The Story

What is the NETS Institute for Church Planting and Why is it Starting New Churches?
Why New England?
The Churches Planted to Date
The New Church in Watertown, Massachusetts
The Missions Trip from Williston, Vermont to Watertown, Massachusetts

The Organ in Pictures
The Church Renovation in Pictures

April 2009, Andy Lawrence:

This is the story of the future Redeemer Fellowship Church from an organist's perspective,where the NETS Institute for Church Planting (started a few years ago by my home church, Christ Memorial Church in Williston) is working on starting its newest new church. We’ve purchased the building of the former Phillips Congregational Church (1855-2006), and instead of turning it into condominiums like all the other closed church buildings on Mount Auburn Street, we’re actually going to use the beautiful 1937 building as the home for a new church. Our annual youth missions trip was our closest-to-home ever (the farthest being Cameroon about 3 years ago), taking nearly one hundred kids from our youth group and well over one hundred people with adults included, to Watertown to make a dent at fixing up this 34,000 square-foot facility.

The building contains a beautiful 1900 Woodberry/ 1937 Frazee organ that I was able to whip into playable shape quite quickly. The great, swell, and pedal are Woodberry while the choir division, console, and electropneumatic action are Frazee. The Woodberry was a 2/20 tracker, while the Frazee is a 3/24 EP, but all the original pipes, including a massive 16’ Open Wood, and the two original main windchests are intact. I had no idea what sort of organ there would be until I arrived at the church on April 17, but my job was to get the organ playing, and play it for a service during the week. Since all 110 (or so) of us were living in the church all week, it was also my job to play Old One-Hundredth at tutti at wakeup time each morning (usually 7:30AM).

This turned into quite an impromptu pipe organ encounter. Dozens of kids and several adults got tours of the organ chamber with great excitement. Two young pianists, one 13 and the other 16ish, want to start lessons right away back here in Vermont (in addition to a young adult who had already recently committed). One seventeen-year-old young man would like to be my new pipe organ maintenance apprentice. In addition to these, every night I had several kids, and occasionally an adult, ask me if they could try the organ. It plays techno quite convincingly!

We all came home to Vermont on Saturday the 25th of April, very tired, but with a lot of painting and cleaning done! We used 35 gallons of paint on the sanctuary ceiling alone. The church looks better and the organ sounds better than they have in decades.