Cullman’s Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church might be celebrating its 150th year in 2024, but some things inside the twin-spired landmark’s tradition-conserving sanctuary are all brand-new.

Newest of all is the church’s 2,100-pipe organ, an elaborate, visually arresting instrument whose intricate complexity is perhaps exceeded only by the church’s timely need. Even as the capital campaign to fund the $650,000 instrument was just getting started back in 2021, the old organ already was showing signs that it had given Sacred Heart’s parishioners all it could.

“In March of 2022,” only months after the church had agreed to its new-organ fundraiser, “the old organ caught on fire during a service on Palm Sunday,” said funding campaign organizer Keith Ellard.

“It was an electrical fire. We had to shut everything down. Austin Organ [the company in charge of installing the church’s new instrument] came along and gave us a loaner organ, which we’ve been using since May of 2022. But the church was already in agreement: It was just time.”

For the past several weeks, workers from Austin Organ, a Hartford, Conn.-based organ architecture firm who’s been custom-designing church instruments since 1893, have been navigating the heights of an enormous hoisting scaffold planted conspicuously astride the central aisle of the main church sanctuary.

Along with the organ’s 2,100 pipes, purpose-built wooden enclosures, keyboard console and more, they’ve been gutting the choir loft high above and replacing its old fixtures, piece by piece, with an extraordinary new instrument that’s been specifically optimized, right to the very last valve, to send music down from the vertiginous upper-story space and all throughout the sanctuary.

Like most Sacred Heart members, Ellard is proud of the church’s new music maker, which won’t officially be regarded as ready for its dedication until a pair of post-installation tunings have dialed in the still-settling instrument over the course of the next six months. But what he’s really proud of are the parishioners themselves, and the way they united and persevered around the ambitious (and expensive) goal.

“It’s been fun for me, because I’ve seen our parish come together, from the Hispanic ministry to the Anglo ministry,” said Ellard. “Everybody has pulled together to raise money for this campaign. The Hispanic community would do food sales after Mass once a month. We had businesses that donated, politicians who donated — without being asked. We had a project with our kids at school where they made up a piggy bank and had a contest as their class theme. Everyone has gotten involved.”

The response from Sacred Heart members has been so robust, in fact, that the funding campaign simply to replace the old organ has almost doubled its original $650,000 target.

“When we started this, our original goal was to raise $650,000. We thought that would cover the cost of the organ,” Ellard explained. ”But when we started the campaign and began raising the money, we found out we had a lot of enthusiasm. We had so many parishioners who were so generous that we soon had pledges of over $1.1 million dollars.”

Though that amount proved more than enough to pay for the organ itself, parishioners agreed that the excess funds could go a long way toward enriching the church’s overall musical environment. Staying true to the campaign’s original mission, said Ellard, was a key good-faith element in putting the extra funding to use — and through it all, he added, church members’ commitment and generosity have never wavered.

“We realized that the money that we had raised needed to go to this campaign, so we have done a number of things we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to do,” he said. “We’ve installed a handicap-accessible lift on the [choir loft] stairwell, so our elderly parishioners, or someone who’s handicapped, can get up here and sing in the choir. We were able to add new choir risers, which the choir had requested so that they could project [their voices] more. We were able to increase the air conditioning up here.

“We were even able to upgrade our choir practice facility with a new practice organ,” he continued. “Paint, finishing the floors — all things that we had not anticipated when we started this.

“It was really a Godsend to think, going into this, that we’d be working with only a certain amount of funds. But our parishioners have responded so enthusiastically, and that, in turn, has allowed us to get to do all of these additional enhancements. It’s really united everyone.”