The longer I “do church” the more I’m seeing the importance of smooth transitions, and I’m seeing it across the board. On a broader scale, I’m seeing the importance of making a smooth transition for people to go from visiting an outreach event to regularly attending on a Sunday morning. The old “bait and switch” evangelism doesn’t work. Smooth ramps are so important, I think we should constantly ask ourselves how our transitions are doing. How smooth is your transition for Sunday morning attendees to move into membership, or small groups? How smooth is your nursery to toddler transition for parents? How accessible is the sanctuary from the parking lot?
The dynamic that I’m noticing about transitions is that they’re either invisible… or they’re glaringly obvious. Seemless transitions don’t get noticed, but have an incredible ability to shape a mood or an image. Ugly transitions, on the other hand, you can spend time, effort, and money, tirelessly building momentum, and lose all the ground you’ve gained thanks to one ugly transition.
Some transitions are expensive, like changing church locations, but it’s still worth the effort to make the transition as smooth and transparent as possible for your congregation. Some transitions are tough. Startup churches have a tendency to use whomever is willing to help out, especially on the worship team. The tough issue comes when, 3 years later, you now have some really talented musicians and vocalists in the growing congregation, and it’s time to transition out the people who were a part of this in the beginning, but aren’t up to the band’s current, professional standard anymore. A well thought out, smooth, lateral transition can save a lot of hurt feelings, and reward loyalty.
From a tech standpoint, these transitions should constantly be at the forefront of your mind. Switching between camera angles (if you do I-Mag) is more than just adding variety. If done smoothly, it can add to the emotion of a worship set, or tension to a sermon. Using lighting fades can be a way of signalling to the congregation that we’re slowing things down, or about to move in a different direction. The transitions between worship songs can do just as much to set the atmosphere as the song selection itself. It’s important for a worship leader to help people move though these transitions. Even in sermon preparation, I’ve found that transitioning between different elements in a message can be just as powerful as a cool little anecdote. In fact, it’s comparable to taking a corner too fast in a car. You’re going north at 50 mph, and need to head west at an intersection. If you don’t transition at all by slowing down, signaling, etc. all the passengers (congregation) smack their collective head on the window. For an airline pilot, the most crucial point of flying is transitioning from being in the air, to being on the ground as smoothly as possible. EVERY plane transitions from the air to the ground at some point, but the landing is what differentiates between a successful flight, and a headline disaster.
At Shoreline we dedicate an entire service run-through to just getting our transitions figured out. At 8 am everyone stops what they’re doing and we meet. Even if they’re in the middle of setting up the drums, or a sound check, we stop for a 15 minute meeting. During this meeting we go through all of the elements of the service; worship songs, performance songs, video clips, prayers, talks, etc., and we focus specifically how we will transition from one to the next. We make sure that everyone is aware of the element preceding their segment, and how it ends. Then we look for ways to make the transition as seamless and transparent as possible. If someone is talking after a song, we make sure that he’s already on stage, and his mic is already turned on before the song ends. We look to see if we need to dim the lights completely to help change people’s focus. We zoom in with one camera on the current element, and set the other camera up to shoot the next element, so it’s a simple crossfade. We use a 60 second video “bumper” before the sermon to give the band a chance to clean off the stage, and keep audience’s attention.
It’s important to think through each element, make sure everything is delivered to the best of everyone’s ability, but also dedicate time to transitioning the congregation smoothly throughout the entire service.