When the gift of a disassembled pipe organ became a burden, Clinton UMC found it a new home with a ministry in the Philippines, making room for the church’s expanding ministries.
JAMES DEATON
Content Editor
When Pastor Michelle McCalla was appointed to Clinton United Methodist Church in rural Lenawee County last July, she curiously wanted to know about the elephant in the room. Every church has one, so she spoke with the outgoing interim pastor.
“What’s the thing that everybody’s working around but nobody wants to talk about so that I don’t inadvertently step on it?” Pastor Michelle asked Rev. Mike Clemmer. “Well, I need to show you something,” he said, leading her to the sacristy. As he opened the door, Pastor Michelle saw large sections of a pipe organ filling the space and then wondered, “Okay, so what’s the story? I know what it is. I’m just a little unclear as to why.”
Rev. Mike began to reveal the backstory, which led to more conversations with lay members of the congregation. Pastor Michelle says, “I affectionately named the ‘elephant’ our ‘woolly mammoth’ when discussing what to do with this instrument and how to preserve it.”
Historic Clinton UMC, one of the first Methodist congregations in Michigan, will soon celebrate its bicentennial. The original church building, operating now as a Romanian Orthodox monastery, was sold in 2000 when the congregation outgrew their first home and constructed a larger, barrier-free building outside of town. Click to read more about the church’s history.
In 2019, a member of Clinton UMC got word that Christus Victor Lutheran Church in Dearborn Heights, where he and his family attended long ago, was closing, and the building was to be sold and razed with the furnishings disposed of, including the magnificent pipe organ. The church member approached the leadership of Clinton UMC to see if they might want this instrument.
Jim Strickland is the head of Clinton UMC’s board of trustees and was in leadership when the offer came at the eleventh hour. “The Lutheran church had closed,” notes Jim, “and they were getting ready to put the wrecking ball to the building. The property owner said, ‘I really hate to destroy the thing, but if you can get it out of here in the next day or two, you’re welcome to have it for free.’”
The trustees called a special meeting to decide what to do. “We thought,” recalls Jim, “this would be a great item for our church, and we could invite people to play it. You can’t beat a good hymn played on a thundering pipe organ. We had high hopes, and we all saw its value, but all that faded when we got the bill.”
The congregational member and his family, who broached the idea, paid for the delivery of the disassembled pipe organ to Clinton UMC. The cost Jim refers to is the reality of being ill-prepared to care for a massive and complex instrument that was expensive to restore and maintain.
A lifelong mechanic, Jim found the pipe organ installation a fascinating project. He even engineered a tentative plan and got the building inspector in town to agree to it. This plan would have made the installation possible since the church building, even though it was fairly modern, was not designed to hold such a heavy instrument.
“The plan would’ve worked,” confesses Jim, “but when we got the bottom-line bill, we realized we needed furnaces, not a pipe organ. The church runs on eight forced air furnaces, all over 20 years old and failing left and right.” So, installing the pipe organ was put on hold, especially once the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
When Pastor Michelle arrived in July 2024, the disassembled organ was still being stored in various places throughout the building, including the back of their commercial kitchen, where the main console sat. Under her leadership, the pipe organ project got traction again as critical space for ministry was needed.
She explains, “We discovered that we didn’t have the financial resources to put this back together and then hire someone to play it, nor is the building up to code to handle it. Plus, the areas in the building where the organ was being stored could be put back to use for ministries if we could find a new home for it.”
One of those ministries needing more space is the community food pantry housed at Clinton UMC. The feeding ministry has grown in the past few years, thanks to the dedication of lay members, and the congregation has really taken it on as their ministry to the community.
“But in the process,” says Pastor Michelle, “the ministry needed space to expand, which meant places in the building where this organ was being stored, especially the commercial kitchen, needed to be cleared out. We needed that room to expand the food pantry.”
She continues, “While this was a lovely gift, and it’s a beautiful instrument, we didn’t possess the resources required to honor it to be able to install it and play it. And it’s difficult to know what to do. Sure, you could scrap it, but that’s not a good way to steward this valuable instrument. It’s got life left in it to play. We just weren’t equipped to deal with it.”
Pastor Michelle began hunting online to see if she could find a new home for it. After running into a few dead-ends, she made a connection through the Pipe Organ Foundation. She got a call from Rev. Ric Marpa, a Catholic priest in the Philippines, who informed her of a ministry in the Archdiocese of Palo in Leyte province that accepts decommissioned pipe organs for a seminary training program. Patmos Seminary has a ministry that trains individuals to rebuild and play pipe organs, helping local churches replace their old bamboo pipe organs with modern ones.
This plan sounded perfect, but how would the organ get to the Philippines from Michigan? The Pipe Organ Foundation let Pastor Michelle know they would provide the shipping container and pay for it to be shipped, but Clinton UMC would have to ensure it was packed safely to travel overseas. The congregation then contacted a local moving company that handles many international mission projects, and this company agreed to participate.
Thanks to the leadership of Pastor Michelle McCalla and committed lay members, the organ has found a new home. It’s now on its way to the Philippines. And it’s given Clinton UMC a fresh perspective on ministry.
“Once the organ left the building,” says Pastor Michelle, “my worship chair was smiling from ear to ear. She spent the entire week in the sacristy, cleaning, organizing, and putting back the things needed for communion and worship. And we are going to have room to expand the food pantry now because we have the space to do that. I’ve noticed the atmosphere of the congregation has been lighter, truly knowing that the organ was going someplace where it would be used. And so that excitement, that lightness, feels like renewed hope.”
Jim senses the congregation appreciates that there is more room for their expanding feeding ministry: “We need space to store things, so this is helping out today, not five years from now. It’s helping out today because the numbers increase every month. We’re up to almost 40 families from our township now. You have to be a resident to be qualified to stop by, but the woman who oversees it won’t turn anybody away.”
This whole experience has made Pastor Michelle think about the words of Jesus in the Gospels, where he tells his disciples not to store up treasures on earth where moths and rust can destroy them. “We needed to share it,” she notes, “and it’s fitting that all of this transpired during the Lenten season when we were looking at how we clean out, how we let go, how we make space for the Holy Spirit to move. Every congregation has things they hold on to or don’t know what to do with, but can’t find a good, God-honoring path because they’ve been donated or gifted, or they have a brass plaque on them. Sometimes, these are even relational elephants.”
The rehoming of the pipe organ is an example of a congregation thinking outside the box with the assets they have. At the heart of it, it’s a story of good stewardship, says Pastor Michelle. “Most people think of stewardship as putting money in the plate,” she says, “but it’s more than that. It’s about stewardship of gifts and spaces as well. How do we use and care for them in the most God-honoring ways? It’s something we all can wrestle with.”
Last Updated on May 6, 2025