By Phil Richard
Hesston College

	Bradley Kauffman, a Hesston College music faculty member, directs a choir of church members and college students during the March 2 organ concert at Hesston Mennonite Church, while Ken Rodgers plays the new 17-rank Andover pipe organ. — Photo by Larry Bartel/Hesston College
		Hesston College music faculty member Ken Rodgers plays the new 17-rank Andover pipe organ dedicated March 2 at Hesston Mennonite Church. In the background is a 68-voice choir composed of church members and college students. — Photo by Larry Bartel/Hesston College

When a pipe organ was installed in 1965 in the church’s old sanctuary, “it was forward thinking in the Mennonite Church to have an organ,” said Ken Rodgers, a college faculty member who teaches organ.

Now the church has a new sanctuary, completed in 2007 and shared with the college, and the sanctuary has a new organ, dedicated March 2.

“This is the kind of instrument that is custom-made for this space [and] that should literally last us as long as the building and space is used,” Rodgers said at the dedication service. “It’s the kind of thing that really is a century [or] multi-century investment.”

Rodgers, who graduated from Hesston College in 1985, said the $265,000 organ fulfilled more than 20 years of dreaming and planning.

“When I was a student at Hesston College, I had the dream that there would be a different instrument perhaps at some point on the college campus,” he said. “That was also the dream of some administrators and people in the music department at that time. So it took a long time, but it’s a nice fulfillment.”

On the eve of the dedication, college historian John E. Sharp spoke to a group of college supporters on the evolution of Mennonite attitudes toward the organ.

Sharp, who is working on the college’s centennial history book, said opposition to instrumental music in worship was as much a factor in the founding of the Anabaptist movement as were believers baptism, voluntary membership, rejection of violence and separation of church and state.

In Zurich, Switzerland, where Anabaptism was born in 1525, reformer Ulrich Zwingli led the city in its rejection of all things Catholic — ceremonies, rituals, liturgy, images and instrumental music.

Though he was a musician of extraordinary talent, Zwingli said the New Testament taught none of those “popish mockeries.”

The organ was characterized as the “devil’s bagpipe,” the “pope’s bagpipe,” the “devil’s trumpet” and a “seducer to the worship of the Roman antichrist.” Organs in the city’s five churches were destroyed.

An eyewitness recorded that the organ in the Grossmünster, the cathedral church, was ripped down and smashed while the organist, Pelagius Karlschmid, stood by, helpless and weeping.

“Mennonites have carried the convictions of their spiritual ancestors to five continents,” Sharp said. “Not surprisingly, the first organ appeared among the wealthy, acculturated Dutch-North German Mennonites in Hamburg-Altona [Germany] in 1764.”

Sharp said that in North America the first pipe organ in a General Conference Mennonite meetinghouse was installed in 1874 at East Swamp Mennonite Church in Quakertown, Pa.

In 1959, the first electronic organ was installed in a Mennonite Church meetinghouse — Grace Mennonite Church, now Rainbow Mennonite Church, in Kansas City, Kan.

Sharp said Mennonite Church members resisted the organ longer than General Conference Mennonites did, partly for historical reasons but also because they believed an instrument would diminish “the living sounds of the human voice” — congregational singing.

“From the beginning,” Sharp said, “vocal music was an essential ingredient in academy life at Hesston. President D.H. Bender expressed satisfaction that ‘singing teacher training’ had begun in response to the great need in congregations in the West, where the ‘demand . . . far exceeds the supply.’ ”

In 1936 professor J. Harold Smith said that “everybody at Hesston has a chance to develop his musical talent” of a cappella singing.

“Organs followed pianos, which is exactly what opponents said would happen,” Sharp said. “In 1956, Hesston Mennonite completed its worship space, without an organ. Nine years later, in 1965, a pipe organ was installed — five months after Whitestone Mennonite Church [also in Hesston] had installed its organ. The new instrument was now available to Hesston College choirs and classes. . . .

“Is it possible that there is more to the artistic melodies and harmonies of keyboards and pipes than we were able to imagine for 425 years? Can such sounds lift us beyond the temporal to hear even God’s voice? Perhaps we could at least agree to rescue the instrument from the domain of the demonic to place it in the realm of the sacred.”

Both Hesston Mennonite Church and Hesston College contributed to the cost of the mechanical (tracker) organ. Staff from Andover Organ in Methuen, Mass., installed the organ in November and December and fine-tuned it in January.

The organ has three keyboards, 946 pipes and 17 stops. It was built with expansion capabilities, with the maximum configuration being a total of 1,106 pipes and 21 stops.

Visitors can view Ken Rodgers’ video tour of the new organ on the music department page of the Hesston College Web site.

Rodgers said the pipes from the old organ were taken to a Catholic church in Russell, where they are being used in the expansion of an instrument there.

The organ was dedicated in the morning worship service, and in the evening 400 people attended a dedication concert.

The first three selections with Rodgers at the organ featured a 68-voice choir composed of church members and college students directed by Bradley Kauffman, music faculty member.

At the morning dedication, Mary Ann Boschmann, chair of the church’s organ committee, thanked committee members Marna Burckhart, Julie Krehbiel and Ken Rodgers.

The dedication ended with a prayer by Cheryl Hershberger, associate pastor at Hesston Mennonite: “We dedicate this pipe organ to be an instrument of praise to you. May your glory fill this house of worship. Consecrate us, your people, to be your instruments in this place, across the street, and around the world. Amen.”