While you are praying

I like when our pianist plays softly at the end of the sermon while I pray.

I do not think Dr. Rice did the right thing. It should have been handled in private.

 

Why did she insist on playing while he was praying? How did he approach her the first two times he asked her not to play while he was praying?
Who knows but God, Dr.Rice and the piano player. If he didnt want her to play then she should have respected that.
Why didnt Dr.rice want her to play during the prayer time? Maybe it was a distraction to him. I dont think this is something we should go to the bible for. It is neither mandated or forbidden.
Whom ever is preaching and giving the alter call should have control of the service, as he is being led by the Holy Ghost.
I think that prayer without music is best.

 

I again with revmitchell here based on the fact that she may have been playing out of a rebellious nature or out of habit but to say one handled it right or wrong without knowing more is not my place to do. But to learn from it makes it a valuable lesson...our church doesn't have any music playing during prayer unless the Pastor tells the pianist to do so. I think it is a distraction when I've been in a Church that does this but defer to the Pastor to handle his altar calls his way and then get past my annoyance

Salty even for an Army guy ya gotta know that ya may never find an answer to this question/issue in the Bible...though maybe you will if you use one of these new fangled versions So I would say that without clear instructions you need to use what is most effective to allow your members to respond to the message and to make decisions for God....with or without music

 

The pianist should follow the lead of the pastor and do what he says.

However, many musicans are quite "set in their ways." There are certain idiosyncracies that I had to constantly remind our organist at my former church not to do...but she had done them for so long, they were ingrained. (Was it that in the OP? Who knows....maybe she was just being ornery ).

I now play keys for our Sunday AM worship band. What I try to play is something that is noticed only by its absence. It doesn't draw attention to itself, but it underscores the quietness of the moment spent talking to God.

 

In A.W. Pink's 2nd church as a pastor in the late 1920's while in Australia ,he had the following experience...

When a female pianist once left the piano before Pink began to preach and walked across the front of the platform in the style of a mannequin , to take another seat , Pink at once told her that there was to be no repetition ! ( As told by Vida McAulay in Iain H. Murray's bio of Pink )

 

PastorSBC1303, it looks to me from the OP that he tried to handle it in private first. SALTCITYBAPTIST wrote: "That evening Dr Rice asked her not to play the piano while he was praying." It is hard to tell, though, without reading the original article.

Bill Rice had great integrity, and was a man's man, two things that are becoming more and more rare. In this day and age, to do what he did might invite a lawsuit or charges of sexual harrassment, so I wouldn't advise it nowadays. In Bill Rice's day, however, I believe that what he did would be considered by the vast majority of Christians to be quite all right. She directly rebelled against the evangelist's wishes. I can't imagine that even her pastor would have excused her for that--unless maybe it was his wife!

The main reason given by the evangelist Rice brothers (Joe, John and Bill) for not having organ music during prayer time was that it is a formalistic method designed to produce a spiritual "atmosphere" during the prayer. However, prayer is a time for genuine, unfeigned communication with God. Organ music during prayer does the opposite of what it is designed to do: it distracts rather than helps.

 

John, I respect your opinion. However, I still believe it was not handled right. There is no call for him to go over and physically do anything.

 

I like to play during the prayer, but I dont play anything recognizeable so attention wont be given to waht song i am playing I do it very softly and its just worshipful for me. But I have played for pastors who did not like it and I always follow his lead.

 

oh, well I aint a pastor either!!

 

Hoo, boy! I got stung by several hornets from that nest that was stirred up!! Or were they flying over from the music forum nest??

So, PastorSBC1303, let's say for the sake of argument (it is very hard to tell what really happened this many years later) that you had gone to her in private and asked her not to play during the prayer, but she still did and it seemed obvious to you that her attitude was wrong. How would you have handled it?

 

Scarlett O., you are forgiven for buzzing into the Pastors forum.

Just by way of explanation, the bit about Bill Rice being a "man's man" was kind of a throwaway line. My meaning was that, knowing him, he would not have gotten angry unless it was a righteous indignation and he truly believed the organist was "bucking him," as the cowboys used to say. (And Bill Rice was a genuine Texas cowboy.)

Dr. Bill got righteously angry at me once when I was a boy, and let me tell you, you didn't want to commit that sin again once he got done with you!! Don't ask what mine was, it was too embarassing!! Suffice it to say that it cost him some bucks in the early years of the Bill Rice Ranch that he could ill afford to lose!

 

If her attitude was wrong when I talked to her in private then there would be a new piano player in the next service.

I still find no reason for a pastor to go over and physically remove a ladies hands from the keys. Should she have followed the request of the evangelist? Absolutely. But there is no call for doing what he did.

 

Once is forgivable, twice is negligence and three times calls for action.

There are many variables in such a situation and we can not really comment 100%. But I think by the third night she should have known.

On a more compassionate note, my wife plays the piano and I know the problems she has had trying to read the mind of whoever was leading the service.

I would not have music played whilst praying. Especially during an invitational. The danger of someone being moved by the music instead of the music is not worth the risk in my opinion.

 

I agree with PastorSBC. Another way to handle it would be to make eye contact and give her the cut sign, and possibly just give her a reminder.

On a personal note, if any man touches my wife, they better watch out.

Joseph Botwinick

 

If her attitude was wrong when I talked to her in private then there would be a new piano player in the next service.

I still find no reason for a pastor to go over and physically remove a ladies hands from the keys. Should she have followed the request of the evangelist? Absolutely. But there is no call for doing what he did. </font>[/QUOTE]I agree with you here. I think this is how I would have handled it. But if I were an evangelist, I would have respected the autonomy of the local church and gone through the pastor.

Having said that, let me point out some things here.

(1) We still don't know who the woman was. Was she married or single? Old or young? Did the evangelist know her for many years or a few days? I can picture a case where the woman was an old single biddy who the evangelist knew for many years, so he knew he could handle the case this way. Or maybe even she was his daughter (neice, aunt) and he knew he could handle it this way.

(2) This probably happened in the 1950's, when Bill Rice's ministry was in its heyday. He died in 1978, but as the 1960's and 1970's progressed he got more and more into the Bill Rice Ranch ministry (the first ever deaf ministry, by the way). For you young whippersnappers, that was a completely different time. It was before Americans sued at the drop of a hat, before the term "sexual harrassment" was invented, before feminism permeated society (ever before they were called "women's libbers"), before the New Evangelical movement split Fundamentalism, before many other things. What I am saying is that, his action not being a direct sin, it must be judged by society's mores, and society was far different then.