Worthington church inaugurates massive pipe organ imported from Indiana
WORTHINGTON, Armstrong County — As a common Lutheran joke goes, a Lutheran Church without a pipe organ is like a farm without a tractor.
By that logic, the Worthington Lutheran Church became a real Lutheran Church earlier this year when it introduced a new Wicks Opus pipe organ. On Sunday, Oct. 12, the church officially inaugurated their new instrument with a 90-minute concert, with the help of musical students and professors from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
The organ consists of 389 pipes, including 12 that were added during the installation.
While the organ is new to the church, it isn’t technically “new.” In fact, it was originally built in 1994 for use at the chapel at Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, Ind., before the hospital decided they no longer had use for it.
“The hospital needed space for its continuing education programs,” said Jon Lester of the Lester Bros. Organ Company of Akron, Oh. “They were going to have to either give it away or disperse it to various organ builders, or in the worst possible case, just put it in a dumpster.”
It just so happened that by the time the hospital was looking to offload its old organ, the Worthington Church was looking for a new one, as its decades-old electronic organ was on its last legs due to repeated lightning strikes.
“It was showing some signs of aging,” said church organist Dr. James Hooks. “Because technology changes so rapidly, sometime it’s going to die and you’re going to need another one. Electronic pipe organs are not all that different.”
Because traditional pipe organs can last for centuries, Dr. Hooks recommended that the church look for pipe organs being given away by churches and other nonprofits. It wasn’t long before they were put in touch with the Lester brothers, who — according to Jon — had taken care of the organ during its 30-year stay in Indiana.
After preliminary discussions, the hospital reached a deal to gift the organ to the church. In August 2024, a group of five, including the Lester brothers, Hooks, and Pastor Will Moser took a U-Haul to Fort Wayne, where they dismantled the old pipe organ and brought it back to Pennsylvania piece by piece.
“Every pipe had to be taken out and bubble-wrapped,” Hooks said. “At the time, we didn’t have any storage space, so it was stored partly in my garage and in my den.”
The exterior wooden casework for the pipe organ was handcrafted by the Lester brothers — Jon and Greg — at their factory in Akron, Oh. The organ was reassembled and completed by October 2024 and played for the first time the following month.
Jon expects it to last much longer than the electronic organ that preceded it.
“We suspect it will last 100 years before any really big major work needs to be done on it,” Jon said.
