Over the last 20 years, Community Lutheran Church has developed a flourishing worship ministry in the Southern California city of Escondido. Chartered in 1989 with 153 parishioners, they’ve grown to a thriving congregation of over 1,200. Recently, the church dedicated a new sanctuary, furnished with state-of-the-art instruments from Roland and Rodgers to meet the diverse needs of their two Sunday services.

Pastor William Vogelsang has been with Community Lutheran almost since its inception, and his wife Christine has served as the church’s music director for just as long. The music program at Community Lutheran includes an adult choir, a children’s choir, a bell choir, and a praise band, and they all perform a wide range of musical selections. “Some people call it blended, I call it eclectic,” she says. “We play what we like, we sing what we like, from hymns of the church to the Lutheran liturgy. The choir does anything from jazz gospel to church-oriented anthems, and the children do everything from traditional songs to praise songs. And the band, of course, does singable praise songs. The congregation’s very receptive; as long as it has good doctrine and a good music line, it’s well received.”

Christine directs the choirs during Sunday services, and she also plays piano, often along with organist Joyce Roberts. For the new sanctuary, she wanted to find a replacement for the church’s Yamaha acoustic piano. Though she was aware of the benefits that a modern digital piano has to offer—such as different sounds at the touch of a button, no need for tuning, MIDI, and more—she wasn’t convinced that such an instrument could actually sound and feel like the acoustic grands she’s played her entire life. “I had to be shown that it was the real thing,” she says.

During the decision-making process, her local Roland piano dealer, Piano SD, brought an RG-7 Digital Grand Piano over to the church for her to try out. Rosemary Bailey—one of Roland’s piano and organ clinicians—happens to live in the area, and she offered to come out and show Christine how get the best out of the RG-7 while she was auditioning it.

Admittedly, Christine was a bit skeptical at first, expecting the piano’s Progressive Hammer Action keyboard to feel stiff and, in her words, “typical digital.” But as Rosemary adjusted the key touch sensitivity to Christine’s playing, it felt perfect. To make the RG-7 sound as good as it felt to Christine, Rosemary chose one of the brighter piano voices. It was just what Christine was looking for. After playing for a while, Christine and some folks that she’d invited to listen were convinced that the RG-7 was the right choice. “For me, it was all about the touch and the sound, but the touch especially,” she says. “It had to have that real acoustic piano feel.”

A replacement organ was also in order for the new sanctuary, and for this centerpiece instrument Community Lutheran chose a three-manual Rodgers Trillium Masterpiece Series digital organ. Organist Joyce Roberts is simply thrilled. “I love my new toy,” she enthusiastically says. “It has become a consuming passion. It’s got so much stuff on it, half of it I’m sure I haven’t even touched yet.” Joyce has been with the church for five years now, and prior to that she was a substitute organist, playing on many different organs in many different churches. With this experience, she’s very appreciative of the Rodgers’ sound quality and versatility. “The digital Rodgers gives so much more flexibility at a tenth of the cost of a pipe organ, and yet you’ve got more than a pipe organ can ever give you with the MIDI and other things,” she says. Speaking of MIDI, she often employs a Rodgers MX-200 MIDI sound module. “With the choir—especially at Christmas—I use some of the MIDI sounds,” Joyce says. “Also, we do soft background music for Communion, and I like to use the Spanish guitar sound for that.”

After playing the RG-7 regularly now for a few months, Christine is just as pleased with her piano. “It’s been great. I’ve been very happy with the sound,” she says. “Nobody can believe it’s not acoustic. I amaze everybody when I show them inside the piano—hey, no strings [laughs]!” She enjoys the digital piano’s other intrinsic advantages over its acoustic counterpart. “It can be plugged right into the sound system, so we don’t have to mess around with microphones,” she says. “Also, it’s always in tune, and it can be updated any time.”

In addition to all of that, the RG-7’s recording features have proved to be indispensable. “That part has been just a wonderful blessing,” Christine says. Normally, she relies on an accompanist to play piano while she directs the choir, but occasionally that person is not available. By pre-recording a piece ahead of time, she can simply have the piano play on its own during the service. As she relates, “Just last Sunday, [our accompanist] was out of town, and I was able to pop over and hit the button, and up came this gorgeous accompaniment on that beautiful piano. My husband pointed out to the congregation what was going on after we were finished singing, and it just blew them away, especially since I left the piano’s keys moving!” (The RG-7 has “player piano” functionality with moving keys.) She’s also found the recording feature a great asset for rehearsing with the choirs.

After being an acoustic piano devotee for so many years, Christine just can’t say enough good things about the new Roland digital piano. “The uniformity of the sound from top to bottom is wonderful,” she says. “And I like the fact that no matter how softly you play a key, there’s always a tone. With an acoustic piano, there’s always that little underlying bit of tension, knowing that even when you’re playing pianissimo, you have to give it a little just to make sure. The Roland’s touch never disappoints me, and it truly relaxes me on a Sunday morning.”

To learn more about Community Lutheran Church, visit their website at www.clcesc.org.