Wednesday, March 14, 2007

The View From The Piano Bench
Page O'Lear ~ Soon-to-be-church-pianist!

This has been a very exciting week, musically speaking!

On Monday morning I played for a funeral at a church in a neighboring town. My pastor had passed my name along to that pastor, as his regular pianist was not available to play at that time. This other pastor, Pastor Meister, called me and explained that a young lady named Carolyn had died, only 39 years old and she had just come to church for the first time on February 11, just a month ago. On that night, after the service, the pastor's wife led Carolyn to the Lord and she was sweetly saved. I am amazed at the grace and mercy of God, that He led her to that church, knowing that just one month later she would meet Him in Heaven.

Pastor Meister preached a very comforting and understandable message about Heaven, and at the end he prayed and gave the plan of salvation and 19 people indicated that they had prayed that prayer with him and asked God for salvation. That was an exciting moment!

I was grateful for the privilege of being asked to provide the music for that funeral, and to be present to see God work in the hearts of people in that service.

Driving home from the funeral, my heart was overwhelmed at the wonderful opportunity that God gives us to serve Him. What a privilege that we get to join God and be used by Him to accomplish His desires in the lives of people. I never get over the grace of God and the way that He continues to use us if we let Him. I thank God that my parents gave me piano lessons and gave me opportunity as a child to use music in the work of the Lord.

With regard to using music in the church, I have always claimed Psalm 27:4 as the verse I keep before me. "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in his temple." I have this verse written on my music binder at church as a continual reminder of the "one thing", which is to do what God wants me to do. Sometimes with the music, it can get overwhelming when I consider that each week I have to have 54 songs (preludes, hymns, specials, offertories, invitation, baptism, etc.) ready by Saturday night, plus working on the upcoming music, and if I really dwell on learning that much music in the short amount of time given, I will panic and get very discouraged! Every service has a minimum of 21 songs, 2 services per Sunday, plus Sunday School and choir practice. I have to stay focused on "one thing", on the big picture, and on the fact that I get to serve. It's not a job, it's a privilege that God has placed in my hands and a way that He has given me to express my love for Him. When I look at it from that perspective, the only thing I can say is "Thank you, God" for giving me a way and a place to serve You.

I gave this verse to Page, one of my piano students yesterday. She is learning to play the hymns and she will be playing an offertory in two weeks. I don't have the words to describe the joy in my heart when I see one of my students begin to use her music for the Lord. Page is almost learning one hymn per week -- which is amazing!!!! She has only been playing for about 2 years, but what a wonderful student. It also helps that her parents, John and Cheryl are very encouraging to their girls with their music. One of my goals in teaching is to help the children understand what a wonderful thing it is to be used by God. I want them to be moldable and flexible and have an open heart for whatever it is that God has for their future. I place very little emphasis on talent and stress faithfulness and hard work as the main thing.

With all the nonsense portrayed on "American Idol" type shows, I pray that my students will see that it is not talent or outward performance that matters, but rather the behind-the-scenes work, and more importantly, the issues of the heart and your willingness to be used by God. We develop our music skills so that we can be a more useful tool in God's hands, not so that we can bring glory to ourselves. As pianists, we are "support-staff", and I love the thought of that! We are there to serve God, to serve our pastor, to serve the people in the congregation. I was explaining to Page yesterday how we always need to be mindful that we are there to prepare the hearts of people for the preaching and to provide music that will allow the Holy Spirit to open the hearts and minds of the people to hear what the Pastor has been given from God to give to the people each week.

Almost weekly, I will receive an email or a phone call from a lady in the ministry, saying how she has been asked to play the piano for her church, or on the mission field or somewhere in God's service. Often it will be a pastor's wife or missionary's wife or daughter, who wants to help her pastor/husband/father, but doesn't know where to begin with all those hymns in the hymn book! (Did you know that all of those notes in the hymn book are written for voices, NOT fingers! Just that realization alone is encouraging to a beginning pianist!)

It can seem like a daunting task, but I always quote them the words of our Pastor Dave who says, "Where God leads, God provides and God equips". Being a church pianist is a wonderful thing, and can be learned by anyone with a willing heart. Over the next few days I will give a few tips to help those who are just starting out, or who may be looking for some ideas to make the job easier. I realize that for those who read my blog and are not pianists, the info may be a bit boring and irrelevant, but it is more time-effective to post a few tips here, rather than giving the same information over and over individually each week.

In a perfect world, I would have this "family blog", then I would hop over and work on the "Joyful Melodies" teaching-music blog for a while, then update the wedding music blog, then I'd visit all of your blogs and kindly comment on all of them, but for some reason, that all doesn't quite fit into my daily 20 minutes of blogging indulgence!