Impact 2015 "Abandoned"
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Impact 2015- "Abandoned"
It still has not sunk in yet. What it's over? I woke up on Sunday after Impact thinking... "I should be going to Impact Central right?" I think the fact that Senior Impact flew by so fast, I really for the first time in a long time rolled away from the campus on Saturday in total denial. It reminded me a lot of how I felt leaving in 2008 "Day Of Reckoning". Just kind of ready to get home but not realizing how two weeks of my life could pass so fast. I mowed the lawn, ran my miles, took a nap, then took the boys out for ice cream. All the while believing I would probably wake up at Impact the next morning.
But let's go back a few months to get the whole story.
Not sure the exact date, no clue what else the email said. I simply remember the one blurb near the end of a Steve Davidson communication. "Oh by the way,we might not have High Rise this summer".
And that's how the Impact 2015 story begins.
High Rise the iconic men's dorm on campus. Not known for its creature comforts, but more as a home for the hundreds of thousands of ridiculous pranks, hi-jinks, and all out riots. Not the nicest, not the most glamorous, but a bastion for mischievous fun for decades. The home of one Todd Nelson Loyd back in, well a few years ago, for at least two years of my college experience. None of us really loved High Rise, but we respected what it was. Kind of like a white concrete Five Points, but populated with white collar college boys.
Anyways I digress. What High Rise really represents to us at Impact is space for almost half of our campers. Imagine us having to tell one half of the teens at Senior Impact that they could not attend. We were ready for the worst. Fearing that youth ministers would balk at our solutions, adults would cringe at sleeping in odd quarters, no one would possibly accept a hotel? Once again we were wrong about you. In fact our numbers held, we had very few issues, and the ladies who stayed in the high school wrestling room, handled it all with so much grace that the High Rise issue we feared for 4 months, was much ado about nothing.
Little did I know the real scary issue at Impact 2015 would be something I never would have imagined.
So back at an Impact Creative meeting in 2013 we had these two theme ideas. Both seemed equally good, but we chose RPG our last years theme, and we all just knew in 2015 we would move forward with the other idea, so coming off Impact 2014. I was confident we had next year already under control. We started looking at pictures to get ideas. I started reading novels about the time period, and researching historical characters. And yes, I am being non descript because there is still a chance it will be a theme one day. But over the course of the 8 months we all thought it was going to be the theme I slowly started to get a really unsettling feeling about the idea. For some reason I believed God wanted us to go in a different direction. For months I could not think about Impact without feeling some sense of dread. I did not understand it at all, I am not sure I have ever had a feeling of dread accompany my Impact thoughts. For months I was confident of what we would do but God's plans and our plans were not adding up.
It was late March when I told the crew that I thought we should start over. Not the latest I have ever revealed that. In fact in 2005 Skid only had one month to completely re-work his stage design. In 2012 we knew the basic stage device but had no story until late April.
To make a long story short I saw this video about Disney's River Country and how the water park was completely abandoned. The whole concept intrigued me. So for another month or so we really started thinking about an abandoned water park theme. Shelby and Jessi Kohring came up with this awesome spiritual direction, and I thought we were set. Impact 2015 was almost a Water Park theme...seriously.
But I still could not sleep, something was not right. I wish I could convey how weird it felt, but I cannot. Then one day it clicked. I was sitting in the office when I came across this book called "The Greatest Thing" a book on love, it totally piggybacked what Shelby was talking about in the water park theme idea. I started thinking about love and how important it is, I thought about outer space and thought it might be time to try that again. Not since 1997 had we done a space theme. Then Tucker (Allen Arena) and I went to work on the story. I remembered this outer space anime cartoon called Star Blazers and well let's not get bogged down in detail.
That's not all that happened but that's enough to tell.
And then another issue....so the whole Rubio deal....well that's his story to share.
So, Impact 2015
So what will I think about when I remember Impact 2015? In no particular order.
1. Mackenzie Lewis, she's the girl who played Altaira and she was awesome. She's the daughter of original board member Mike Lewis. Just like her brother Drew who played our lead in 2009, When I think about Impact 2015 I will think about her role, her acting chops and how well she played the part of that abandoned teen. She was fabulous. But let me just say this. I am so blessed to be a part of this skit team every year. I love each and every one of these guys and gals. I love the fact that people like Robert Lindsay and Haley Sells come back year after year, in spite of my right brain.
2. Those Two Wolves shirts and how nervous I was that no one would buy them, then you guys bought every single one of them in just three selling sessions. That raised over $2000 for charity. On top of that you bought over 1000 packs of cards, played enough Lazer Tag and bid on paintings for another $1000 plus what you gave out of pocket for nothing to add up to $16,000. That $16,000 will go to orphans in Kenya, students in Ghana, students in the Ukraine for Bibles, and special needs teens and adults in Tennessee.
3. Waking up Jon Shoulders every night, and how hard Aubrey Wood, Brian D'herde, Jonathan Tucker, David Knox, Steven Hayes, and Patrick Chapel work to help make Skid, Rubio, and I's job easier.
4. Paul Skidmore being back with us..............................! Seriously he's our video genius and we missed him last year, a ton.
5. DJ Randall, what a great add for us. Thanks especially to Eric Petty for the heads up.
6. How well the theme came together, Dave Clayton, Jon, Skid, and Josh Ross were in sync and it was obvious.
7. That Holy Spirit song Jordan taught what a great find and wonderful song. I appreciate Jordan so much.
8. At Junior Impact I was reminded as to how good Jeremy Swindle is, good to have him back.
9. Jed and Mary our own little version of "Brajalina". "Jedry" perhaps?
10. That Stalker song at Impact's Got Talent....wow, just wow. Maybe it's better that I don't go into any detail.
That's not even including Dudley Chancey's spaceship prop that was our centerpiece, Garry Potter, Jurrasock Parking Narc, the Pump It Up Crew, The Baseball Game on Thursday of senior with major leaguer Josh Willingham, Little House videos, Charlie Sells picking up the slack on music, Mike Shepherd's overdue return. The fact that Morning Impact was stronger than it had been in two years, or any number of other awesome things that happened at Impact 2015....honestly those lopping lobby videos were among the my fondest memories.
And then there's Shana, for 23 years Shana has been a regular at Impact. She started working with the counselors in like 1995 and has been a part every year since. It was wonderful to get the oprrotunity to honor her and all ladies in full time youth ministry. I've known Shana since college days when we were both sitting in Bible classes at Lipscomb ignoring Dr. Briley. She is a great lady and one of our constants.
With all this in mind I pray that Impact 2015 "Abandoned" will go down in memory as the year that changed everything for you. I hope you know, you are not alone, I hope you realize Zylons are just people worthy of God's love. I hope you understand the depth of God's love for you, and I hope you realize His Spirit lives in YOU!
I was blown away by how many of you chose to take on Christ in Baptism, and I am 100% sure hundreds more made new commitments to Christ
So the irony of this whole deal, this is the crux, if you will.
We stress about things like themes, and dorms, camps, and behavior....and then we realize. God is in control.
WE ARE NOT ALONE.
The whole time I was losing sleep, God was like, "I got this, dude let me take it". Sigh, when will I learn.
Thank you Lord!
Now you, go out there and follow God with Abandon.
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