Challenging Normal

Go big or go home - When we started dreaming for this night, we started dreaming BIG. I heard a bunch of excuses in my head why we shouldn't try to pull off a big event. We have only been here for two months. We only started with a base of 30-35 students. We should work on building a relational foundation. It is the holidays. Attendance is off because of exam week. If you are going to make an impact or a difference in this world, you are going to have to take risks.

There is no substitute for excellence - We said from the onset of this event that the main goal was to see lives changed but secondly we wanted it to be a really cool night. We worked really hard at trying not to substitute anything or let any small detail slip through the cracks. We even made sure the students took home a token or souvenir to remember the night by. We designed our own labels and put them on tubes of chap stick.

Come off the top rope - A really wise man once told me that you have to go over the top every now and then. We thought and meditated on that for weeks. It was not good enough to just build an ice wall. It was not good enough that we put out 20 pounds of cotton stuffing that really looked like snow, it was not good enough that we cut down pine trees and sprayed them with artificial snow. We went and bought a snow machine. When it started snowing, the students went nuts and that made it all worth it.

It is not about the event - The event was important, the event is what we planned and worked on, but the night was not about the event. It was about the students. It was about the relationships that were built. It was about the lives that were changed. That is why we did what we did.

If you are going to make an impact, you are going to come under attack - This is something that I had forgotten. When advancing you are going to meet resistance. When working at changing the world you are going to upset the apple cart. I was reminded in the last week that there is a war going on for the souls of this generation. You might not see it, you may not know it is there, but it is. I was reminded this week that this is not a war for the popular but for the passionate.