Forget, for the moment, that Zachary Crippen\u2019s church has been in the news because of a nasty, high-profile divorce from its mother denomination.<\/p>\n
And let\u2019s sidestep the fact that there\u2019s a dispute over who owns the towering stone church building and its belongings, including the 80-year-old organ.<\/p>\n
This story is about the young man who brought music back into the lives of the congregation of Grace CANA Church, a group that broke away in March from the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado. The timing wasn\u2019t the best. It was right before Easter, a highly attended service that begs for a church organist. But the organist and most of the choir did not join the breakaway.<\/p>\n
Enter Crippen, a master of the keyboard with about eight years of piano lessons to his credit. That\u2019s piano, not organ. He had never touched an organ, but he wasn\u2019t deterred. He stepped into the vacuum and up to the organ \u201d\u201d and it took him 10 minutes to figure out how to open it up.<\/p>\n