Moving The Piano

I was once told by a very wise man, that, “If you want to move the piano in the church, move it an inch at a time every Sunday.”

Bottom line is that these are great words to put into practice with pianos and any other changes you want to make in the church.  I have worked in the Lutheran Church for a long time and I can tell you first hand that all of the jokes involving light bulbs and tires are true...they don’t like change.

I heard a story that involved an actual piano a while back.  Upon the worship leaders arrival at his new church, he moved the piano from the side of the stage to in front of the alter in his first week.  I almost died laughing.  This poor guy hadn’t even had his first Sunday and people were already on him. 

I’ve been there when I was younger.  In a moment of “brilliance,” my co-worker and I decided that the organ that hadn’t been used for 5+ years should be removed from the front of the church.  In our defense, it was broken for 5 years and was being used as a catch-all for coffee mugs and sheet music.  On a Monday morning, we took a sledge hammer to it and put it in the dumpster.  We spent the week doing carpentry work to fix the stage where it previously resided.  The next  Sunday morning, we caught a lot of flak for that.  I realized then that we moved too soon and too fast.

This philosophy is the same when it comes to service time changes, bulletin changes, stage layout…really, it’s a good standard philosophy to have in any church.  Hopefully you can avoid the mistakes that I’ve made in the past.

UPDATE: Still working on hunting down “Mike.”  It’s been a tough process!