Hi,

Let's chat about our church jobs....the good, bad, and ugly!

I hold down an organ bench on Sabbath morning, not Sunday morning, so I hope I'm still welcome here. My job is with a Seventh-day Adventist church - it's a small congregation in a small market town on Canada's Vancouver Island. The instrument is a church organ systems Wurlitzer church model with a pretty fair stop list - mixtures and mutations and couplers. There's no church choir which suits me fine as I don't like playing for a choir, mainly because I don't have knowledge to conduct one or a good enough ear to know whose voice needs tuning. The service follows this format: Prelude / Play The Lord is in His Holy Temple while the minister enters and kneels at the front for a moment of silent prayer / Opening Hymn / Approach to prayer during which the congregation sings As We Come to You in Prayer / Offertory / Special Music (usually a soloist or one of the young people trying out their piano pieces) / Sermon / Closing Hymn / Amen (played by me, not sung) / Postlude.

For the church service the hymnal is used with traditional hymns and gospel songs. There is a 15 minute praise time before the 11 a.m service - guitar players usually accompany the praise songs (7-11 songs, 7 words repeated 11 times) tho I am asked to play occassionally when someone just wants hymns. I don't mind as some of the praise songs seem quite impossible to play on piano or organ, or perhaps it's just my lack of knowledge letting me down again.

I also must tell y'all about the one and only pipe organ we have here in the valley. It's a historic instrument, an 1878 tracker built by Alfred Hunter of London, England. I've been playing two recitals per year on it, to raise money of its maintenance. It needs some major work - some leaks in the wind trunks and the slider for the 2' principal needs to be replaced or maintained so there are no leaks at the upper end. If you are interested in historic instruments, I've got a blog for this one at 1878alfred.blogspot.com

Greetings all!

Oh, honey, yes I am 'at the bench' every Sunday!  I love it!  Playing for Jesus is awesome!  Im part of  San Leandro community [United Church of Christ /American Baptist Church-dually aligned] church as their organist. part time. Im also organist for First Christian Church of Watsonville, Ca.  part time.   In Watsonville, I play an antique Wicks pipe organ from 1928.  This was/is my first pipe organ.  I Always played electric/electronic organs and thats what I learned on... Well, I must say I really enjoy that pipe organ. Its not your typical pipe organ.  I jam on that thing.. I play it like a hammond. Nobody complains about boring organ music anymore!   They love the way I play it.   At my other church---- church in San Leandro, there are 2 organs in the sanctuary.  A Hammond  M2 [with NO LESLIE--ouch! can you believe it?]  and an early digital Allen organ [one of the mid 70's models that have the IBM 'punch card reader' ]  I mostly play the HAMMOND.  The Hammond sounds better with the piano . Our minister of music plays piano. The ALLEN is good for a solo or prelude music, something where it plays alone.  The Allen is in need of some new speakers, but you know how churches are---HELL will probably FREEZE solid before they spend the money, or the hammond will have to BLOW UP or something . LOL!  The Hammond is like 25 years older than the ALLEN and is in better shape.  NOt a spokesperson for HAMMOND, but they are built like a tank.  I play all types of church music on any of these organs. AT both churches.   People just dont realize all the things the organ can do. In The church the organ has been "stereotyped" and people dont think modern music/contemporary can be done on it. Yes you can do contemporary music on organ! 

God Bless, keep on playing!