The Church Answers Podcast
Why Are the Pianist and Organist Paid Positions in Many Churches?
Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now here's the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. Welcome to the Church Answers Podcast with Jess Rayner. I'm Tom Rayner and we're going to talk about something that hardly ever gets talked about in the podcast I've listened to. Why are the pianists and the organists the two most commonly paid positions in the church? Jess, I was working with a pastor three weeks ago. There are three paid positions in the church. Him, Organist and pianist. They just gave him a pay cut and the organist makes more. Oh dear. I said run, don't walk. Oh dear. Oh man. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the Church Answers podcast sponsored by Chaney & Associates, the accounting firm for the church. You've already heard that on the bumper, so I'm not going to repeat a lot of it. But visit our friends at chaneyassociates.com. Get yourself, get your church set up for their bookkeeping for their accounting. They are really doing an incredible job. Over 1,100 churches. That's all they do. It's churches. They do it well. All right, Jess, we're going to talk about something that really hadn't been that much a part of your life. I guess it has when I was a pastor and not every one of our churches, but the first church, the church, the first mural, Hope Well, did not have an organist and we didn't have an organ. We really didn't have a pianist even though she was there. Oh dear. You weren't even-- The two O'Deers already. Yeah, you weren't even born when I started as a pastor in that church. I started in '84 and you came into the world in '85, so it was technically your first church. But I know you don't remember anything about that little country church. Then the second one, yeah, we got an organ and we got a pianist in there. On each side of the pastor, just like it. And third one, yes, fourth one, yes, all of the above. By the time we got to the third one though, the organists didn't always show up. So that's another story to itself. You said something pre-recording that I think is fascinating about why the organists and the pianists are often paid position and a lot of other positions aren't particularly musical positions, but other positions are not. They're volunteer. Tell me. Yeah, you put your money to where it was most important to you. It's what you emphasize as a church. And so we're talking about pianists and organists here. More than likely based off even what you were saying before that these maybe are more traditional style worship churches and they are going to pay the pianist or organist because they value that and they emphasize that. And that's also where you want your quality to be. So wherever you pay, even if it's a more, for lack of a word to contemporary church, you may pay a particular part of that worship because you want that to be emphasized and you want that to be its highest quality. You may, maybe not remember this, but early on at the church at Spring Hill, we actually paid someone to run our sound. We didn't have anyone paid on stage. We had someone paid to run our sound because we didn't have anyone in the church that had enough capability to run it well. And so when I say sound, I'm talking about our sound board. And so we really remember that. Yeah. So for a season there until we could train up to new volunteers, we paid that because we felt like that was a point of emphasis in our church, especially when it comes to our worship service that we wanted the best mix of our sound quality. And so why are the pianists organists paid? Well, they value. It's what they emphasize. It's who they are as a church. I think you're partially right. I just don't think you're fully right. Okay. I'll accept that. Well, the partial right is your statement is correct. You pay for what you value. The reasons for the value are not always just we like traditional music. The reasons for it is a deep seated tradition, not the music, but the two positions. The organists was the most in demand position from the 19th century to the mid 20th century, particularly in more formal churches, but in informal as well. The organists and the type of organs they had in the church were much more complex than the piano. And so you had a, why did you pay your sound person? Yes. You had to pay for something you gave a priority, but the reason you paid is because you had no one else to do it. Right. And you had to pay someone. Same thing in churches. If they wanted an organist, they basically had to pay for it because those people cannot be found very, very much. There's a lot more keys on most organs. It's a lot more complicated, more pedals on the type of organs that were there. And I'm not a musician, but that's part of the history, particularly of many European churches, but of the American church as well. And so in order to have an organist, which was an indication you had a professional musician in your church. That was an indication. You had to pay them. But many churches also had pianists and they could not, to double negative it, not pay them. So the pianist rode the coattails of the organists to get paid. Now, why do you think I even created this podcast? Just because I was looking for content and couldn't find anything else. I mean, you never asked me, well, why are we doing this one? Why did I create content for that? I thought it, but I didn't ask it. The reason is, it's coming up in a lot of church budgets. I'm doing consultations and I'm looking at allocation of funds. Listen, if you're a church organist, forgive me for what I'm about to say. But because I'm not anti-organist, so I just want you to hear that. But I've looked at a number of statements, financial statements of churches, budgets for churches, where the attendance is 50, 60, 70. And the amount that they pay for an organist for their size church is so disproportionate to the whole budget. And now with the median size of a church down to around 50 to 55, that's a lot of churches that are expending funds there. Right. And they've always done it that way. And it can be disruptive if you don't. There's the other point. Yeah. Because every organist has a cousin, husband, wife, somebody who is going to pitch fit if you don't have the organist anymore. The reason I did this is because it's coming up in consultations, especially on the normative size church. By that, I mean those churches that are smaller. And I'm asking the question, why are you paying this for an organist compared to the budget of the whole church? And the response is, I don't want to get fired. It's become a sacred cow. It has become a definite sacred cow. There's a rich history to the organist and the pianist. Or the organist. I had to do some research on this. Not necessarily for this podcast, but to find out what was going on in the history of the American church. Yes, a lot of it is stylistic because what does the organist represent? And you said it usually it represents enmity, it usually represents the traditional music. But that one, the only reason, the primary reason was it was the instrument that carried this way for a century and a half in the United States. And if you didn't have an organist, you just didn't have a musician. So there could be one other potential point of this is that if that is a major budget item that it could be, I'm not saying it's for all churches that have organist, it could be that they're living in the past as well. Could be. Could be. But we have to be careful. There are some churches that have organists that have a more higher form of church, more traditional form of church and they do it well. Right. I didn't say all. I was just saying the potential could be that one, we can't do it because it's a sacred cow. It could be though that we want to continue to live in the past and not really move toward the future. Right. Could be. And when you start looking at sacred cows, we could go down, I'll kind of pass on that. But when you start looking at sacred cows, you're looking at things that you ask the question. Why do we do what we do? And you don't have a good answer. And that may be the case here. So if you have an organist and a pianist and you're paying them, I just want you to simply ask why. And if you have a good answer for it, good. Now if you say we shouldn't, but it is such an issue of contention that it's going to cause all kinds of division within church, I get that. Maybe it's not. I've got a metaphor, another metaphor, not a hill worth dying home. Yeah. You know, especially as this podcast is coming out, that's a great question to ask. For your entire budget, that's something we do is we look at each, each of our main, not line items, but our major categories and go, why are we spending money here? Does this make sense? Is there a better use of this? And so take that principle and apply it to your whole budget as you're looking at as we enter budget season in church life. You're talking about the zero based budget where you don't assume that anything should be paid for the next year that you've paid this past year. Good work. Well, now you, the listener or viewer at YouTube, you were wondering, why is Tom Rainer talking about organics and pianists? Is he just run out of content after all these years, he no longer has any content, so many books, articles, podcasts, he just, he's done. No, it's because I'm seeing it in budgets. If you, if you write the book, I am an organist, that's it, you're done. You're done. Oh, you're on the quits. I got it. Thank you as always for being a part of the church answer. I guess see you later. You have been listening to the church answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to the church answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)