No Piano No Problem (NPNP for short) is the combined effort of three ministers from different Michigan churches to share our success and resulting solution to solve the problem of dynamic church music for churches lacking reliable and skilled piano players.
More information about us coming soon...
About Terry Hemmes
Terry was a sophomore at Ottawa Hills High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan
when a school friend introduced him to an experience called, "the baptism of
the Holy Ghost." His life was changed forever when he received it soon after
on April 30, 1972.
Terry married Rebecca, the love of his life, and they're parents to a son,
Terry, two daughters, Shawna and Ashley, a daughter-in-law, Julie and a
son-in-law, Darin. Additionally their lives have been blessed with eight
grandchildren.
Terry and Rebecca passionately work for the Lord in beautiful Traverse City,
Michigan, where Terry serves as Assistant Pastor and Worship Leader at Greater
Life Apostolic Church.
How did all this get started?
I have to admit that I didn’t think about having good music in church until 1989. There had always been a wide variety of good music in the churches I’d attended and, although I enjoyed the music, I admit that I probably took it for granted. That all changed in the late 1980s.
It was in 1988 that God began to deal with me about becoming a pastor. My wife and I raised the level of ministry in our own home church and in our personal devotional lives, all the while asking God to lead us to the place he wanted us to be. Then in 1989 while we were at a meeting in St Louis, someone told us about a church in a small Missouri town that needed a pastor. After we visited the town and prayed about it, my wife and I felt that it was God’s will for us to go and accept the pastorate.
One difficulty we encountered immediately was that we had no music for our services. Although there was a baby grand piano left by the former pastor, we didn’t know how to play it and neither did anyone in the congregation. We tried to figure out how to provide music for our church services, including inviting friends who played and music students from the Bible College ninety miles away, but there were no takers – even when we offered to pay their expenses. I even tried to find a piano teacher who could teach me to play, but it wasn’t meant to be. We did get a tambourine, which gave us a percussion section, but we never found a player for that baby grand.
Eventually we resigned the work there and moved back to our home state. Our new home church had the best organist in the apostolic movement. But when she and her husband moved out west to start a new work, we definitely felt the loss in our worship services. We weren’t completely without musicians because there were a couple of ladies in our church who each knew how to play a few songs. But they only knew how to play in one key and in one tempo, so we realized that if we were going to resume the former richness of music that we previously had, (including chorale, choir, soloists and the periodic addition of new worship music), we’d need to look in a different direction.
It was at a ministers’ meeting that I noticed a “piano player” who wasn’t actually playing! He was just pushing a button at the beginning and end of each song. I knew right then that I had to find out what it was all about, so when I got home, I went to the local music store and started asking questions. It wasn’t long before our church bought a Kurzweil digital piano.
For the next six months we gathered songs, programmed them, and then trained people to work with the piano. Our congregation loved the new sound in the services. It revolutionized our worship!
We now have all styles of songs programmed into the Kurzweil, including worship choruses and songbook songs, in different tempos, giving the church a varied worship experience. And when we hear new songs, we’re able to add them to our piano’s memory. We’re currently working to add songs for special occasions, such as holidays and weddings. Technology is developing so fast that we’re planning to purchase another piano that will hold even more songs (on chips) and be able to repeat sections of songs upon request.
If I’d had this technology back in 1989, it would have made my job as pastor so much easier. I’ve experienced worship services both with and without music, and I know how much better it is to have a rich variety of music to choose. That’s why I’m anxious to share this resource with everyone who needs it.
Terry Hemmes
