I know of a church in Portland, OR, (First Presbyterian Church) when I lived there and a wealthy member donated $1 million for a new pipe organ. A brand new pipe organ. What do you do with a gift like that. They couldn’t just plug it into their Sanctuary. Everything about the acoustics of the room were wrong for the organ. So, they raised more money and dismantled the interior of the Sanctuary. They tore out the carpet and put in new flooring. They changed out the walls, the ceiling. They rebuilt the interior of the building to accommodate this fantastic organ.
The resurrection is a strange gift. Like a magnificent painting that won’t go anywhere in your house. This work of art demands that you dismantle a room or the whole house and rebuild it around the work of art. The resurrection demands that we rebuild our thinking around the resurrection.
a new way of knowing. a new epistemology.
Jaeckel Pipe Organ
Our hand-crafted tracker pipe organ was custom-designed for the congregation by Dan Jaeckel, of Duluth, Minnesota.
The instrument was constructed at Jaeckel’s shop in 1997-99, dismantled, shipped to Portland, and installed in the church sanctuary from August 1999 to February 2000. The formal Service of Dedication was celebrated on April 30, 2000.
The Jaeckel organ has 52 stops, 69 ranks, 3 manuals, and 3,515 pipes. Several hundred pipes from the church’s previous organ were rebuilt and revoiced to become part of the new one.
Jaeckel’s craftspeople created the main case of cherry and alder woods to match the 19th Century Carpenter Gothic sanctuary.
The new instrument restores the basic appearance of the church’s original 1890 Ryder organ (which was replaced by a Möller organ in 1929).
The project was made possible by a generous leadership gift from Sally and Cecil Drinkward, and donations from the congregation and friends of music at First Presbyterian Church.
Through its singing beauty and visual splendor, the Jaeckel organ inspires each of us to seek and worship the living God. It will serve as a gift to the congregation and the community throughout the years.
Learn more about our historic Jaeckel Pipe Organ here at FPC.