Restoration of Tipton church nearly complete

God provided a miracle for us. No doubt about it. A very special gift from God, I tell you that.”

Carl Kliethermes, parishioner, St. Andrew Parish, Tipton

SCROLL THE ARROWS to see more photos of the church.

CLICK HERE to see a gallery of photos from the anointing of the new altar.

“Peace the world cannot give.”

That unique, utterly indescribable gift from Christ is what Carl Kliethermes experiences every time he sets foot in the church of his upbringing.

“My heart and soul are at peace,” he stated.

Mr. Kliethermes, a lifelong member of St. Andrew Parish in Tipton, helped oversee the nearly completed, comprehensive renovation and restoration of St. Andrew Church.

“A couple of years ago, I didn’t think this could ever be done,” he said. “But God provided a miracle for us. No doubt about it. A very special gift from God, I tell you that.”

The 1884-vintage gothic church, once known as “Little St. Peter’s,” due to the uncanny resemblance of its interior to the larger St. Peter Church in Jefferson City, was adorned with delicate stenciling and massive, intricately carved altars, reredoses, ambo, confessional and communion rail.

These things were removed and replaced with simpler furnishings in 1968, as part of the liturgical renewal following the Second Vatican Council.

Several subsequent pastors sought to bring depth and color to the church, which had retained its vivid stained glass windows, sanctuary murals and ornately rendered Stations of the Cross.

“But something just wasn’t right,” said Father Anthony Viviano, pastor of St. Andrew Parish and of Annunciation Parish in California.

Many parishioners continued longing for what had been lost all those years ago.

“What was missing was a sense of the mystery, of the sacred, of the divine,” said Fr. Viviano. “Sometimes, it takes a hard turn for people to look back and realize that something was good and beautiful and timeless.”

In this case, that hard turn was a water leak.

Shortly after Fr. Viviano was assigned there, a parishioner discovered that the carpet, tile and subfloor below the 1970s-era confessional had been soaked.

“It was a real mess!” said Fr. Viviano. “We had to take it all down to the subfloor.”

Mr. Kliethermes dared to hope that something more in keeping with the church he grew up with could be built in place of the old confessional.

With Fr. Viviano’s blessing, he spent several months trying to find a carpenter who could build something sufficiently substantial, beautiful and appropriate.

Mr. Kliethermes eventually talked to Anthony Cardwell of Cardwell Hardwoods in Jefferson City, who pointed him to Tom Marshall, founder of Marshall Custom Cabinets, a small, family-owned business in La Plata.

Mr. Marshall had never built anything for a church but had seen many elaborate Catholic churches as a U.S. Marine detached with the U.S. State Department in Rome in the early 1980s.

“I toured many, many different churches over there,” he recalled. “I’ve been to St. Peter’s Basilica a dozen times.”

Mr. Kliethermes contacted Mr. Marshall and asked if he would be interested in building the new confessional.

“I said I would be very interested,” Mr. Marshall recalled. “I like taking on challenging projects.”

He pulled several elements together from photos of other confessionals and incorporated artwork to match the frames of the Stations of the Cross.

“That really set the tone and whetted everybody’s appetite for what could be done here,” said Fr. Viviano.

Just the beginning

The priest and Mr. Kliethermes contacted Mr. Marshall about possibly doing more work in the church.

Fr. Viviano, who in his previous assignment had rallied the people of St. Joseph Parish in Westphalia to undertake a stunning renovation of their church, recognized a need and an opportunity.

“This church flat-out needed to be renovated,” he said. “It’s well over 100 years old. It had bats in the attic. Our steeple was falling apart. Our carpet was 30-some years old. Electric, plumbing, the bathrooms were disasters. It was time.”

He realized that the renovation could also be a restoration.

“The whole idea was to restore it back to its original majesty,” he said. “First and foremost, to give God the glory of a good home, because this is where he resides. But also to honor our ancestors who put their blood, sweat and tears into this parish to get it started, and to leave something meaningful for the next generations.”

He added: “We beautify our homes to the best of our ability. Why wouldn’t we do the same for the House of God?”

Fr. Viviano found inspiration in the many lifelong parishioners whose grandchildren and great-grandchildren are now St. Andrew parishioners and students at St. Andrew School.

“Keeping them in mind, they want to do things right and not cut any corners,” the priest stated.

Preliminary work included cleaning and resealing the stained glass windows with new protective coverings and painting the trim, and repairing the steeple and replacing its original slate tiles.

“That’s when Carl and Fr. Anthony showed me a really old picture that they had of the church, and started talking about the front altar and all the other pieces,” said Mr. Marshall.

“And basically, they wanted me to give a bid to build these items,” he said. “I prayed really hard about it. It was a huge, challenging project, not like anything I’d ever built before.”

The answer to his prayers was a sense of peace about the project and trust for the people who were inviting him to do the work.

“I don’t mean to sound corny, but I feel like the Lord has led me to be a part of this project and has been working with me all through it,” said Mr. Marshall. “There are so many things I had never done before, things I had to figure out how to do, and everything just came to me.”

He studied old photos of the church and other churches from that era and visited St. Peter Church in Jefferson City, where the vintage altars and reredoses remain in place.

At St. Andrew, “the original organ case was still in the balcony. That was one of the only remaining pieces we could work off of,” he said.

He drew up plans and then refined them with feedback from Fr. Viviano and the parish’s church renovation committee.

The scope of the work eventually grew to include a new altar of sacrifice, communion rail, pulpit, baptismal font, ambry, and wall sconces for statuary.

The parish enlisted several local contractors for various aspects of the renovation and chose Conrad Schmidt Studios of New Berlin, Wisconsin, to recreate the magnificent flourishes on the walls and vaulted ceiling.

Moved to tears

Mr. Marshall shopped for a dizzying quantity of cherry lumber to create the new sanctuary fixtures.

“It’s beautiful wood, very solid,” he said. “It has fine, tight grains — a lot of unique grain to it. It’s usually reserved for something special, and this project is very deserving of something special.”

He hand-carved the details on thousands of crockets — which are the small, three-dimensional flourishes that adorn gothic spires.

The reredos on the high altar is 12 feet wide and almost 30 feet tall — reaching within 4 inches of the church ceiling.

“In my shop, we only have 10-foot ceilings,” he noted. “I couldn’t build it and put it together in my shop and know that the proportions were going to be right until it was finished.”

He relied on his years of experience and on the power of prayer.

“I feel very strongly that the Good Lord has been preparing me for something, and I’ve never known what it was,” said Mr. Marshall. “I’ve always prayed that I’d be doing what God wants me to do.

“He’s blessed me with the ability to create things out of wood, and I’ve tried to do that,” he stated. “This might be the project that I was meant to do, and for years, I’ve been getting my education.”

That conviction led to long workdays and extra work on weekends.

“We wanted to make sure it was done right, and more than anything to glorify God,” he said.

Mr. Marshall’s wife, Kelly, prayed for her husband, encouraged him, and reminded him to relax whenever she saw the need.

She was with him in St. Andrew Church when he and his crew installed the tall reredos in the sanctuary.

“She told me it brought tears to her eyes,” said Mr. Marshall. “It kind of did mine, too. When you work so hard for so long on something, and to be able to stand back and see it after it’s completed, that’s a really awesome feeling.”

A place set apart

Enough of the work on the church was completed in time for the people to return to St. Andrew Church for Mass on Easter Sunday this year.

Archbishop Shawn Mc­Knight, in one of his last official functions as bishop of this diocese before going to lead the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, offered Mass in St. Andrew Church on May 3.

He anointed the altar and blessed all the new items that were in place, mindful that more was to come.

“The sacramental character of our Catholic faith is built upon our belief that God can and does interact with us, even now, through tangible signs to convey invisible realities of grace,” the archbishop noted in his homily.

That is why it’s necessary for Catholics to have a sacred place, a consecrated edifice set aside from profane use, for interactions between God and humanity.

Archbishop McKnight referred to the renovated St. Andrew Church as “a shrine that raises up our souls, minds and even our bodies — through the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and texture — to heaven.”

He also called it a necessary means of evangelization.

“In a very real sense, this church building speaks loudly of our faith, especially its beauty as a place of quiet prayer and devotion,” he said.

The archbishop thanked everyone for their gifts of time, talent and treasure that made the renovation possible.

He reminded everyone present that they are on a mission.

“All you have done to renew this beautiful church — now use it!” he said. “It’s meant for you to come and put it to good use, and to go out and by your lives as beautiful Catholic people, to attract others to the faith — so they may come and claim their place at this altar as the Lord intends.”

Mr. Marshall and his crew installed the high altar and central reredos on July 2.

He hopes to complete the reredoses for the side altars and install them in time for the Solemnity of the Assumption on Aug. 15.

He was startled to consider that the grandchildren of people who aren’t born yet may well enter St. Andrew Church someday and hopefully be filled with the same wonder and reverence for God that it brings to people today.

“The feeling that you get — you feel close to God because it’s so powerful,” he said. “It’s awesome to be able to make something like this and know that people will enjoy it for many years to come.”

“Drawn back to his glory”

Mr. Kliethermes remembers standing in the church with Charlie Raymond, who had created some of the woodwork.

“One interesting thing about you Catholics: you guys show the glory of God,” the man told him.

Fr. Viviano has accompanied parishioners and visitors alike into the church, especially since the high altar and reredos were completed.

“People are absolutely blown away by the beauty and magnificence of God’s house,” he said. “They have tears in their eyes.”

That magnificence, the priest stated, “evokes a sense of the Godly and of ‘Wow! I’m in this beautiful house of God. What’s my next logical move? To pray and reflect and become an active member of the Church.’

“That’s the essence of it,” said Fr. Viviano. “To glorify God with a beautiful dwelling place and offer this beautiful edifice as a house of prayer.”

The priest called Mr. Marshall “a tremendous blessing for us.”

“I can’t imagine working with someone better,” he said. “In conjunction with the magic that Conrad Schmidt can work, the whole thing is a homerun.”

Mr. Kliethermes was quick to note that no object made by God or man can outshine the most beautiful thing about any Catholic church — God’s true presence.

“It’s not the furniture, it’s God in that holy building,” he said. “You’re in the presence of God. He’s here. All of this — the altar, the crucifix, the tabernacle — all of this just points to the Eucharist. And people are being drawn back to his glory.”

“That’s why we elevate the beauty of the sanctuary,” said Fr. Viviano. “The crucifix, the altar and the tabernacle, intertwined intimately. They draw our minds to Christ’s Supreme Sacrifice. All the other things are secondary to that.”

Mr. Kliethermes sees this renovation not just as a miracle but a gift.

“It was God who gave us the opportunity to do this,” he said. “I tell people all the time, all of this is part of his plan.”

Mr. Kliethermes asked for fervent prayers for people who have grown lax in their faith to return to church, be inspired by what they see and experience and ultimately fall back in love with God and their relationship with him.

“Come back to church, and bring your children!” he urged.

Contributing to this report was St. Andrew parishioner Becky Holloway, editor of the Tipton Times newspaper.