Picture this: I’m at a party, engaged in the classic small talk dance. A new acquaintance pops the inevitable question: “So, what do you do for a living?”
I brace myself, hoping they won’t delve too deep into the subject. “I’m a musician,” I reply casually.
Their eyes light up, curiosity sparked. “Oh, what kind of musician?”
I can’t escape it. “I’m the music director at a church.”
Cue the raised eyebrows and a puzzled expression. “Is that a full-time job or just a Sunday morning thing?”
For people who aren’t really involved with the life of the church, it can be quite baffling how a person could do this line of work. After all, their great aunt played at church every week for free. She even had a spinet organ in her living room!
One church member, wanting to discuss music for her daughter’s wedding, was taken aback when I proposed a weekday meeting. The shock on her face was palpable when she discovered I had an office. It was as if I lived permanently perched on the organ bench, a notion akin to a first-grader assuming their teacher resides at school.
I’m not going to use this post to justify and chronicle every hour worked, all the time spent practicing at the organ, the time spent listening to other church services to get ideas about repertoire or sitting in planning meetings. Rather, I just want to give one anecdote from a few weeks ago.
Like most mainline churches, the program year at my church begins the Sunday after Labor Day. Everyone returns from their vacation homes and there is a big celebration marking the return to the busyness of the church calendar. For this particular year, I thought I wanted to add some pomp and pageantry to the processional hymn. I thought some banners spelling out the three keywords of our mission statement would be effective. I met with a woman in my choir who was willing to tackle this project. She would get the banners made and I would take care of the rest. I roamed the aisles of a hardware store looking for ways to hang the banners. After numerous trips and consulting with the banner maker, I finally came up with a plan.
The timeline to finish was going to be close, but doable. Well, every possible thing that could go wrong did go wrong, including two broken sewing machines!
The banners were mostly done, but the method of hanging them had to be completely changed. So, the Saturday before Kick-off Sunday, I found myself at 10 pm in the store looking for tape, Velcro, and wooden dowels. I arrived around 6:00 am the morning of Kick-off Sunday with supplies in hand including a saw ready to cut wooden dowels down to size.
All this time was spent on something that lasted about 25 seconds on the live stream.
All this work and planning for my 1 hour a week job.