My best 7 pieces of transition advice, some of which I did well upon arriving at Woodburn and some I wish I'd done better...
1) Build prayer into your schedule. Pray alone. Pray with others regularly. Pray with your pastor. Pray in your meetings. Pray in your rehearsals. Let the people hear your "praying voice." Ask others to pray so you hear theirs.
2) Build margin into your schedule. This is enormously difficult early on, but if you grow frustrated by people interrupting, you will communicate to them that your task is more important than their time.
3) Build fun into your ministry. People want to feel good. You can do that without compromising the seriousness of your faith. C. S. Lewis said "Joy is serious business." Make it fun to be in your ministry.
4) Build people, not programs. Great musicals, great services, great rehearsals...all of those are wonderful and we should strive for them. But use the schedule of ministry to build people, not the people of ministry to build programs.
5) Build relationship time into your early months. I started my last two churches with what I called: "From Trios to Quartets," (get 3 people together and I make the 4th) where I asked everyone who would sign up 3 questions: What was it like growing up as you? If God could see His dream come true in our worship ministry--something that would put a smile on His face--what would that look like? (Not musical style.) How can I pray for you?
6) Build for the future. Have a long view, not a short one. We are all (I think) tempted to do a lot right off the bat to change what's broken. Sometimes this sabotages our ability to have long-term success.
7) Build better before you build different. Of course improvements are also changes, but if 9 of 10 people believe your making something better, rather than making something different, you will earn leadership capital with those folks to really change things later. Quick example, we changed the appearance of our screen content when I got here. Nobody thought of it as a change because everybody knew it was better--clearer, easier to follow, more consistent, etc.
Oh, one more: let your pastor know he is your pastor and your authority. Remove any doubt in his mind that you want anything but the best for him. He is your most important relationship, next to that of your wife, when it comes to effective ministry. Guard that relationship.
What would you add?
