Downtown Presbyterian Church spent $130,050 in 2008 to have its organ restored. Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Green Hills spent $1.8 million on a new, four-story, Fisk organ for its recently finished sanctuary.

There are no fog machines, no video screens, no drums.

Unlike many new church buildings modeled after movie theaters, St. Andrew’s Anglican church sanctuary looks like a church — especially with its three-story, newly restored Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ.

Built 40 years ago for a now-shuttered Episcopal cathedral in Michigan, the organ has been reborn here in Middle Tennessee, and St. Andrew’s organist Darryl Miller is ecstatic.

“We did the Rutter Requiem last Sunday, and it was glorious,” he said. “I’ve been resurrecting great literature … that I haven’t played in years.”

Organists like Miller have become an endangered species in recent years, as many churches have replaced their organs and choirs with rock bands. But in Nashville the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists is thriving. During the past six years, it has grown from about 150 members to 228, said Sharron Lyon, head of the membership committee.

Several local congregations have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore old organs or build new ones.

Covenant Presbyterian Church in Green Hills spent $1.8 million on a new, four-story, Fisk organ for its recently finished sanctuary.

Paul Magyar, Covenant’s music minister, said the instrument is unlike any other because it can match the range of the human voice and is the perfect accompaniment for hymn singing.

But it also inspires the soul in a way that other instruments don’t, he said, standing in front of the red-oak-encased instrument, whose 3,394 pipes include two that are 32 feet tall.