Worship Leader Strategies: Transitions

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This series on worship leader strategies gives systems and suggestions on how to better organize worship ministries as it pertains to planning, training, and practically leading congregations in musical worship. Like most strategy-oriented discussion in ministry, there are no fix-all solutions, but these strategies are suggestions that should help others organize their ministries to better serve their leaders, volunteers, and general congregations.
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Oh, the wonderful concept of “transitions”. The modern megachurch culture will spend significant time working on them, while smaller and “minimalist” churches will ignore them completely. Some music and worship ministries aren’t given the option of deciding, but are given orders from their lead pastor or whoever may be teaching for that specific service. But is there a right way, or a healthy balance?

Before we tackle the how we need to breakdown the why behind good transitions. Even as we get into those reasons, it’s important to note that any worship leader is subject to their lead pastors and other leadership. In my own experiences I’ve disagreed numerous times about what makes for good transitions with my own leadership and with the leadership of other churches whenever I’ve been a guest, but it’s vital (not to mention biblical!) to submit to the direction of those in leadership. If you’ve built up a good enough relationship with those individuals, whether you are a coworker or a guest, sometimes the opportunity to discuss and collaborate comes up. Here is the reasoning for the why behind good transitions.

Why do good transitions matter?

Now, I’ve met plenty of worship leaders who try to take a personal stance on a non-essential issue and claim that there is only one biblical stance and – gasp! – it just so happens they their opinion is the right one! Incredible! Of course, if we are truly being objective and reading our Bible for what it is, we know that there is little specific direction on the way a worship service is meant to be designed. Even less direction exists about how we are supposed to transition from one element to the next. So it can be understood that the necessity for transitions is decided on these two principles: preference and strategy.

Preference is easy to identify, but difficult to set aside. I might have a different preference than you, you might have a different preference than your lead pastor, your lead pastor may have a different preference than most of your congregation, but from my conversations over the years most people believe that their preference is the majority opinion. I would advise all worship leaders, young and old, to avoid the discussion of “what do you think our people would prefer?” because it is rarely based in any substantial and well-balanced data. Few people are able to fully set aside their preferences.

Strategy, on the other hand, tends to be the less tempting brother of preference. Sometimes people will, knowingly or unknowingly, disguise their preferences as strategy because it is more “proper”. However, in general we are less emotional about strategy as we are with preference so be cautious when removing this disguise, as it is usually wrapped in the clothes of nostalgia and investment. Ideally, you’re able to engage the strategy discussion when leaning into the why in order to best determine what types of transitions make the most sense. Here I have some great questions to ask yourself and others when determining the strategy behind transitions, and they also happen to be disarming if the conversation does turn toward a debate on preference:

-Do you want to teach your congregation how to sit in silence for a moment?
-Will a long transition discourage focus (I ask this a lot when I do student events)?
-Are there children in the room that may become distractions to the people around them? Do you want to encourage your audience to get used to focusing even with those sorts of distractions around?
-Is it cold and flu season? Will there be a lot of sniffles around the room?
-Will movement on the platform be awkwardly exposed?

This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but you may be able to see the goals of these pointed questions: what are you trying to teach your congregation and what distractions are you trying to eliminate in order to best teach them? Sometimes an underscore is distracting to the goal of a moment of silence or when trying to expose people to silence and natural distractions (such as babies crying and shuffling papers) for the sake of practicing how to focus in non-ideal environments. Other times, a silent room enhances the distractions of people moving around onstage or sniffling noses. What sorts of distractions are you trying to eliminate so that you can enhance the focus of the moment?

Your goals for teaching your congregation will inform what your transitions look like. One of my strategies that I use often in worship services is to minimize the amount of time between elements. I don’t like keeping an audience sitting and waiting for the next “thing” to start in the service, so I plan for people to move in opportune moments where everyone can be ready for the next element. I want to keep them focused and in the moment with me, so I eliminate these “breaks” in the action. For example, when a teacher is wrapping up their message, I will have discussed with them how they plan to end. One way that happens often is that they will pray to close, so I will have one band member go up to underscore the prayer. That player needs to be up and ready before the prayer actually happens, then begins playing as the teacher begins praying, then the rest of the band sneaks up during the prayer, gets ready and set, and seconds later when the teacher says “amen!” my team is ready to go right into a song of response. With that transition, we are able to minimize the amount of waiting that the congregation has to go through before the next element takes place.

How do we execute these transitions?

After you’ve determined your strategy, the why, and you have the trust and agreement of your leadership then you can move onto the next question: how do we pull it off? In the example above I walked through the overview, but there are so many more details to consider in just that transition alone:

-Which player/instrument will underscore the prayer?
-What key should the underscore be in?
-Does the teacher know we’ll be moving at this time?
-What podiums, mic stands, etc. need to be moved on and offstage as well?
-When should the lighting scene change and/or house lights go down?
-Will we add to the underscore with additional instruments and textures, build dynamically leading into the next element? Would that match the end of the message/prayer/lead into the song?
-Should I/Will I say something between the prayer and the response song?
-Will the teacher stand the room to pray, or will I need to stand them at the beginning of the song?

There are probably more details to consider, this is just the baseline details that I know I need to ask every time I do this specific transition. The example rings true with every transitional scenario that there are a lot of details to work out and a lot of people to communicate these details to. You might be in a situation where you have hazers and lights to turn on and off and videos to cue up or you might be in a place where the environment never changes and people just need to know when they are supposed to move from one place to the next. Regardless, one constant always exists: communication. You are responsible to communicate to everyone involved, and nearly 100% of the time there are more people involved than just you, especially any time that there is a new person taking over and leading a segment of the service (e.g.: from musical worship to the message or announcements).

Now you might notice that I’ve talked a lot about transitions without actually giving practical how-to on the element’s details of these transitions. That’s simply because these details are fully dependent on the abilities of those involved. Whether you play behind (underscore) the explanation of communion with an acoustic or a piano is dependent on if you have a player capable of executing or not. Maybe you lead from electric guitar and you’re the only musician skilled in the art of underscoring, so you need to determine if that’s the best or only option you have to underscore with. Maybe the issue isn’t music, maybe it’s technical. Do you have someone running graphics (what others might call “slides”) and they don’t know when to cue the video? Maybe you’re just wanting them to cycle through scripture passages while the offering plate is being passed? Does your volunteer know how fast or slow to cycle those? Have you automated it on Propresenter or Mediashout? There’s an element of training that comes in because your transitions only go as smoothly as your team is able to execute.

So many worship leaders overlook transitions simply because they take so much mental capacity. After all, we’re already thinking about the songs, the pastoral talking points, teaching a new song, taking feedback from congregants, the length of service, and to top it all off, we’re on the platform the entire service. We may not even know what the transition looks like from the room, because we don’t have the opportunity to witness it from that perspective! This is where I encourage people to train up producers and stage managers (which is an incredible serving opportunity for type A people!) to be the eyes an ears in the room for these transitions. Don’t lean on your own abilities, trust your team!

To summarize, these are the steps you’ll want to take when it comes to transitions in your worship gatherings:

1. Determine what you want to teach/instill into your congregation
2. Decide the strategy for exposing them to that practice and eliminate distractions from the practice you’re implementing
3. Communicate to all involved in the transition
4. Train people to be able to execute well and confidently

Finally, it’s important to always honor people with the why and continually cast vision for the transitions. It’s entirely possible that you find the transition you chose didn’t pan out the way you had hoped, so also be willing to listen to feedback and hold the plan with a heart of humility. Additionally, be aware of when the need for that transitional element might not longer exist. Has your congregation gotten too comfortable with quick and seamless transitions? Is the culture around you and your congregation causing them to get anxious in moments of rest? Do you need to change these transitions to make room for more reflection? Keep in mind that we don’t pursue excellence in transitions for their own sake, we do it to best serve the people who are in our crowds. Ultimately, what do those people need in these moments and (most importantly) how are we communicating the best news ever to these people every week through all of our service elements, transitional and otherwise?

Did this help you as a worship leader? I’d love your feedback! Feel free to comment below with your thoughts or how you and your church organizes your songs! Have a question you’d like me to tackle for “Worship Leader Strategies”? Comment with those below as well, or shoot me an email!

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Kevin McClure has been leading worship in the local church for over 10 years in different capacities of student and adult ministries. As a songwriter, musical artist, and worship leader he has had the honor of touring the United States both as a performer and worship leader over the better part of the last decade. With a heart to see believers learn how to take the act of worship beyond the setting of a group gathering, Kevin is incredibly intentional with his time on and offstage to help teach the practice of worship as a lifestyle. Kevin lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his bride Hailey and his two daughters, Everleigh (8) and Eliska (2). His favorite food is coffee (lifesource), loves bonfires, and is convinced that Jesus is a Chicago Cubs fan.