How To Minimize Or Prevent 5 Common Stress Points For The Church Piano Player - Part 2

October 16, 2025•5 min read

"Let's also remember how important it is to bring all of our worries and stresses to Him in prayer, because He also can carry us through stressful situations, even when we don't think we'll manage."

As church piano players, we will likely experience stress in many different situations as we carry out our role. However, as we saw in last week's post, there are some things we can do to minimise or even avoid this.

We'll continue with the second stress point, which is...

Having to learn a new song quickly

While this is quite similar to the first point, when you have the songs chosen for you, it's more specific to the situation where there's that new song you’ve hardly heard before, and you don’t have much time to learn it!

There are a few things you can do to help with this.

Firstly, find an audio recording of the song on YouTube or whatever streaming service you may use, and just listen to it on repeat for at least 30 minutes. You can even do something else at the same time if you want, as this is just about familiarizing yourself with the melody, making the song easier to play.

Then, once you’ve done that, you could also simplify the song and play fewer chords. If you don't know how to do this, I cover that in my course, The 20 Day Church Piano Player.

Other than that, the main thing really is listening to the song until you know it well, and then just playing it over and over. You could also play along with the audio recording if it’s in the same key. Again, the aim here is to just get as familiar with the song as quickly as you can.

Having to learn a hymn with only notation, when you mostly play from chords.

This is another thing I cover in my course, but for a simple instant solution, you can google a version with chords, and for most songs, there will likely be this option.

Being asked on the spot to lead some worship

This can be pretty stressful when you're in a group of people, and they realise they are hanging out with the church piano player, and then someone says - “let's have a hymn sing”. You're probably thinking—“But I’m not prepared, I don’t have any music or chords”!

For those of you who play well by ear, this won’t be an issue for you. However, for others, aside from politely declining and feeling like you're letting everyone down, what else can you do?

While this does involve a bit of technology, I would highly suggest that for those of you who have your music digitally stored, you try to make sure that storage is also cloud based. This means that you can access it from anywhere on your phone or tablet, just as long as you have an internet connection; and you don't have to rely on having your computer at hand.

You could also consider making up an emergency set list, for times like this, so that next time you get caught off guard, you just pull out your phone and say “let’s do it - I’m ready!”.

If you can have that music in offline mode, then that means you won’t be so dependent on an internet connection, which can also be helpful.

There is of course the non-digital version of always having a folder of music in your car, or something like that; you may also want to consider that if you don’t have your music stored digitally.

Now to the final stress point...

Being asked to change a song last minute

Now hopefully you have leaders who wouldn’t do this kind of thing a lot, because it really can throw people. But, while it does sometimes happen, there are a couple of things you can do to make this situation a little less stressful.

As I have mentioned already, the first is to have a selection of “back-up” songs that you are very familiar with, maybe between 5 and 10. Also, if you vary your selection there’s a lot more chance of you being able to say “will any of these work?”, and if they do - no stress!

However, if a song is requested that you are not that confident with, I would first “appeal” if you feel like you just can’t play it. Or, the other option is to ask if there’s any chance it can be sung accapella, and then you’re off the hook altogether!

So there's a few tips on how you can minimize or prevent 5 common stress points that you are quite likely to experience as a church piano player. It won't necessarily be all of them, but you probably will come across one or two.

And as we implement these strategies, let's remember how important it is to also bring all of our worries and stresses to Him in prayer, because He also can carry us through stressful situations, even when we don't think we'll manage.

[Return to The Church Piano Player Website]

This blog post was written by pastor and pianist Kris Baines, from The Church Piano Player. Kris lives in the UK with his family, having recently moved back from New Zealand where he worked as a pastor for the past 26 years (also leading worship/worship teams). Kris has also spent over 35 years writing, recording, and performing music and is now bringing all that combined experience together to help equip church piano/keyboard players.

Check out the church piano player website for more information on online courses by Kris Baines.