Today was a strange day at our church. Let me set the scene for you. Our regular teaching/senior/founding pastor is in Uganda on a mission trip checking, among other things, the feasibility of us doing family mission trips there. So this weekend our high school pastor and the high school worship band (read as the band that plays for out high school kids, not the band made up by our high school kids) handled “big church” today. In the past when other speakers and worship leaders are given opportunities like this the programing team has been careful to point out that it usually works best if whoever it is doesn’t deviate from our standard template too far. This weekend our high school crew did a good job, Donnie was a great speaker and Jake and his band sounded awesome. We had a few kinks that we fixed, minor transition details ect…, and by the second service things were going good.
At the 4th service today the congregation did the oddest thing. The band was doing a song after the message, not something we do all the time but something we do often enough that it shouldn’t be a surprise to our church. Typically when we are done our senior pastor prays; then says a few words and dismisses the congregation, or he does announcements then dismisses, or we do a song then he says somethings and dismisses. However as soon as our high school pastor said “Amen” in his prayer, the band started playing again, which is how we do that transition most of the time. Rather then stand and sing or even sit and listen the congregation simply got up and walked out. In the middle of the song. In the dark. before they were dismissed. I am not sure I can do justice to the awkwardness of this in this post.
Of all the possible outcomes in that scenario that was not a predicted reaction. Also it didn’t happen at the other 3 services. I felt really bad for the band, they had a great song left that no one got to hear. Sadly really think that since the tournament was on and we were 5 minutes over they all just called it a day. Seriously, it was oddest thing I have ever seen in my time doing church tech. That said it raises a good question, how intentional are you about your transitions between service elements? Have you ever had awkward transitions?
Those 11:15 types are not yet acculturated enough to be trusted! 🙂 My most awkward transition was recovering from a word that got played on a video that was supposed to be turned off (think 4 letter words)!
Ok admittedly that was a little awkward, but I apologized for that. I still think this was right up there with it.
I think we failed to calculate the most important factor to the last Sunday service… Hunger. People wanted food more than one more song.