Every Once in Awhile

You pray and plan and hope for the best. Over the past two and a half decades of ministry I have planned numerous events. Many of those events were total flops. Every once in awhile an event is prayed over, planned, and executed with much success. It is like when a batter really gets hold of a pitch hitting it in the  sweet spot. You know it is gone when you make contact.

I met with four men over breakfast weeks ago to begin planning our own version of the Amazing Race. We brainstormed and came up with a great plan. We knew it would take much effort to pull the event off. We began casting vision to our students. Several more meetings ensued with parents and the event coordinator to make sure all the details were covered. Our adults really went the extra mile.

We had close to thirty students participate. They composed six different teams. Twenty-four adults helped at some level of the race. Some worked clue stations. Some drove. Some planned the event. Others put together the meal after the last clue.

For weeks the excitement has been building among the students. The race officially started around 12:30  right after church today. It would take teams over four hours to complete the twenty tasks. From the start the blue team jumped out to the lead. In fact they jumped to such a sizable lead I felt the race was all but over before we even reached the halfway point.

There were physically demanding tasks as well as mentally demanding ones. Clues were not easy to find or to figure out. I am amazed how few of the students knew what the word parson meant. At times teams had to go back and redo tasks because they did not read the clues and did not execute the tasks properly.

With two thirds of the race completed I got a text that the first place team was a full two tasks ahead of every other team. I felt for sure the race was over. Then the blue team committed a critical error. They took a wrong turn trying to find a clue and when all was said and done they went from first place to last place. With four clues to go all the teams were even. The race became a nail biter. I could not believe it.  Things were going better than we could have imagined.

The last clue involved gathering scrambled letters at the bottom of a pool and then decoding the message. There were two sets of letters because after four hours of racing nobody thought two teams would be that close in the end. Going into the last task four teams arrived at nearly the same time! One team arrived at the pool. Another team who had been in last place up to the point the first place team made the critical error decoded the message first.  When I finally arrived and the judges looked over the final station it was determined none of the first teams to arrive executed the task properly. The first team to execute properly turned out to be the team who had been first for most of the race, dropped to last, and then surprisingly finished first! We could not have written a better script where four teams in the end had a shot at winning the race.

Students and adults kept talking about the race afterwards. Memories were shared. Laugher abounded. Facebook began lighting up from people who had watched the race unfold. One mother said her son could not quit talking about the race. Another posted she did not know who had more fun, her driving one of the teams or her son. Students were exhausted. Adults were contented in the exuberance of the students. Some students threw up from eating raw spam, sardines, and chugging chocolate milk. They pushed their brains and bodies to finish. Adults were exhausted from a full day of labor to pull the event off.

I sat back amazed at the work and precision of our adults to pull off such a great event. Every once in awhile you get to be a part of something really special. Every now and then you watch people come together with their gifts, talents, and effort to hit a home run. You watch the sacrifice and diligent work of people who rally around the vision of something grander than themselves. In the end I sat back humbled to play a very small part of something that turned out so amazing. Every once in awhile it all goes right for a huge success.

I take no credit. I applaud the two dozen adults who worked to pull the Amazing Race off. I applaud the students who gave their all for over four hours. No matter what obstacles they encountered they did not give up. They worked together and every team made it to the end. It was truly a team effort. Faith Community Church you continue to amaze me with your ability to come together to pull off big things. I most of all I thank God for building our student ministry and Faith Community Church. Every once in awhile you get to be a part of something really special.