Impact 1995 Live To Tell

1995: Live to Tell- This will be a long one, pull up a chair. This was the turning point for everything, and I mean everything my personal life and Impact. I was interning at Mayfair in Huntsville, and really struggling, see I lived a duel life. Over the school year I would live the college life (no explanation needed hopefully) and in the summer I would straighten up enough to get back in youth ministry as an intern, not because I wanted to do real ministry but because it was fun and I needed a job. Sound familiar to some of you high school or college students too? The past four years while I was not doing great during the school year I was not too bad. The problem came when that school year I was particularly bad, and it affected my judgment. After the breakup with "Bowling Green", I thought I needed to let my hair down, "man we can be so stupid". I felt like I had wasted a year of prime dating opportunities to date “Bowling Green”. “Bowling Green” had kept me out of a lot of trouble the previous year. Chalk one up to putting my faith in a relationship instead of our Lord. This was my last year of school and for the first time in my life I really let things get out of control. I still believed in God and had somewhat of a relationship with Him but it was not my priority. I dated some girls who really were struggling like me, not a good mix. In fact as I left for Huntsville I was ending one of the worst relationships for my spiritual health I ever had. As a result, things were not great at Mayfair at first. I just did not have a good spiritual perspective. The lessons I had learned in previous summers of interning were not taking root this summer. I did not do anything overtly wrong, I just made some poor decisions, because my spiritual evaluator was out of whack. I was the first non-Mayfair graduate to intern there and there were some lofty expectations. I was struggling to meet those expectations. One weekend after a bad week, Lee Milam and I went to lunch where we talked about things. He told me I needed to get my head on straight. I am not making any excuses for myself but the fit with Mayfair was looking bad. It was not totally my fault things were slipping. Lee knew that, he knew that I was not doing anything terribly wrong I just was not, as someone aptly put “smelling like Jesus” but he also saw something in me that was worth keeping around, maybe even something I had not seen. Thank you Lee, I owe allot to you for not giving up on me. I went back to Nashville to rethink some things. I knew things had to change. A bunch of my friends and I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd in concert at the now gone Starwood Ampi-theatre in Nashville. During the show, during the song "Simple Man" to be exact, I really examined myself. It was almost like I heard the voice of God telling me to get it together and follow my calling. I did not know what was going to happen, but I was waiting for direction from God and decided there was no turning back. The living in two worlds would stop right then and there. I was going to make things right and allow God to help. That drive back to Huntsville the next morning was the first step in my spiritual recovery. Then an event happened that made a huge impact. One week before Impact, Mayfair hosted a Time trip (a mission trip for several small groups) in Huntsville. This is where youth groups not large enough to take an individual trip with just their group teamed up to form one large mission team. Jon Shoulders, and Mark Hayes whom I had known for years brought their teens to Huntsville as did a group from Indiana. It is crazy just how many people who have been figures at Impact over the years were there like Jon Owen, Johnny Brown, Brad Shumpert, Jeff Fincher, Russ Adcox (whom is the minister at the church I work with now), Lincoln Smith, Lee Milam, Jonathon Tucker, Mark and Jon and the list goes on and on. We were set to work in the Inner City ministry hosting VBS programs throughout the area. It was great! It changed my life, because I was ready to change. It was step two, so to speak. Mark and Jon were probably two of the top five spiritual influences in my life. Their impact on me can never be measured. They took this kid hiding a low self esteem behind a brash, arrogant, womanizing exterior, and just treated me as a peer, a fellow struggler and loved me. That week was awesome just working with two guys whose personalities were so like mine. They showed me I could be a Christian and really have fun. All of us who were on that mission trip remember how great it was. Impact was the next week and Jon and Mark were there, in fact they were on the "board of directors". Mark Hayes was the MC for the event and I am not sure what Jon's role was at the time, I don't think he really knows either ;). I went in changing, maturing, different, not the same guy, in fact I began talking to the ladies again during counselor training (one in particular, lets call her "Savannah") when it hit me I was there to minister not to hook up. Duhhhh, it took me way too long to figure this out, step number three. I chose to stop talking to her, probably not the best way to handle it, but I had to. By the way if "Savannah" is reading this (which I do not know why she would, or even remembers me). I really never apologized for blowing her off like that. That year I had the privilege to minister to a group from Ashland City, Tennessee who did not have a youth minister. They changed my life for good, step four. I ended up baptizing a couple of them. Something that helped cement my personal change happened when a kid I did not know came to the pool wanting to be baptized. He did not care by whom. I just happened to be there, so he asked me to do it. This really left an impression on me. I for the first time realized that his faith was the kind I wanted. A faith without concern about how things looked or who did what. The only sad thing to me is that years later I ended up dating one of those Ashland City girls, I think I blew a lot of credibility with her. Anyways possibly the most significant thing for me personally was this, that year Jon and Mark wanted to do a skit at Impact. This little whim of theirs would change my life.
"Pause for personal Flashback”: Super Christian was a skit that my old high school youth minister Steve Powers and I dreamed up with some of the other guys in our youth group (Tommy Holliday, Tony Drankwine, Aaron Sullivan and others) to use during Bellevue Church of Christ VBS. It's funny I have seen youth groups all over the country imitating this simple skit."
When it came time for a skit during our Time trip in the inner city the week before Impact we did Super Christian. So low and behold the first Impact Skit was Super Christian with Mark playing "Super Christian" and Jon playing "Kid High Pockets", I was the narrator and youth ministers from across the south played the villains. For all purposes Morning Impact was born. Jon's simple phrase "Yeah" in his high pitched voice could be heard at Impact for years to come. We also had some cool videos Lee Milam did. The theme actually had some teeth as the speakers talked about the theme. It was all coming together. Impact was becoming a spectacle, a production. Lee also decorated the stage instead of just having a banner. We brought bleachers on stage, for teens to sit on, and it became a tradition for three years or so, remember that? Here’s an ironic story about that. My future wife Amanda has a picture of her sitting on the bleachers on stage in 98 with me on the mic jut in front of her. When I asked her if we had met that year she said "no, I did not remember you", funny huh? A great story from 95 is the relationship we built with an obscure band known as Jars of Clay. We liked their brand of Christian music and Jon booked them for his church camp. Allot of us drove out to Camp Neyati to see them play the week after Impact. It was just about then that they hit it big. They did a show for just the counselors, while their video "Rain" was on MTV and number one on the charts. For those too young to remember, Jars Of Clay was as big, if not bigger than "Swithfoot" ever was. They were everywhere and had another minor hit before fading out of the popular culture and back into Christian music stations. This was also the first year we began turning away campers. It just seemed like Impact grew up this year, and I don't think it has anything to do with me growing up as well. The year just seemed to take a life of it’s own. Oh and we still took that stinking group picture. Another of my old rivals from school days Jeff Fincher, who most of you know, and I became pretty good friends this summer, ending years of feuding. One of the most vivid memories of 95 for everyone was speaker Bill Wilson. This guy was a minister for an inner city New York church, and I think Dudley instructed him to shake us up a little. He shook us up a lot "Are your tents pointed to Sodom?" He called down kids for talking and used some tough love on the middle to upper class crowd. Whether you loved him or hated him you never forgot him. Needless to say Impact 95 will forever be known as an impact year in my life. For those of us who were there, I think we agree it was one of, if not the best ever.