that's okay.

It's.

I'm gonna jump down a little bit, I'm gonna jump out a little bit here. So all these different pieces, they have to work together basically perfectly. They have to be designed, you know, all that stuff.

We did a series last year on the show with Faith in Science stuff and some of the biologists and stuff we were talking to, they were talking about ecosystems and how it's actually just incredible how one tiny little creature, bacteria, whatever, throws off the whole ecosystem and how they can't help but think of the body of God, whatever, when they're talking about that. As Christians who just happen to be doing that work. Do you ever think about stuff like that?

You're this whole huge organ with thousands of pipes and all these tiny little pieces going together. Does that ever occur to you? Or is it all just mechanical? Or are you ever like, wow, and God designed something even bigger somehow?

I do sometimes think about the metaphysics, I guess, of it all of the complexity of the universe that we were given. As far as the work that I do, I think there are definitely days where I get to sort of wax poetical in my brain about how glorious it all is.

There are also, frankly, days where I'm just glad that the work is over, too busy.

Because like when, when there's something going really, really wrong and you know, you've got a part that was made by, by some individual craftsperson a hundred years ago that no longer exists.

And you've got to figure out how to make that part now, today, you know, like that, that can be difficult, that can add hours to your day that you didn't anticipate. And it's all, you know, at the end of the day it's all, it's all joyous and I'm grateful for the work that we do and the people I get to work with.

But, but there are definitely days that are just an endless slog of tedium. I don't want to deny that.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I get it. It's, you know, people only hear, I guess, the parts we want them to hear because, you know, it's a podcast.

And like, a lot of times, me and my co host, tj, we both work in a restaurant, same franchise, different place. But, you know, a lot of times we have like, the God moment in the episode and we'll be like, oh, well, this customer did this.

Or, you know, I got to think today about how, like, I served all these people and that was just like a blessing, whatever. But, like, you know, nine times out of ten, that's I'm thinking of.

At the end of the day, I'm thinking of, like, I just wish the customers would give me a break for, like, 10 minutes.

Absolutely.

You know, but like, every now and then you're like, oh, yeah, that is, like, I did get to just serve these families and see all these smiling faces. And that's cool. Most of the time you're just kind of like, man, I'd like a break. I'm tired. So, yeah, I get it, I get it.

But not, not the same thing, but similar vibe. So you mentioned on the emails the Industrial Revolution really changed a lot with pipe organs. And like, you listen to.

You're like, it sounds almost mechanical. Like the fan blower thing going back and forth. How did we do this before that, though?

Like, like, sure, I want to know how much has changed, but I'm also like, how did we, like, if it involves a blower and all of these, like, hundreds of people, how did people make organs Back before we had, like, little robots and stuff, you know?

Sure, yeah, no, that's a, that's. That's a fair question. We can go back pretty far, actually. The, the pipe organ as we know it today originated as. As a Greek invention.

It's described, I think, first described by. Oh, I'm going to get the name wrong, but I'm, I'm.

I'm just going to say Acicleus of Athens, I think was his name in the 6th century BCE, and he was an engineer who, who designed this.

This machine called a hydrolis, which, which uses a reservoir of air that is pushed down essentially like, like pushing a barrel and an overturned barrel down into a body of water. And the, the air on the inside of that barrel gets pressurized, and you can use that pressurized air to feed a series of pipes.

And that instrument was first used in Greek theater to Reproduce the sounds of birds, and occasionally was used to play tunes for singing for more of a congregational thing. But it was usually just kind of a gimmicky bird sound machine. And fast forward about a thousand years or so and we get the development of bellows.

So these are much larger, human powered devices that has an intake valve on one side and you lift up the lid of it, and when you set it down, the weight of that lid is what creates pressure on the inside of that bellow and it slowly releases its pressure into the rest of the pipes. But the problem with that, of course, is that you have to either have a couple of different sets of bellows all going at once, or you lose the sound.

Right. Once that, once that one bellow depletes, deflates.

So later on, a couple, not a couple, an awful lot of engineers worked to create water wheel powered pipe organs. And this was the way of things for several hundred years throughout Europe.

A lot of those old cobblestone churches were either near a stream or had a stream brought to them by a little channel that was dug for the purposes of powering its pipe organ.

And so that water wheel would spin a series of gears which would lift with a series of camshafts, would lift up the lids of bellows and operate the pipe organ.

Fascinating.

Since then, if you wanted to get any bigger than that and you were in an urban area, you would just need to have a whole lot of people to operate these enormous hand pumped bellows.

It is said, and this is apocryphal, but it said that the organ that Beethoven would have played at full bore was operated by a small army of 50 boys just to run the bellows because it was moving that much air. And so nowadays, of course, there is no upper limit to the size of an organ you can create.

You can spend as much money as you want and build something absolutely enormous. The largest pipe organ in the world is at Boardwalk hall, which is in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

And it has somewhere in the range of 70 or 80,000 pipes in it. 80,000 Pipes? Yes. It's crazy. It is absolutely crazy.

Yeah. That's insane.

But an instrument that size is only possible because it's got several different blowers feeding it. And you just couldn't do that with even the largest army of boys. You just, you couldn't make that happen. Yeah.

So like 30 minutes ago, when I was like, there's not like 10 pipes. Are you? You were like, dude, there's one with 80,000.

There's so many boys. Yes. It gets so Big.

That is so cool. Okay, man. Wild. It is wild. How far? That's absolutely 80,000. Would not fit on Davy Jones ship, but.

No, that's in an orig arena.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting to go back to, like, Greek stuff. So.

A lot of my fascination with church architecture also comes from what we've implemented since, like, Greek plays and stuff, you know, like, a lot of sanctuaries still have that same model of, like, a stage in the middle and the kind of seating going outwards, which it made sense because, like, it's easier to hear.

Whatever Frank Viola writes in Pagan Christianity talks about, like, some of the issues we've had since then, though, is a lot of times what happens is we make it all about a pastor or the people on stage because it does something like your mental psyche as well.

So even though it serves that practical function, it's still, like, we have to wrestle with the spiritual implications of keeping that kind of layout. And it's like, do we still want to do that?

Church?

I 10 actually kind of does both. Like, sometimes we have everyone facing one direction. We have the big order, and it's cool.

And then sometimes they get more centered, and people kind of have circle around, and we're sharing the communion together. And I think it also matters, is the podium in the front, or do you have the elements for the sacrament in the front?

Like, I think all these little things I think really matters on how we do worship. When a church comes to you guys. Cornell. Organs. Cornell. Sorry. But anyway, they're ordering something.

They're not just, like, ordering a piece and you, like, deliver it. Like, I assume it actually has to be built for the sanctuary. Especially when you talk about how many pipes and stuff.

Like, I don't imagine, like, they can just go pick one up and bring it to the church or anything like that.

That is right. That is correct. Yes. Yeah.

The first step that we take when a church calls us is we visit that church and we usually bring some pipes with us to hear how they sound in that space. And we will use those pipes in all the different corners of the space to figure out what the space does acoustically.

And we'll usually take some notice of the architectural features of that space, things that we might want to include in the facade that we build for. For them.

And then we take all those elements and we go back to our drawing board, create a proposal which includes the total number of pipes and just sort of the size and the scope of the thing that we want to build. It includes some renderings of what it could potentially look like in that space.

And then once they approve those drawings and start paying us, then we can start ordering materials and building, building the real thing.

Do you ever get, like, pastors with, like, spiritual implications stuff? So, like, you mentioned, like, at your church, the organs are behind.

Cause it kind of facilitates that worshiping together instead of, like, the organs face fronting. Do pastors ever, like, mention stuff like that? Or, like, the churches when they're ordering, like, hey, we want it to be like this.

We don't want people to be, you know, performing for them, but with, you know, like, does that kind of stuff have a problem?

The church usually has some idea of what they want and kind of where they want the organ to be in their space before they call us. And I will say, nine times out of 10, we're not dealing with the pastor at a church directly. Long before a church is ready to call us.

They've formed an organ committee which has met to kind of tour around the other organs in their area. Maybe there's one organ builder that they like over another.

And so they go and find a bunch of their organs and listen to those organs in their spaces.

And then once they've got an idea of what they want and how much budget they have, then at that point they come to us and say, hey, we want an organ that's about this size. We want it to be at the back of our space, or we want it to be divided.

We want to have a sanctuary division behind where the altar is, and then an additional antiphonal or gallery division up in the balcony so that we got sound coming from multiple spaces in our sanctuary. And then we take that idea and we expand upon it and we tell them, look, this is. This is what you want.

This looking at your budget is what we can do for you. And then, you know, we kind of meet in the middle. And I will say, usually organ committees have a pretty good idea of what's realistic. So it's rare.

Organ thing's been around for a while.

Bad news. And tell you, you know, you've got $10 million ambitions on a $4 budget,.

But, yeah, okay, cool, cool. So getting near the end here, I can't help but ask. And, like, I like organs. I don't want them to go anywhere.

But just thinking about it logistically, with, like, the digital age and everything upon us, and, like, in my mind, even with that many sounds, it probably could create a digital keyboard that pretty much imitates anything. Do we think there's still going to be like long term need for organs. Do you think it's going to be replaced by like the digital age stuff or.

I don't know, how does this work out in your mind?

So to an extent that replacement is already going on right now. I think a lot of the church organs that exist don't have any pipes in them at all. Right. It's a box with speakers that are playing into the room.

I will say those are perfectly functional instruments.

And while a pipe organ is this big, expensive, difficult thing to maintain when you're planning for the long term life of your church, a lot of times the big expensive organ winds up being a better investment long term because a digital organ is something that you're going to have to replace every 10 to 15 years. And while a digital organ is certainly cheaper than installing a brand new pipe organ in your space, it's not that much cheaper.

And it doesn't sound as good. I gotta say, they're getting a lot better.

And so I think there will certainly come a time where digitally reproduced sounds can really will sound just as good, just as authentic as a real pipe organ. But I don't think we're there yet.

And I think there are enough, I kind of hate to use this term, but there are enough purists out there in the world that I think there's going to be a market for the real thing for a very long time. And more to the point, I think as we're seeing,.

Let's just call it.

A decrease in Sunday attendance, right? Like as we're seeing a shrinking in the number of people that have an interest in worship weekly.

From my perspective, from the industry that I work in, we're actually getting more work from that because what's happening is smaller churches are closing down because they can't afford to be open when you've got six people in the pews and nobody's pledging. But what happens is that those six people then go to the larger church in the middle of town which has to expand.

And if that organ gets a whole lot of money and the congregation that's there is a very musical congregation, musically minded congregation, and the organ is integral to the way that they worship.

Well then that congregation that suddenly got this influx of people and an influx of money suddenly has the resources to make some repairs that they've been postponing for 30, 40, 50 years. And so at that point they call us and we help them maintain the investment that they made 50, 100 years ago.

And so that's where it really Starts to pay dividends in the long run. And I don't want to plug.

I mean, it's holy logistics. Yeah.

I don't want to plug pipe organs in particular or say that one style of worship is inherently better or not, but when people think about the longevity of the space that you're creating, when you make a space that's intended to last well beyond the years of anybody who's sitting in the pews today, that. That changes me as somebody who's sitting in that pew. Right. That. That.

That tells me that this is a place where people have gathered long before I existed and will continue to gather long after I am gone. And that continuity of worship is just so. So impactful for a community.

Yeah. Yeah. I am a. I think in general, when it comes to, like, new tech and stuff, I'm, like, annoyingly both.

And I feel like I get on people's nerves because I'll leave AI out of it for now, because that's a whole nother conversation. But, like, so. So we'll just use.

What we're talking about is, like, I think it's probably a perfectly good example at one point that, like, whole, like, water wheel, all this other stuff to, like, make it organ. That was crazy. New technology.

Totally.

And there were probably people who are like, why would you want imitation of bird sounds? We could just go hear the bird.

You know, like, there was probably people making similar arguments when we've had this technology, but then, like, the organs come into its own. It's its own beautiful thing. And guess what? Like, I enjoy the sounds of birds, and I enjoy the sound of an organ.

It, like, for me, another example, like, I love Kindles, and I love the Bible app, and I love that I can just, like, have nice little digital book here, but sometimes I'm gonna go pick up my grandfather's Bible that he left me because it just means more. And it's King James. I don't even like King James, but it means more because it was his. Right?

And, like, there's still some notes in it, some, like, highlights, you know, whatever. And I feel like having a tangible.

Thing is different from having a PDF of that. Of that same thing. Absolutely.

That's why I love what you're saying when you're talking about, like, the organa, like, outliving you. Like, oh, this is something that's been here for generations. And, like. Like, we're talking about church unity. For me, it's not just the people alive.

It is people who came before us. And I'm like, yeah. That connects us to our history, and I think that's beautiful. And hey, maybe sometimes there is room for.

In the fellowship hall, where sometimes we do Wednesday service instead. We'll have, like, the digital one in there because it's cheaper and, you know, whatever. Like, I don't know. I feel like maybe there is room for both.

But I do love that you're talking about, like, I just think it is beautiful to have that longevity, that thing that we can touch and be like. Like those before me use the same thing, worshiped the same way that I did. Like, something about that physical part of it.

I feel like it's pretty powerful.

No, I, I.

Sorry, that was a whole tangent. That wasn't even a question. I'm sorry.

But I, I agree with you that there's. There is something, I guess, intangible about, About a tangible connection to the people that came before you. And in the.

In the same way that there's a tangible connection to the people that will come. Come after. And, and digital.

Digital organs, you know, while they can produce the same sounds from a physics perspective as a pipe organ can, they are. They are not moving the same amount of air. You know, they're, they're. They're not. They. They don't have.

Have the same continuity of purpose and the same continuity of spirit as, as something more traditional.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. Love it. So before wrapping up here, if you had to put it into just, like, one or two sentences, what has been.

What's being a part of this business meant to you? And how does the work that you do really impact what happens Sunday morning for so many churchgoers each week?

So I, I have always been in church choirs since I was maybe 3 or 4 years old in, like, a little preschool children's ministry. I have always been a singer, and I don't know if I'm a particularly good one, but I know that when I sing with other people, my love for them grows.

It is. It is physically impossible to sing a song with somebody that you hate. And especially congregational singing, right? When you.

When you all come together and you all sing a hymn and there's organ behind you, and it's helping that whole process take place. There's. There is something. Something so unifying about that experience. It unites us with. With Christ and with one another in. In a way that.

That really can't be replicated anywhere else. And while, you know, organs aren't necessary for congregational singing, you.

You can get the exact same spiritual unity with one another from, From a from a praise band or from, you know, from a CD player. Right. Like, whatever it is. But being able to.

To build instruments that facilitate that sense of unity for congregations all across the country, across the world is. Is huge for me. That's just. There's. There's no higher calling than helping people love one another more. More deeply.

Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. That's so cool, man.

Well, one thing we do ask every guest is, is if you had to provide just a tangible action that would help veteran gender church unity today, what comes to mind to you?

What's something you think people could stop and do after this podcast that would help them be better united with their fellow brother sister in the church?

So it's 250th anniversary is coming up in just a couple of years. And that's been something that, you know, I don't know a single Christian that doesn't know Amazing Grace. I don't care what your background is.

I don't care if you've got an organ in your church or if you've got, you know, guitars and speakers, Whatever it is, you know, Amazing Grace. And that's something that we can all share. Saved much like me. That's just. That's a really powerful, powerful hymn.

Yeah. Yeah. Music is just. It is just so uniting.

I know I grew up Pentecostal, and before I'm now a Lutheran, but before I, like, switched or anything, I remember, like, had arguments with other Christians, whatever, but, like, I was still friends with them. And I think one of the first times I remember really being like, oh, they are just like us. It was actually a Methodist.

It was like, one of those progressive Methodists because, you know, I was more conservative Pentecostal. Now I'm a dirty liberal Lutheran, I guess, whatever. But, like, I, you know, I wrote him off like, oh, he's just. He thinks he's Christian.

We just can't have to leave these topics alone. And then, like, one day he was a music major and he was playing Prayer Bells of Heaven, and I'm like, heck, yeah, dude, let's do this.

It's like, oh, wait, yeah, we're the same. So, yeah, I like that. I think that's really powerful.

What do you think would change in the world if everybody did just stopped this week and at some point just hummed the chorus of, like, Amazing Brain.

I don't think anything big would happen, but I don't think the Lord acts in big, sweeping ways. I think the Lord changes the world by changing individual hearts.

And if by humming that tune to yourself, it helps you accept that the people who worship in the church down the street from you really aren't that different from you.

Even if their political beliefs might differ, even if what they think happens at the Eucharist is slightly different than your understanding of what happens at the Eucharist. We all worship the same God.

We all dedicate our lives to the same Jesus who saved us, who created us, who loves us, and music helps us remember that we aren't so different after all.

Yeah. Yeah. Amen. Good stuff. Good stuff, man. So the last thing we actually do, it's called our God moment segment. And TJ always likes to make me go first.

By not being here, he has succeeded. I will have to go first.

Did you read you in the background?

Yes. He actually played that. That's not a digital sound. That is a. We recorded TJ playing the digital.

How cool is that?

That's the God moment sound. It's great.

You gotta create a didgeridoo organ stop next. That'd be fun.

We need that. That's what the whole church podcast needs. We need more donations so that we can.

For a small donation of $2 million. You too?

Yeah. Oh, man. But. Which is shareable. But we've got in. In the last week or so. Yeah. Whether blessing, curse, not curse, blessing, challenge, whatever.

I will go first again. TJ's not here, so I have to. He was gonna make me anyway, but I can't remember if I've shared this or not is the problem.

I might be sharing the same God moment twice. You've done a lot of God damn. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to keep up.

But the place I work currently, I had to go in in extra time to close when I had already opened that day. It was tiring and long, and I was upset.

And then the truck delivery came and everybody had to stop working and wait on him when it's already been a long day and I don't feel like sitting there waiting. And one of the younger people who worked there is like, why did everybody hate Catholics?

And I'm like, man, what an interesting person to ask that to. Right? I'm like, well, I do a podcast. Like, I hate being that guy. Just like I do a podcast.

But, like, I know what you're talking about, because I've seen some of that in my family, I've seen that around, especially Pentecostal circles, bad talking Catholics. And unfortunately, there's a lot of faith.

But we had a whole conversation, and then one of the other majors was like, oh, hey, actually I go to a Luther church now.

And we weren't trying to push religion on anybody, but it was just such a cool moment of I happened to be right there when I didn't want to be there at a time when someone was going to just ask that question. I'm like, man, I feel blessed to have been there for that conversation, even if for reasons we couldn't get super religious.

It was like, I'm glad I was there for that and got to briefly kind of speak to it a little bit.

Yeah, that's one of those here I am, Lord, send me moments where time.

Yeah, cool stuff. So what about you, man? Do you want to share a moment you've seen God in recently?

Sure. This year, my partner and I tried something new, and we planted a garden in our backyard.

And when we planted it, you know, we had both grown some things in the past, and, you know, I had a small garden growing up, and we got a couple of cucumbers, you know, maybe a dozen tomatoes over the course of a summer. Nothing major. But through this year, I don't know what has been going on. But this year we have been getting a lot of produce.

We have, like, a problematic number of tomatoes on the vine right now. She is working tirelessly, trying to can them all and, you know, and preserve them for. For, For. For later.

She's making the most delicious pickles I have ever had in my entire life out of cucumbers that I didn't even believe we would get in our backyard. And it's amazing how just, Just a. I mean, faith the size of a mustard seed, right? Like, that's the. There's. There's a literal metaphor here.

We are literally growing mustard, but, like, faith the size of a cucumber seed, right? Like, that's just. That's what it takes. And then you wind up with 50, 60 cucumbers, more than you could ever eat.

That's so cool. That's so cool. Backup God moment for me. Then when we got this new house, we have hoa. A lot of other stuff I had to give up.

At my old house, I had this pollinator garden and I was in love with. I talked a lot about it on the show because I care a lot about the pollinators and stuff. And I'm weird. I like ecosystems. I think they're cool.

That's a good thing.

It got out of hand. It got really wild and hard to maintain, so we weren't able to do it here.

But you know, every now and then I plant stuff that I'm like, I know this is good for the Pollinator. You know, neighbor moved in forever ago, but like hasn't actually moved in. Like bought the house a while back.

Finally moving in is straight up setting up a pollinator garden in her backyard that faces my backyard.

Oh.

And I'm like, yes.

How amazing.

Here we go. Here we go.

Yeah.

I'm so excited, man. I'm like, ah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna like connect a garden across the yards. We'll figure something out, man. But no, it's, it's great. Such a good gift.

But yeah, so praise God. If you guys appreciate Pollinator Gardens or this podcast, consider sharing it with a friend, an enemy or a cousin. Especially your cousins.

They're more obligated to listen than your friends, so share with them. You could always go to our website. You purchase one of the T shirts. It's going to help promote our show.

Helps get the word out about what we're doing here. All that good stuff. It does a lot. It does a lot. Gives us money to help pay for mics and apparently camera. My camera keeps going out.

Need someone to buy a T shirt so I get a new camera. You guys also consider checking out the other shows on the Onazole podcast network. You know, I mentioned systematic ecology.

I'm also do be living water Christian. Ashley. I just recorded with he does let nothing move. You won't go through Bible one chapter at a time.

Maybe a little bit differently than I would but you know, we talk about the Bible. It's good stuff. And we hope you enjoyed this show though.

Coming up, we're going to be talking with some representatives from the Church of God of Prophecy as well as the AME Zion Church to discuss behind the scenes of how church denominations function. So that'll be fun to that we're going to be talking with an esteemed guest about the building of church pews. Just get a carpenter on the show, guys.

And finally at the day, the end of of season one, Francis Chan will be on but he doesn't know about it, so somebody does have to tell him. Cuz if you don't tell him, I'm not going to tell him. And season one will just go forever. It's been like eight years now.

So if you want us to do a season two or to stop seing in season one. It's up to you. Get a hold of Francis Chan. Until then, later.