Sharing Your Gift Of Music - Part 2
"...in each of these situations, you still have the opportunity to glorify God as you use your gift of music, given by Him, to bless others."
Last week, we started looking at some ideas on how you can share your gift of music in settings beyond the church.
Let's continue with the fourth idea...
Organise informal hymn sings with your Christian friends
What a blessing this can be, and the great thing is that it takes very little organisation, and people love it. You simply need to prepare the songs ahead of time, including word slides or printed lyrics, or you could even send the lyrics to people in a format they can read on their phones, and then you can easily organise a hymn sing.
Just to clarify, this doesn’t mean you only sing hymns, of course. So, whether you call it a hymn sing or a worship evening, this kind of musical fellowship can be a real encouragement to people.
You can always speak to your pastor or leaders about doing this more formally, and you may find they are very interested in doing it.
I was at a conference in the States last year, and between the sessions, there was always a group of people, somewhere on the conference grounds, having a spontaneous time of singing worship together. However, it did often require piano players who were available, and who knew a bunch of songs, and who were prepared enough to have their music or iPad with them so they could easily access those songs. It was such a blessing to see and be a part of.
Offer to play for an outreach or church event
This will depend on the kind of music that is required for such an event but you can at least offer, and it will give you another opportunity to use your gift in a way that blesses others.
Offer to play for a residential care home, or for a church service held there
Your church may already hold services like this, and be in need of help from a piano player, or you can simply enquire yourself.
While there are Christian care homes and nursing homes out there, you will often find that even regular residential facilities love having someone come and play traditional hymns as the elderly residents, whether Christian or not, still know and love many of those hymns.
This is a situation that can also lead to you getting to know some of the residents, and using the opportunity to share the hope of Christ by lovingly communicating the gospel.
It’s a very special thing to see the look on people’s faces, who are stuck in the same place all day long, as you bring some joy to their day through your piano music. So, why not give that a go?
The final idea, then, is...
Make yourself available to play for weddings or at a memorial service
This may not happen much, but if you let your pastor or leaders in your church know you are available, that could be a great help when they need to plan a wedding or memorial service.
This might involve leading several songs in a similar way to how you would in church, and it will also involve playing incidental music too.
That’s all the ideas I have for you, but I’m sure you can think of more. I hope you can see that in many of these, you also get the added bonus of consistently improving your confidence and competence, as you play more and more, in different settings.
Just to recap, here are the seven ideas I listed:
Help to train new church piano players
Offer to help the church with admin & organisational tasks related to church music
Play the piano for family worship
Organise informal hymn sings with your Christian friends
Offer to play for an outreach or church event
Offer to play for a residential care home, or for a church service held there
Make yourself available to play for weddings or at a memorial service
And remember, in each of these situations, you still have the opportunity to glorify God as you use your gift of music, given by Him, to bless others.
[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.
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