Divine Preparation: The Yellow Baldwin Acrosonic

Part 6

The yellow lacquer with the fake wood grain made it one of the ugliest pianos I had ever seen. But this little Baldwin spinet piano, called an Acrosonic, was a rare gem with a reputation for a light touch and a hardy sound board that almost never needed tuning. I didn't know or appreciate those attributes yet but my Grandma had spent months searching a 5-state area looking for just the right piano for me. This was in the early 80s, before the internet, so she scoured newspapers and drove hundreds of miles to find this ugly thing. My family had just moved and we opted not to haul the heavy upright grand that was sitting in the basement of our previous house to the new one. Grandma Kraabel was distraught about that decision - she felt I needed to continue the lessons I had started in kindergarten, cultivating a God-given gift. I was in 4th grade now and taking piano lessons as a boy was not cool. And I was trying to make new friends in a new school. Surely this little yellow piano was a curse! But Grandma knew better and the piano arrived and sat in our dining room.

A few months later, for reasons I don't remember, I decided to play The Christmas Song for my classmates during our elementary school music period. No one pressured me to do it and, looking back, I'm not sure what I was thinking. But that little "recital" started something special - a divine preparation that would last decades. My music teacher asked me to play the song in the school Christmas program. We were a very small school so that program involved not just elementary kids but also middle and high school students. This little 4th-grade boy had a solo performance during that program that was captured by the local newspaper who stuck a picture of me playing that song on the front page (again, very small town with a local paper that didn't have much news to report upon!). Over the next several years, I found myself accompanying the high school choir and various individual vocal and instrumental soloists vying for state band and choir positions. I also shared this gift in church playing alongside the organist and some "special music" pieces. Much credit here goes to Gayle Moen, a fabulous piano teacher who taught not only music theory and finger articulations but also improvisation - something I would tap into many years later.

As an adult, I was still playing piano in church services and at weddings and such. We were living in Tullahoma, TN, attending Trinity Lutheran Church where I was first asked to play the organ - an event that would eventually lead to my identity as the "Barefoot Piano Guy" (ref: The Identity Trap) while also preparing me to keep the damper pedal for my digital keyboard from sliding away decades later.

As we moved around the country, one of the first things our family did was to find a new church home in each new place. Many people search a long time to find a new church home. That wasn't our experience. We tended to find a place we felt we belonged rather quickly and an opportunity for me to share the musical gift God had given me was often part of the reason. And each one of those church homes prepared me in a unique way for each subsequent opportunity to share that gift.

It was at Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church in Florida where we were first exposed to contemporary worship. This was a big change from my upbringing in a more traditional worship setting and required some getting used to. I played one Sunday there with the band but I didn't know what I was doing - I wasn't prepared for that yet. God wasn't yet asking me to play - just observe.

We moved to Detroit and found a new home at King of Kings Lutheran Church where the worship was a contemporary service in a traditional environment - a sort of cross between the worship style I grew up with and the style I was exposed to in Florida. The band there had just lost their keyboard player and was looking for a replacement when I walked in the door and unknowingly offered to sit in if they ever needed a fill-in player. It was there that I learned how to play with a praise band, leveraging some of that improvisation training Mrs Moen taught me many years earlier.

We moved back to Tullahoma but were now looking for a contemporary service that our previous church there didn't offer. We walked through the door at First United Methodist Church (UMC) and the praise band was just wrapping up their warm-up. They didn't have a keyboard player and I again blindly offered to play if they ever needed someone to sit it. Multiple "greeters" said they were actively praying, as a group, for a keyboard player to walk through the door and here I was! I spent several years there playing with professional musicians who taught me "Nashville notation" and about in-ear monitors and other professional sound equipment. I also decided to make a significant investment in a new keyboard that would allow us to incorporate multiple sounds and layers into our instrumentation (in addition to that slippery damper pedal!). I also got to observe how the band leader guided our rehearsals and prepared us each week for service.

We then moved to northern Virginia and visited Crossroads United Methodist Church. Again, during our first visit, I offered to play if they ever needed some help. This church, too, had been praying for a keyboard player and I quickly found myself in the band. Here, I learned from Susan Yantis how to prepare the vocalists each week.

Most recently, we moved back to TN and rejoined the First UMC band within a week. I was back in my comfort zone, simply grateful for being able to play with an outstanding group of musicians. We were retiring in TN and I figured this would be our final church home. But after a few months, we unexpectedly found ourselves looking for some place new. While the reason for that change isn't important to this story, it was very unexpected.

My mom was attending Cumberland Presbyterian in Winchester, TN and we decided to visit. We arrived a bit early and the praise band was still warming up. They had a gorgeous Hammond B-3 with a 147-Leslie on stage, but no other keyboard. I was still reeling from leaving First UMC and decided not to say anything about playing piano here - a departure from many of my previous church-visiting experiences. But the Hammond player stepped off stage and walked straight over to me and said, "I heard you play piano." I was baffled. I had never met this man but he apparently knew the guys in the band at First UMC and heard I might be looking for a new church home. I'm still not sure how he recognized me. He didn't ask if I might be the guy from First UMC. Rather, with confidence that could only be derived from God's vision, he simply stated the fact. He asked me to join the band and within a week, I was playing with them. A few weeks later, we learned that the Hammond guy, who was also the de facto band leader, received some terrible news - his cancer was back and he needed to step away from the band to focus on his health.

It was clear that God had sent me to this place. The unexpected situation that resulted in me leaving First UMC was the forcing function that led me to the opportunity to help a new band, and a new congregation, in a time of need. And it was here that the totality of 40 years of divine preparation sank in: the exposure to contemporary worship, learning how to play in a praise band, working with sound equipment and new instruments, and observing how to effectively prepare a praise band each week to deliver a worshipful experience for the congregation. And it all started with that ugly little yellow spinet piano gifted to me by my Grandma - the Baldwin Acrosonic - and The Christmas Song.

Now, nothing in this story has anything to do with business so sharing it here on LinkedIn might seem a bit unusual. But I encourage you to think about the divine preparation experiences in your life and what they might be leading you towards. Your experiences are more than unusual coincidence. You are being prepared to answer a calling. And when you answer, you'll be blessed beyond all measure.

Psalm 98:4. Make a joyful noise to the?Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!