A History of the Impact Skit and how Impact finally found it's identity.
Let me first start off with a bit of history about camps....
Within the world of church camps, there were certain things that were at one time accepted blindly. Thankfully we (or at least most of us) have moved on. Growing up going to camp and visiting camps all over the country, I noticed that most camps just do the same kind of thing every year. They basically have an old formula and they stick to it. The idea of a theme that permeated the entire week was not on anyone's mind, and camp pretty much ran itself. You did the same things every year with little imagination or spark, and a theme which seems just so natural now, was an afterthought. When Impact finally started using it's drama to help the theme, well it seemed like we finally discovered that a theme could mean something. A drama could make the theme real, unite a camp, and develop a real sense of community. A theme that enveloped everything about the camp, the games, set, skits, shirts, well it could give the campers valuable perspective and give them something to focus on rather than a thrown together poperi of good thoughts.
Back in the 70's-90's, youth ministers built their themes around the coolest t-shirt idea they had, or thy would take a popular slogan or song title and run with it. The speakers, if there were speakers, NEVER had any clue what the "theme" was until they arrived. In fact the whole idea of a theme was something of a novelty until the mid 1980's. At typical camps, you did what you had always done, and there was little change. Who needed a real theme when you had a formula that "worked"? The theme for most church camps was a catchphrase that had little bearing on anything that was taught unless it was a catchphrase so bland that anything taught could fit into that "theme"..like "Just Do It", "Swim Upstream" or "I can do all things". You played hours and hours of games each day, which dominated the camp time save an hour of class, some crafts, a period of gender separated swimming and a morning and evening worship. You had to play a camper vs. staff softball game and if you even had audio visuals it was just common practice to show sports blooper videos, and sing VBS songs in order to kill time. In fact youth ministers spent way more time evenly dividing sports teams than worrying about any spiritual focus. I know because I was guilty of this myself. This was what camp was back then, and still is at some places today. Not saying it's a bad thing, it's just a formula I believe to be lacking imagination and vision for what you could actually do with a group of teens in an environment where you had their captive attention.
Even Impact was guilty, from 1992-1994 the first four years of this new youth gathering, the theme was just a t-shirt phrase. Classes were not organized, and teachers and speakers simply did there "best" material. As long as there was a "spiritual emphasis" every night, some worship and an extra push on one night, everyone was happy. Hey, it worked, but a couple of youth ministers decided to change things and decided we needed something more, and this is where the Impact skit was born, and the theme became the emphasis not an afterthought.
At Impact there used to be this 30 minute stretch in between the two classes and lunch. Not exactly sure why it was there on the schedule but it seemed like for the first three years of Impact no one really knew what to do with it. It was probably there just to break up a long class block. They would show videos, or even sometimes have a keynote, maybe even bring in a juggler or magician. In fact one year all they did was throw out t-shirts from the previous year. It seemed like that 30 minutes was never properly used. Who knew that that 30 minute stretch, that no one knew how to use, would become the catalyst for Impact's change into community?
In 1995 Mark Hayes, a youth minister in Arkansas at the time, told the Impact board he wanted to try something different. He was tired of Impact just trying to "kill time", Mark along with another youth minister, Jon Shoulders, felt like that there needed to be more of a community building activity in between the class session and lunch., rather than baseball bloopers. You see, just the week before Jon and Mark had been at a T.I.M.E. trip in Huntsville. For those of you who do not remember T.I.M.E, this stood for Teens in Mission Experiences. In short I was there in Huntsville interning for Mayfair, and Jon, Mark and I were partnered together to create skits for our mission trip. The skits were for the kids at the Huntsville Inner City Ministry but they always were filled with inside jokes that made memories for the mission team and we noticed it helped them bond. We noticed that the Mission team really loved the skits as much as the kids they were intended for. The teens would talk about them all day, and it built some real common ground between all the different youth groups there.
Mark felt like this could be done at Impact as well. A running week long skit could actually be used to build community.
So with the blessing of the Impact board Mark, Jon, and I presented a skit everyday called "Super Christian." It was really just a hero vs villain tale where I would narrate Jon and Mark's actions, while they defeated an Impact villain whose personality was based on something we had seen at Impact. It was.full of inside jokes for Impact campers, and it took off immediately. Soon that 30 minute break became the main event of the day. By the end of the week, it was a big deal, I mean the teens would just go wild. Jon Shoulders played Super Christian's sidekick and he had this high pitched "Yeah" he would say, and that's all he would say. But for probably 10 years I would still hear someone do that voice during Morning Impact. We had all done silly VBS skits before, we had all done drama for our churches. Every Christian school had a touring drama team back then. It was not the fact that we had a skit that was the big deal. It was the fact that it was a skit about Impact for Impact with Impact jokes, with stuff that had happened that day. A skit for teens not little kids, it pushed the envelope a little, and it was so popular I think it ran the risk of being too much the focus of the week. Actually I think all three of us were somewhat uncomfortable with some of it. Dozens of teens would follow Mark around like a fan club. Needless to say we are all "stage" guys, but there is a fine line you have to walk being on stage.
So a few weeks after Impact I wait for the call from the Impact guys, knowing they are going to want Super Christian 2 or something like that for the next year. I did not dare call them. They were the Impact Board....back then they were like the "godfathers" of youth ministry. I did not dare approach them for fear of looking like a kid wanting attention (which I was to a large degree). so I waited and hoped that we would be able to do it again....
But at some point during that year Mark Hayes left youth ministry. This left us without our main player and leader. I was not sure what would happen and I don't think anyone else knew either.
I never got the call. When 1996 Impact starts I asked about the plans to replace Super Christian.....there are no plans. The first day of Impact starts and...videos of baseball bloopers. Yep you read that right... Blooper videos. I was disappointed, and so were most of the nearly 850 campers. The fact that Super Christian had brought us all together was lost. I am not sure why, but I think maybe the Board at that time saw the possible danger of having "stage guys". They were wise, but there was something there that needed to happen.
So Jon approaches the board on the second night of Impact after the bloopers were panned by the campers, and they tell him to take that 30 minutes. I suspect this was done with some debate. Being 40 years old gives you a little perspective. Think of it this way. There's this skit that almost takes over the whole camp and makes huge "week-long stars" out of a couple of guys. So I think looking back, the Board probably would have preferred to do something else, but they saw value in it in spite of it's dangers..
Anyways, so Jon finds me and we put together a new skit. "Mission Impactiful". This skit was done primarily on video with a live ending every day. It was like "here's a villain, Jon go chase him" and we filmed it all around campus. Needless to say the campers were very pleased. The skits are a big hit.
In 1997 the Impact Board decides that there is merit to doing these community building skits every day, but not just that, also doing some other funny stuff, to give the teens a break and "Morning Impact" as we know it today was born. So Mike Shepherd and I are asked to be on the Impact Board and are given the task of leading "Morning Impact" and given 45 minutes instead of 30. I had no idea how important this would become in my life.
From 1997 until 2002 things changed very little with the skits, Morning Impact continued to grow and morph. However the skits were basically twenty minutes long and simply about getting a laugh. Thy basically remained the same for 7 years. Sometimes we used video sometimes we did not. They were always ad lib, meaning no script. Usually Jon was the main character, I would narrate and keep things moving, and others would come and go. We worked very hard trying to get Impact jokes into every skit. One thing I thought was very important was that they had a running story line, which they all had, but it always boiled down to a hero defeating a villain. It was always just a different version of "Super Christian". Inevitably the skit would end on the last morning of Morning Impact and the entire cast would dance to Y.M.C.A. There were really bad ones...1997 comes to mind, our attempt at Star Wars parody, and really good ones like 1998 where we did a Lone Ranger spin off. But for the most part they were silly, and did little theme wise for the camp except foster a sense of community. The other main change was that in 1999 Mike moved to a different role, and David Skidmore started working with me on Morning Impact and the skits. In 2002 we added another key piece to the puzzle when David Rubio joined us.
It was in 2003 "Deep" in the middle of the week either Skid or Rubio, had a thought. "What if the characters in the skit each represented different goals people have in life?" We realized that it would be a good analogy for Jeff Walling's last keynote. At the time I had never seen a camp actually do anything like this. Sure camps had drama teams in to perform, but to have a running drama every day and end it on a serious note during worship? It really worked and suddenly new thoughts and ideas for spiritual application and theme development were swirling. Something was brewing but I was not sure what, yet.
So in 2004 "This Mystery" , we planned the entire skit to have a spiritual ending from the get go, that would conclude on the last day of Morning Impact. That being said it was still 95% silliness and a ten minute "ah-ha" moment at the end. In fact no one saw the ah-ha moment coming so it surprised more than a few people that this ridiculous skit actually had a point.
We used the same formula in 2005 "Escape", but this time the story had a plot, it was about four POW's during WWII. Again it was 90% silliness and the skit had a running story that was not about hero vs villain but rather why each character was imprisoned. The reveal on the last day was that the POW's could have left at any time and their "prison" was one of their own doing. This time the ending was so powerful it changed the way we thought.
The thought occurred to all of us that we should use the skit as a living breathing parable, or analogy of our theme. Not just work for one spiritual reveal, but make the skit a drama. We did not want to loose the silliness and inside Impact humor that made the skit popular but we felt like we could do both, and in 2006 "The Story" came about.
One night on the stage at Otter Creek we formulated the basic plot to a story. We did not wait until Impact to start getting the elements down. I sat down at a computer and wrote out exactly story wise needed to happen each day. This first script was loose and included loads of space for Impact inside jokes to insert, but it was the first time we had an actual plot that developed as a play. It was a huge hit and "The Story" became the benchmark for all Impact's to come.
Suddenly the entire culture of Impact changed and the drama worked hand in hand with the theme. Everyday the skit provided insight and analogy for the theme. From that point on the Impact skit no longer resembled a skit. It was the Impact Drama. Over the top costumes, a script, and a story rich in analogies, all the while still having the Impact gags. The Impact set also simply became a set for the Impact drama. This was the first year we decided to wrap up the entire play on the last night, another big change that proved popular.
Of course not everyone loves the drama's. I am certain there are people who could do without it. But for the first time a youth event offered something for people like me, people who learn through story and not a keynote. So even though the drama probably has some detractors, the drama as a whole has proven to do more than just entertain, it has opened up a new venue of learning for teens who learn this way.
So that is where we are today...from "Super Christian" in 1995 to "RPG" in 2014 the Impact skit has become a part of the tradition. It has helped shape Impact's own identity and has made the throw together theme an idea of the past.
Within the world of church camps, there were certain things that were at one time accepted blindly. Thankfully we (or at least most of us) have moved on. Growing up going to camp and visiting camps all over the country, I noticed that most camps just do the same kind of thing every year. They basically have an old formula and they stick to it. The idea of a theme that permeated the entire week was not on anyone's mind, and camp pretty much ran itself. You did the same things every year with little imagination or spark, and a theme which seems just so natural now, was an afterthought. When Impact finally started using it's drama to help the theme, well it seemed like we finally discovered that a theme could mean something. A drama could make the theme real, unite a camp, and develop a real sense of community. A theme that enveloped everything about the camp, the games, set, skits, shirts, well it could give the campers valuable perspective and give them something to focus on rather than a thrown together poperi of good thoughts.
Back in the 70's-90's, youth ministers built their themes around the coolest t-shirt idea they had, or thy would take a popular slogan or song title and run with it. The speakers, if there were speakers, NEVER had any clue what the "theme" was until they arrived. In fact the whole idea of a theme was something of a novelty until the mid 1980's. At typical camps, you did what you had always done, and there was little change. Who needed a real theme when you had a formula that "worked"? The theme for most church camps was a catchphrase that had little bearing on anything that was taught unless it was a catchphrase so bland that anything taught could fit into that "theme"..like "Just Do It", "Swim Upstream" or "I can do all things". You played hours and hours of games each day, which dominated the camp time save an hour of class, some crafts, a period of gender separated swimming and a morning and evening worship. You had to play a camper vs. staff softball game and if you even had audio visuals it was just common practice to show sports blooper videos, and sing VBS songs in order to kill time. In fact youth ministers spent way more time evenly dividing sports teams than worrying about any spiritual focus. I know because I was guilty of this myself. This was what camp was back then, and still is at some places today. Not saying it's a bad thing, it's just a formula I believe to be lacking imagination and vision for what you could actually do with a group of teens in an environment where you had their captive attention.
Even Impact was guilty, from 1992-1994 the first four years of this new youth gathering, the theme was just a t-shirt phrase. Classes were not organized, and teachers and speakers simply did there "best" material. As long as there was a "spiritual emphasis" every night, some worship and an extra push on one night, everyone was happy. Hey, it worked, but a couple of youth ministers decided to change things and decided we needed something more, and this is where the Impact skit was born, and the theme became the emphasis not an afterthought.
At Impact there used to be this 30 minute stretch in between the two classes and lunch. Not exactly sure why it was there on the schedule but it seemed like for the first three years of Impact no one really knew what to do with it. It was probably there just to break up a long class block. They would show videos, or even sometimes have a keynote, maybe even bring in a juggler or magician. In fact one year all they did was throw out t-shirts from the previous year. It seemed like that 30 minutes was never properly used. Who knew that that 30 minute stretch, that no one knew how to use, would become the catalyst for Impact's change into community?
In 1995 Mark Hayes, a youth minister in Arkansas at the time, told the Impact board he wanted to try something different. He was tired of Impact just trying to "kill time", Mark along with another youth minister, Jon Shoulders, felt like that there needed to be more of a community building activity in between the class session and lunch., rather than baseball bloopers. You see, just the week before Jon and Mark had been at a T.I.M.E. trip in Huntsville. For those of you who do not remember T.I.M.E, this stood for Teens in Mission Experiences. In short I was there in Huntsville interning for Mayfair, and Jon, Mark and I were partnered together to create skits for our mission trip. The skits were for the kids at the Huntsville Inner City Ministry but they always were filled with inside jokes that made memories for the mission team and we noticed it helped them bond. We noticed that the Mission team really loved the skits as much as the kids they were intended for. The teens would talk about them all day, and it built some real common ground between all the different youth groups there.
Mark felt like this could be done at Impact as well. A running week long skit could actually be used to build community.
So with the blessing of the Impact board Mark, Jon, and I presented a skit everyday called "Super Christian." It was really just a hero vs villain tale where I would narrate Jon and Mark's actions, while they defeated an Impact villain whose personality was based on something we had seen at Impact. It was.full of inside jokes for Impact campers, and it took off immediately. Soon that 30 minute break became the main event of the day. By the end of the week, it was a big deal, I mean the teens would just go wild. Jon Shoulders played Super Christian's sidekick and he had this high pitched "Yeah" he would say, and that's all he would say. But for probably 10 years I would still hear someone do that voice during Morning Impact. We had all done silly VBS skits before, we had all done drama for our churches. Every Christian school had a touring drama team back then. It was not the fact that we had a skit that was the big deal. It was the fact that it was a skit about Impact for Impact with Impact jokes, with stuff that had happened that day. A skit for teens not little kids, it pushed the envelope a little, and it was so popular I think it ran the risk of being too much the focus of the week. Actually I think all three of us were somewhat uncomfortable with some of it. Dozens of teens would follow Mark around like a fan club. Needless to say we are all "stage" guys, but there is a fine line you have to walk being on stage.
So a few weeks after Impact I wait for the call from the Impact guys, knowing they are going to want Super Christian 2 or something like that for the next year. I did not dare call them. They were the Impact Board....back then they were like the "godfathers" of youth ministry. I did not dare approach them for fear of looking like a kid wanting attention (which I was to a large degree). so I waited and hoped that we would be able to do it again....
But at some point during that year Mark Hayes left youth ministry. This left us without our main player and leader. I was not sure what would happen and I don't think anyone else knew either.
I never got the call. When 1996 Impact starts I asked about the plans to replace Super Christian.....there are no plans. The first day of Impact starts and...videos of baseball bloopers. Yep you read that right... Blooper videos. I was disappointed, and so were most of the nearly 850 campers. The fact that Super Christian had brought us all together was lost. I am not sure why, but I think maybe the Board at that time saw the possible danger of having "stage guys". They were wise, but there was something there that needed to happen.
So Jon approaches the board on the second night of Impact after the bloopers were panned by the campers, and they tell him to take that 30 minutes. I suspect this was done with some debate. Being 40 years old gives you a little perspective. Think of it this way. There's this skit that almost takes over the whole camp and makes huge "week-long stars" out of a couple of guys. So I think looking back, the Board probably would have preferred to do something else, but they saw value in it in spite of it's dangers..
Anyways, so Jon finds me and we put together a new skit. "Mission Impactiful". This skit was done primarily on video with a live ending every day. It was like "here's a villain, Jon go chase him" and we filmed it all around campus. Needless to say the campers were very pleased. The skits are a big hit.
In 1997 the Impact Board decides that there is merit to doing these community building skits every day, but not just that, also doing some other funny stuff, to give the teens a break and "Morning Impact" as we know it today was born. So Mike Shepherd and I are asked to be on the Impact Board and are given the task of leading "Morning Impact" and given 45 minutes instead of 30. I had no idea how important this would become in my life.
From 1997 until 2002 things changed very little with the skits, Morning Impact continued to grow and morph. However the skits were basically twenty minutes long and simply about getting a laugh. Thy basically remained the same for 7 years. Sometimes we used video sometimes we did not. They were always ad lib, meaning no script. Usually Jon was the main character, I would narrate and keep things moving, and others would come and go. We worked very hard trying to get Impact jokes into every skit. One thing I thought was very important was that they had a running story line, which they all had, but it always boiled down to a hero defeating a villain. It was always just a different version of "Super Christian". Inevitably the skit would end on the last morning of Morning Impact and the entire cast would dance to Y.M.C.A. There were really bad ones...1997 comes to mind, our attempt at Star Wars parody, and really good ones like 1998 where we did a Lone Ranger spin off. But for the most part they were silly, and did little theme wise for the camp except foster a sense of community. The other main change was that in 1999 Mike moved to a different role, and David Skidmore started working with me on Morning Impact and the skits. In 2002 we added another key piece to the puzzle when David Rubio joined us.
It was in 2003 "Deep" in the middle of the week either Skid or Rubio, had a thought. "What if the characters in the skit each represented different goals people have in life?" We realized that it would be a good analogy for Jeff Walling's last keynote. At the time I had never seen a camp actually do anything like this. Sure camps had drama teams in to perform, but to have a running drama every day and end it on a serious note during worship? It really worked and suddenly new thoughts and ideas for spiritual application and theme development were swirling. Something was brewing but I was not sure what, yet.
So in 2004 "This Mystery" , we planned the entire skit to have a spiritual ending from the get go, that would conclude on the last day of Morning Impact. That being said it was still 95% silliness and a ten minute "ah-ha" moment at the end. In fact no one saw the ah-ha moment coming so it surprised more than a few people that this ridiculous skit actually had a point.
We used the same formula in 2005 "Escape", but this time the story had a plot, it was about four POW's during WWII. Again it was 90% silliness and the skit had a running story that was not about hero vs villain but rather why each character was imprisoned. The reveal on the last day was that the POW's could have left at any time and their "prison" was one of their own doing. This time the ending was so powerful it changed the way we thought.
The thought occurred to all of us that we should use the skit as a living breathing parable, or analogy of our theme. Not just work for one spiritual reveal, but make the skit a drama. We did not want to loose the silliness and inside Impact humor that made the skit popular but we felt like we could do both, and in 2006 "The Story" came about.
One night on the stage at Otter Creek we formulated the basic plot to a story. We did not wait until Impact to start getting the elements down. I sat down at a computer and wrote out exactly story wise needed to happen each day. This first script was loose and included loads of space for Impact inside jokes to insert, but it was the first time we had an actual plot that developed as a play. It was a huge hit and "The Story" became the benchmark for all Impact's to come.
Suddenly the entire culture of Impact changed and the drama worked hand in hand with the theme. Everyday the skit provided insight and analogy for the theme. From that point on the Impact skit no longer resembled a skit. It was the Impact Drama. Over the top costumes, a script, and a story rich in analogies, all the while still having the Impact gags. The Impact set also simply became a set for the Impact drama. This was the first year we decided to wrap up the entire play on the last night, another big change that proved popular.
Of course not everyone loves the drama's. I am certain there are people who could do without it. But for the first time a youth event offered something for people like me, people who learn through story and not a keynote. So even though the drama probably has some detractors, the drama as a whole has proven to do more than just entertain, it has opened up a new venue of learning for teens who learn this way.
So that is where we are today...from "Super Christian" in 1995 to "RPG" in 2014 the Impact skit has become a part of the tradition. It has helped shape Impact's own identity and has made the throw together theme an idea of the past.
Comments
1. The Story 2006
2. hIDDEN 2010
3. Hooked 2011
4. Day of Reckoning 2008
5. Escape 2006
6. This Mystery 2004
7. Go West 1998
8. Super Christian 1995
9. Sheild About Me 2002
10. Mission Impactible 1997
11. In Search Of The Covenant 2001
12. Deep 2003
13. The Mighty 2007
14. The Super Duper Friends 1999
15. The Wizard of Impact 2000
16. The Impact Strikes Back 1997
Anyways I would put Buried Alive right below Hooked at number 4.