God I hate to keep this thread going, please don't wave the ban hammer at me for this, but have to throw in a couple of cents here.
I personally don't use the transpose function on my board that often mostly because I don't have a need to. I'll use it during rehersals with people who need things transposed on the spot(I have a hard time playing by ear so I use sheet music and its hard enough to read vocal lines and piano lines at the same time to make sure the vocalist is on track.), BUT then after we figure out where he/she wants the song to be at, I'll go back after rehersal and manually transpose it there and learn it in that key. Is this such a bad thing? I honestly think its a great function for on the spot things like this. However, I don't use it during services, because at the church i went to before i was just kinda thrown into playing. EVERYTHING WAS IN A DIFFERENT KEY THAN WHAT I KNEW THE SONG IN. And to add insult to injury I was on a Yamaha Acoustic Grand. No transpose button on that one, so I had to quickly learn to transpose things.
Now back to point, I would say that "transposers" are real musicians, because who is to say that they aren't? I agree that you should be able to play in every key, but thats not what music is truly about. Its not all about theroy and manual transposition vs the keyboard function. Its about worshipping God with the annoniting that He has given us. Music is mearly the expression of emotion through pitch. And if you absloutly need the advancement of modern technology to get to the correct pitch(though seriously guys its a piano, quite easy to transpose on really, just move your fingers up or down how many half steps you need to go. Mind the black keys of course
)then by all means, USE IT. Does it take away from the annoniting of the player if they do use it? Does the audience care if you used the transpose function or not?
So sorry for contributing to the never ending topic here, but just had to say something.