Out in the Community at Canyon Lake Middle School

Awesome day yesterday teaming up with TC to do an assembly (6 periods, 1200+ kids total) for the Canyon Lake Middle School about achieving their dreams in life. TC rocked the music (along with Chadd and Rhys) and shared some of his personal story and insights, and I yacked about how to make their dreams a reality. The kids seemed really into it, based on their decently good attention for 45 minutes (which is always a challenge for a Jr. High crowd), their participation in the activities, the questions and comments afterwards and the requests for “autographs”, though I think that was mostly due to the mysterious persona of TC and the band in rockstar garb.

Two things mainly come to mind about yesterday.

One is that I was stoked with the synergy between TC and I. The kids love the “Rockstar” image and his great music and TC does a great job of using that platform to get across a good message. I combined the use of a funny movie clip, an audience participation activity, a video of some CLMS kids about their own dreams, interactive questions about current pop-culture favorites, and some high-energy motivational speech kind of stuff. We brainstormed together on the theme and flow of the day and then each let loose in our own area of strength/giftedness. A good team is hard to come by, so I feel blessed to partner up with my bro TC for stuff like this. (A shout out to Chaddelicious and Puff Webster for their work in the band, and RCG Swanson for his editing and camera work and Ben O’shea on camera. Awesome teamwork gents!)

The second is that I count it a major privilege to be there. One of my passions as a person and a pastor is for Christians and the Church to earn a reputation in the community as people who love, serve, enrich and make a positive impact on the place they live. So to be there yesterday pumping up 1200 kids to work hard in school and chase their dreams so they can make a positive difference in the world is a little bit of a dream become a reality for me. Yesterday we began a relationship with the school administration that I see as a partnership for the future of our community’s kids. The kids are the future leaders of our world so to partner with the CLMS principle and teachers to be a part of developing them into strong leaders is an awesome privilege and I look forward to this partnership expanding in the future.