I play pipe organ. 
Sometimes I feel like I’ve chosen the worst instrument to play.
When us organists hear that a brand new organ is being built somewhere, its big news. What hurts the most of being an organist is that we hear about the destruction of pipe organs.
It causes me distress. I get all testy and depressed. (What a nice little rhyme).

The methods of destruction are so varied. The ones that stick out:
* A church looses their organist (moving, quit, retired, death, you know…). The organ goes without being played for a few years. The church never bothers to find a new organist. Eventually, they decide the organ isn’t needed and they’d rather have the few precious feet of space they could gain by removing it.
* A church building is sold to a congregation which doesn’t value the pipe organ and refuses to let it be part of their service.
* A church congregation moves buildings. They have the organ disassembled to be moved to the new location. It never gets unpacked. Eventually, its dispersed. This happens surprisingly often.
* The organ needs repair. The church never kept it maintained, it’s going to take a lot of work to get it back to prime condition. Rather than repair, it gets thrown out and replaced with a newer instrument. An even worse fate, it gets replaced with a digital instrument. A farther worse fate, it gets replaced by nothing and never gets repaired.
A godawful instrument comes to mind in Wenatchee. The church shall remain unnamed. To their credit, the churches leaders and congregation enjoyed the organ. Unfortunately  the installation wasn’t very good.
The location allowed for only a small amount of sound to get down to the congregation out of the choir loft.
The instrument was 5 ranks, and possibly not-very-well chosen ranks at that.
The console was cheap, falling apart (literally, I nearly had the stop rail fall on my hands..)
They assessed the problems, and after long thought and careful consideration it was replaced with a Rodgers organ.
They sold the pipe organ to another church for $1 (one dollar). The church they sold it to kept all the pipe work and chests, dumped the console (at least, that’s what I heard), added a few more [useful] ranks and merged it into a much better organ.

The church that sold it gains my favor for a few reasons:

It was assessed that the installation could not be made much better without significant alterations of the building. They didn’t tell me that, but I gave it a lot of thought and I can’t come up with a better placement plan.
They, at the very least, made sure the old organ had a home.
They recognized that what they had wasn’t obsolete, but that it just wasn’t serving the purpose.

What do I hope someone will take away from this?
Save the organ. Don’t let your church throw it out. Try to convince them to keep it. If they are considering a digital replacement, do all you can to convince them to expand the current instrument and do the work it needed. A pipe organ can last hundreds of years when properly maintained. A digital instrument, although some are quite good, cannot quite live that long. Finally, when at last you can’t get them to reconsider, make sure they understand that the old organ needs a home and is useful to SOMEONE. At the very least, try and give it away to an organ company — even if that means its going to be dispersed into parts and many pieces might be disposed.
It will make my day, I promise you.