Impact 2020 "TV 31"
I just watched Impact 2020 wrap up. It’s officially over.
I can’t say I am happy. This one was a roller coaster.
I have the same feeling I have every year driving back home, because even though it was different, it was still the same. A community, a family, my best friends in the world, and although there were far less of you here, I still got a little misty eyed driving home.
And so this one’s gonna be different. I’m gonna tell you what happened, the whole story.
This ones gonna be long.
Every year a group of us meet to discuss what the Impact theme will be. Some potential themes get brought up and subsequently passed on for years, before we finally decide it’s time to use it. For example 2016’s Hyde was almost our theme for many, many years before we finally rolled with it. Well for the last five or six years, one of the potential themes has been a local television station.
But with 2019’s “Bound”, which focused on the Psalms, and expressing ourselves to God, we finally gave “TV 31” the green light. In fact it was, way back in January that we decided that it was time for “TV 31” to debut and we would dive into the wisdom of Proverbs.
We were getting ready for Chanel 31 Central City to debut on campus. And that is one of the amazing things. God knew we needed to be prepared! We already were planning a TV theme.
Then it happened. You all know that story. I don’t think I need to repeat it. Yeah Co-Vid 19 happened, we all know.
Around March I realized Impact was in trouble. We all held out hope, but I could not see a scenario where Impact was going to happen in person. Then Lipscomb confirmed my fear by cancelling their summer events. The irony is that we were way further along with Impact planning than normal.
We immediately came up with about 4 plans.
- Pushing back to July (which would not have worked in hindsight),
- Doing an Impact tour to about 6 major cities (which would not have worked in hindsight)
- Moving Impact to the school year (which was the worst of my ideas)
- Doing Impact online…...The only one we could do.
Online was my least favorite idea, but the one we had to do. And here’s the deal, some of us immediately envisioned camps all across the country putting out a couple of hours at night on the internet. And I thought…..our Impact family is more than a camp. We had to do more.
You lost more than that. You deserved more than that. Obviously nothing we could do could possibly replace Impact on campus, but a lot of us wanted to try.
And we shot for the moon.
Knowing the nature of what we were going to do, we started to plan. Even though we did not formally announce cancellation till May 1st, we were already getting ready.
So sometime around April 1st, we rolled out an ambitious plan,
“Your wise choice”, Central City’s WIPT-31! Complete with mini television shows,
Twelve hours of content. The main content would revolve around two hours in the morning and two hours at night, with filler content in between, and some other Easter eggs.
With 29 years of Impact history and over 100 hours of video content, we knew we could take advantage of that. So the daunting task of putting together the content began.
Our team got behind the idea, from Jordan our worship leader, to our keynote speakers, and class teachers, our counselors, our skit team, our “Morning Impact”crew, even our forner roadies. Jeff Walling called and asked to chip in because he loves Impact.
We committed. The plan was locked in and guys like Rodney Keaton, and Sean White were enlisted to help with our schedule and online content.
Weeks passed, zoom meeting, after zoom meeting occurred.
Many Impact board members and personalities took hours and hours to record the Impact Rewind content, where we simply commented on every yearly Impact video we could find. We actually worried if you would watch these (and you have).
So we got ready to go to campus to tackle Impact 2020.
Then roadblock after roadblock occurred….
-We lost our main tech guy
-Our set team was sidelined due to quarantine.
-Nashville stayed in Co-Vid Stage Two, Lipscomb could not allow us on campus for the week, we lost Lipscomb’s Entertainment Services.
-We could not stay at Lipscomb, so we lost housing for our team.
-We had no cafeteria.
-We had literally no budget!
Impact was in trouble, serious trouble….
Then there was the realization that everyone who was going to help, had to do it on their own dime. Being away from families, paying for their own housing, buying their own food….I thought, we were in trouble. I thought we would lose key folks, but we did not. That is a testament to how many folks love you,the Impact camper.
Thankfully Otter Creek Church stepped up and allowed us to film on their campus. Mackenzie Lewis, Rodney Keaton, the Hendersonville Church interns, and Justin South stepped up to build the set. Churches stepped up to provide meals.
So we had folks from all over headed to Otter Creek to work on videos
Then it really got serious….A Co-Vid scare took place the night before we began and almost stopped Impact from happening again. I will never forget that Wednesday night gathered with about 12 folks of the Impact team wondering what we were going to do.
I called a former Impact camper, and the resident Impact doctor James Parnell. He told us what to do and we waited.
Some of our key folks were on pins and needles as we waited for James to give us some news.
Praise God we got all negative tests, and we were free to start.
And then Impact really began.
A ragtag bunch of about 15 adults, their kids (especially Charity Rubio, who was an MVP), and a few more teens and college students pulled together to try and fill the void left by an event that is literally dependent on over 100 volunteers.
We lost one day of filming because of the Co-Vid scare, and had to circle the wagons. On the Thursday before we went live we started pumping out content. I personally was overwhelmed, and actually thought “we have bitten off more than we can chew”. I thought our dream was too big.
It will be a moment I will never forget, we were all in the Otter Creek pavilion and I was overwhelmed with doubt. Seth Madaris suddenly said “we should have done this before, , let’s ask God for more help”, and we gathered to pray over Impact 2020.
Our dream was not too big for our God!
The result was Impact 2020. A theme revolving around a small station in mythical Central City, which featured kid’s show “Gobo and the Enchanted Clubhouse”. I hope you tuned in to see those hilarious shorts.
And tonight after watching the last of “TV 31”, I have these memories....
Impact stepping up, repenting and making a statement that was sorely needed on behalf of our black and brown brothers and sisters. Then following up by premiering the “Be The Bridge” videos that hopefully start many conversations. The fact that we finally have had the scales drop from our eyes is hopefully just the start in Impact efforting to represent the kingdom of God in every way.
That first Thursday night driving to campus to watch Skid and Rubio record their “Camp Rock” video.
We had awesome keynotes by Jeff Walling, Derrick McClardy, Patrick Chapel, Adam Brewer, and David Skidmore. I hope their different and unique presentations of the wisdom of God during these turbulent times spoke to you.
Reminders of Impact’s past worship with Jordan House.
10 impressive Impact teachers willing to take the time to record their hearts.
The “impromptu” TV shows, featuring Durwood Hucks, Lighthouse Lefty, The Gobo Gang, Wake Up Central City and last but not least “Bringing Home the Bakin” with Blaise Betrand….”Thick it up”.
The most ridiculous Morning Impact ever and the commitment of our team. I hope we brought joy to your mornings. The unique ball races, He-Man, Bob Ross, the Pump It Up Crew, Mr T, Rubio’s ridiculous folly, Leviticus, BOAB, Little House moments, Low-Ryda, Dr Kobra, Brewer running a muck, Skid and Rubio’s Camp Rock duet, The popular return of Mr Bill, Three Faced Baby, etc….
And of course the epic that was “Boun-T”. Here is where I will thank our camera, and editing crew….Tucker, Rubio, JMoore, Seth, Scott Utter, Brett Ellis, and of course the man who shot all of our skits and so much more Kidron Cannon.
Kidron had no clue what he was getting into. When we had to leave Lipscomb we had no idea how we were going to film the Impact skit. We did not have time for a shot by shot tv shoot. Kidron made the absolute best of a daunting task, and still found time to make some amazing content like Boun-T and Camp Rock.
Kidron, it is always a pleasure. Thank You from the bottom of my heart and from the rest of the Impact team.
Obviously a big thank you goes out to Sean White, without whom, Impact might have not happened. Tirelessly up until all hours of the night, Sean helped make Impact 2020 a thing. Hey he even set up an actual website for Impact. That’s the first time we have had one ever.
Rodney Keaton….holy cow I marvel at how good you are at everything.You are quickly becoming my go to guy. Rodney produced the TV Guide you all got, help build the set, edited and filmed and took a week of his life to give back to you all.
Thanks to the rest of the Impact Board who could not be here, you all still pitched in and helped on so many levels.
Thanks to the counselor team for putting together our college small group studies, Walter, Kristen, Justin, and Abby.
Mackenzie Lewis, well we had a few scares (lol). But you are so awesome. I thank God for your input and your passion for Impact. Especially the Impact skit.
Speaking of the skit…..
The Impact drama has become the central event that drives our theme. This year we faced an epic challenge. How to make something that happens on stage come across on television with limited time. I think our team did an unbelievable job.
Robert Lindsay knocked it out of the park as the editor (maybe my favorite Robert role ever), Haley Sells as our resident bully, Sam as the wizard Alakazam turned janitor. Tucker and Skid as the hilarious duo of Brooks and Lou, Rubio playing the unusual role as villain (hope some of you gamers recognized the nod to you with his costume), Jordan and Mackenzie as the Paulson’s. Brian and Grayson taking their small roles and nailing them. Also thanks to our heavy hitter Easton playing Happy. Of course our music guy Charlie Sells always comes through.
Then there were our teens/college students, Chamberlain, Lawson, Brock, Lydia, and Libby. Absolutely incredible job. It’s really cool that a lot of our Impact teen actors are former Impact’s Got Talent finalists. A special shout out to the Impact Board kids who filled out the other clubhouse roles….Battle, Brewer, Jack, Luke, Lila Mae, and Charity.
I know it was unusual but I hope you were able to follow and enjoy this epic that took three months to write. I hope you remember Annette’s decision not to walk through that door, and her choice and face the consequences of the choice she made.
And I hope some of you caught, The Barron Von Scarin’s Creature Feature, weeknights at 11:30 on TV 31. That was a source of personal joy.
In the end to be honest Impact was still familiar. I still spent days with my best friends in the world working on Impact. I love this team so much and I hope it shows.
In the end it was an impulse idea by Rubio and Skid that may have been my best memory. One night we ended Morning Impact (filmed at night lol) with Rubio playing “You’ll Be In My Heart”.
Rubio at 10:30pm said we need to lip sync this for the final scene of Morning Impact. I immediately texted the team and they railed the next day at Lipscomb. The next morning a crew of about 20 folks all in costume were there ready to record.
The result left few dry eyes. I remember thinking,” this is exactly why we are doing this”.
So, Impact 2020
Sure we could have skipped this year. We could have done some keynotes at night, we could have had some singing, but we didn't. We did our best, it might have not been perfect, but we gave our all for you, our impact family. I am extremely happy with the result because I know we tried to make up for what our Impact family lost.
There is no way Impact 2020 will be among the best Impact’s ever, I mean, our family was not here, But in some ways it will be remembered just as fondly.
31 Proverbs, 31 pieces of wisdom, I hope you heard God. I hope you recognize your cloud of witnesses, I hope you chose not to walk through that door. But most of all I hope Impact 2020 was a blessing.
It was to me.
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