Grace notes
Friday Roundup for July 25, 2025
The piano I learned to play on beginning in second grade was a converted player piano my parents bought for cheap somewhere. The automated mechanism had been taken out but the opening to where it once lived remained, visible behind wooden doors that pulled closed. The entire woodwork on the massive upright had been painted antique red. No wonder we kept this fine piece of furniture hidden in the laundry room.
It was on this very used piano that I first learned to play hymns such as “Church in the Wildwood.” Once it became apparent I had a knack for piano and an interest, my parents splurged and bought a brand-new Baldwin upright piano — the one recommended by my teacher who lived across the street — that likely was the most expensive item in our house.
That walnut-brown piano still sits in our living room today and is the piano my own two boys learned to play and that launched their current careers as professional musicians — instrumentalists but not pianists. Yet they both love to sit down and noodle there, as do I and my wife, Alison.
Our family is an exception to modern American life as fewer and fewer homes have acoustic pianos. As recently as 2006, about 100,000 new acoustic pianos were sold annually in the United States. Now that’s down to about 18,000.
Churches cannot unload the pianos they have in classrooms and they sure don’t have the capacity to receive the number of donated pianos members want to give them as they downsize their own homes. During my time as an executive pastor, I cannot count the number of piano donations we had to gracefully decline. We already had more upright pianos than we could use.
The person I relied on to make those evaluations was our associate minister of music and organist, Jeff Brummel. Jeff’s story is fascinating too.
“It was the piano that marked the beginning of the life I’ve carved out for myself,” he recently told me. “At about age 12, I took interest in the piano and taught myself to play and read music. I did play trumpet in the middle school band and would ask questions to the band and choir teachers when I felt stuck. Within about a year, I was able to play Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer for the spring music concert as well as accompany the school choir. Piano was indeed the gateway instrument for me to find interest in the pipe organ and even singing and my career path in music ministry.”
If a piano is leading anyone into music ministry or to the church today, it’s most likely to be a digital keyboard rather than an acoustic piano. These more portable — and economical — electronic instruments are sold in greater quantity than traditional pianos.
“The invasion of digital keyboards has changed churches as well as homes.”
The invasion of digital keyboards has changed churches as well as homes. Church praise bands are more likely to include one of these than an acoustic piano. Same goes for schools.
Jeff told me this fascinating story about a recent experience he had while accompanying a well-known high school choir in a state competition and concert at the Meyerson Symphony Center in the Dallas Arts District.
“I was quite amazed when I walked into such a large school to find that the choir room(s) and auditorium were using digital pianos. … I noticed something about the choir. They had a strange void of color and dynamic variation. Sure, they would sing soft and loud, but nothing really convincingly in between. I had several rehearsals and a mock performance using these digital pianos.
“We had two performances, one at the Meyerson and once at the local Performing Arts Center. I noticed quickly at the Meyerson, during the warmup, that the choir began to sing differently. Then, in the performance.
“All of a sudden, I began to hear the students adapt quickly to the dynamic and color shading of the piano. At my next rehearsal at the school, the students returned to their rather stagnate sound, matching the digital piano. For their (state competition) performance, I heard an immediate shift to matching the color and volume variety of the upright piano in the rehearsal space. It became very obvious to me how having an acoustic piano for choir rehearsals was so vital for the students’ experience in learning.
“As musicians, especially singers, much of what we do is emulating what has been demonstrated to us. It didn’t even matter if the acoustic piano was a grand or an upright/console, the students began to match what they were hearing instantly and subconsciously.”
Call me an old-school piano snob, but Jeff has a point. Digital keyboards just cannot convey the range of color and nuance you’ll hear in an acoustic piano. And we emulate what we hear.
That’s not the only factor, of course. I recall sitting through hours of recitals and competitions not only for myself but later for my boys. And every time, in every setting, we would hear some piano students who played all the correct notes but had no heart. No emotion. No pathos.
It is possible to know all the right notes and miss the meaning of the music. Hopefully you see where this is going. It is possible today to practice religion without emotion or color or nuance.
Just this morning, I had a conversation with a new friend who told me how her 83-year-old mother had been captured by the MAGA movement. She got caught up in AM talk radio in the rural area where she lives. For her, everything is about abortion — which she sees as a black-and-white issue with no nuance. And AM talk radio has about as much nuance as the flat sound it produces.
Preachers today struggle to give sermons or Bible lessons with the kind of nuance that’s needed but not easily heard.
To borrow another musical term, we need to learn once again to hear the grace notes — those short, ornamental notes in music that precede a main note, adding a flourish to the melody. It’s often hard to hear such small things on a digital keyboard. And it’s hard to play them if you only play mechanically.
It’s also hard to leave room for grace when everything is black and white, cut and dried.
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Hard to believe we’re still talking about Baylor University, but we are. The fallout over the administration’s decision to rescind a $634,000 grant from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation hangs heavy over the Brazos two weeks later.
Ben Cole and I have a new episode of “Stuck in the Middle with You” that just dropped a few minutes ago and is all about the history behind this controversy. Check the podcast site on your favorite app to see when it drops.
Meanwhile, we began the week with a second letter sent to Baylor administrators and regents, this time from Baylor alumni and faith leaders who say Baylor should “do better” on inclusion. Unlike the previous letter praising Baylor’s “moral courage” for rejecting the grant for academic study of LGBTQ loneliness in churches, we know exactly who wrote and circulated this letter. And it has five or six times the number of signatures as the earlier letter.
And a new development at Belmont University in Nashville might help explain why Baylor is suddenly so cautious on the appearance of being inclusive.
Also of note in Waco at the same time is how conservative evangelicals are turning on TV superstars Chip and Joanna Gaines for the — gasp! — horror of including a gay couple on their reality TV show. As Rodney Kennedy writes, this is more about evangelical disgust than about the love of Jesus.
Seriously, how mean must you be to be upset that one couple out of many featured on this reality TV series happens to be gay? Can you not tolerate the very idea of someone being gay? Apparently not. Some of the criticisms of Chip and Joanna are just outrageous — including assertions that a gay couple has taken over “our” TV show.
Never fear, Mark Driscoll has weighed in on the Gainses now too, comparing their inclusion of a same-sex couple to farting on an elevator.
And in case you’re wondering, Baptists in America aren’t the only ones dealing with differences of opinion over LGBTQ inclusion. We reported this week about what Baptists in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are facing.
Matt Comer offers a helpful review of Brandan Robertson’s new book, Queer & Christian.
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In other news this week:
Advocates and families of people with intellectual disabilities are pleading with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt the Aug. 5 execution of an inmate suffering from brain damage, dementia and lifelong cognitive impairment.
Republicans are significantly more likely to identify as Christians than Democrats, and they have a distinct preference for evangelical Protestant denominations.
Among widowed Americans, 80% identify as Christians. That’s almost 20 percentage points higher than the national share of Christian-identifying adults, which is 62%.
Red state legislatures are spending more tax dollars on faith-based anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, and federal funding may soon follow.
More than 2,100 participants logged in July 17 to a United Methodist-sponsored webinar that gave 90 minutes of spiritual encouragement, prayer and information on birthright citizenship and immigration enforcement.
Tensions are boiling over in Ohio as immigration authorities continue to detain Imam Ayman Soliman, a former Cincinnati Children’s Hospital chaplain whose asylum status was revoked last month.
The Justice Department has determined women no longer may cite gender-based violence as grounds for seeking asylum in the U.S.
Holly Berkley Fletcher’s new book examines the relationships between evangelical missions and missionaries, their children and the religious culture and churches that send them into the world.
Donald Trump’s plan to evict Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and have the U.S. take it over seemed laughable when he first proposed it in February. Now, he appears to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his side.
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In other analysis this week:
The death of John MacArthur prompted Curtis Freeman to consider whether the famous preacher was a Baptist or just a fundamentalist.
Rick Pidcock outlines 10 Bible verses Christian nationalists take out of context to seize power.
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In other opinion this week:
Nikki Hardeman says one way churches can unintentionally contribute to gender inequality is by requiring women to provide a greater burden of proof for their calling and competencies, just to access the same opportunities as men.
Robert Darden connects the dots to campers fleeing Camp Mystic’s flood to the legacy of songwriter Kurt Kaiserthrough “Pass It On.”
Charles Qualls recalls a 34-year-long game of tag that still exists in his family.
Zach Lambert’s new book says there are better ways to read the Bible.
Edmond Davis says Hulk Hogan demonstrated the reality of a mixed human legacy.
Robert P. Jones offers a prayer for the brokenhearted people of the world.
Jordan Conley says the biblical prophets knew something America has forgotten.
Edmond Davis says the drowning death of Malcolm Jamal-Warner should remind us of the fraught history of Black Americans and water.
I consider the importance of a “biblical worldview” and how the worldview of conservative evangelicals has about as much Bible as Grape Nuts has grapes.
Richard Conville ponders the lack of empathy all around us today.
Brad Bull is thankful for some teachers who taught him how to do nothing.
Advocacy work can seem overwhelming but Mara Richards Bim says to remember the Little Hummingbird.
Christy Lynne Wood says Cara Meredith’s new book gets a lot right about understanding the influence of church camp.
A final word
That’s all for today. Next week’s Roundup will be written by Marv Knox, who will begin that day filling in for me during a family vacation. I am thankful for Marv, my longtime friend and colleague, being able to step in so we don’t miss a beat.
This is a good time also to say a word of gratitude for Lindsay Bergstrom, our director of operations; Jeff Brumley, our senior news writer; and our part-time employees Mara Richards Bim, Catherine Storke and Mallory Challis. And there are two other folks you don’t see or hear from directly who are very important to us, Debbie Meripolski and LeAnn Hampton, who do our development work. We’re a small but mighty team!
Mark Wingfield
Executive Director and Publisher
Baptist News Global