I interned for a summer with a worship arts pastor when I was in college. At the time, it had nothing to do with my major, and I did it for free. But it was an awesome summer for me - I learned a ton, and I also met this amazing girl who later agreed to marry me. The church was fairly large by most standards - average weekend attendance was around 1500 at three services - and so it seemed a fitting place to learn the ropes of leading and planning worship.
I remember that first few weeks of this strange new world I’d entered were awkward, as starting any new routine usually are. There were lots of things I wasn't used to, especially the planning meetings, but I remember noticing that my mentor had an attention to detail that I’d never seen in a pastor before. She was a bit of a nazi for transitions in particular, and it’s taken me a long time of doing this myself to realize why it was so important to her.

But there’s one more reason I've discovered, and to me, this is the most important one.
When there's that extra space that lasts just a bit too long between things, and you're left wondering if these people actually care enough about what they’re doing to know their own plan, there's always an uncomfortable silence. The thing is, the silence was not on purpose. In our culture, people are already suspicious of silence or pause; it doesn't fit into our "self-made people" image very well, and doesn't fit into our cultural narrative of constant productivity. We work hard, we play hard - we don't like to slow down for sabbath. Yet silence is an important spiritual discipline and thus a counter-cultural element of the Christian spiritual life. So when it happens unintentionally, say in an awkward transition, it reinforces our hostility towards it.
Awkward transitions give silence a bad name.
Planning your transitions effectively not only helps tell the story of God in a better way, it also helps curate space for purposeful silence. It helps us learn to sabbath.
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