Controlled Chaos



Epic. FCHS's first ever Fall Weekend Sign-Up. His Last Name? Rayburn.

The way a lot of people describe a Young Life club is 'controlled chaos'. For me the month of November looks like a whole lot of controlled chaos. It all culminates on the last day of the month where we take kids to our first official Fall Weekend at Rockbridge. A few weeks ago I posted a picture with the flyer on the blog. We've been handing out that flyer ever since. A lot of kids have been interested, but we were still waiting for the first kid to turn in their money and form; that is until last night. Pictured right is our friend writing his check to secure his spot on our Fall Weekend trip. This is no small happening. As you can see Brad is writing his check on the hood of his car in the school's parking lot. What the picture doesn't tell you is that this is after we had been standing outside in freezing weather for the last half an hour talking at 11:15 at night. But to give this story a bit more context, let me backup and explain.

One of the privileges I have as being a Young Life staff person is that I get to help out other areas and have other areas help me out. That sense of serving one another expresses itself in many ways, but two of the most obvious come in Fall Weekend's and Banquets. While Young Life camps are fully staffed with incredible year-round personnel, when there is a Fall Weekend or summer camp Staff people from different areas come to serve in different ways. One of those ways is being the program for the weekend. The program acts as the directors of the weekend; planning the schedule, setting up everything for club, being the run-on characters, assembling the music team, the list goes on. As you can imagine this is a pretty hefty task.
This fall I've been asked to be on a program team for a fall weekend in Lake Champion with two of my best friends, Craig Sweeney and Alex Hopkins, on staff in Fredericksburg and Charlottesville respectively. Planning this has been a huge task, and a lot of fun. Its also been stressful as the weekend (Nov. 9-11) draws closer and we prepare our attempt to control chaos. Later, when we go to Rockbridge, we'll have a team serving us in the same way.


Brendan and I Ready for the Wytheville Banquet.

Banquets are another huge event in every area.
Similarly, an area will usually bring in staff people from another area to speaks and run programs for their banquet. For our own banquet we are bringing in people from other areas for just those purposes. I was asked to form a program team for the Young Life banquet at Wytheville. To join me I asked Brendan O'Connor. Brendan and I led together when I was at Tech and he is one of my best friends in the world. You can see us pictured right, before we went out trying to make people laugh at the banquet. We also brought along Ben Gallagher, a WyldLife leader and good friend of ours to help us out.
With all of this going on its been a whole lot of fun trying to juggle program for a banquet, program for a Fall Weekend, and all of the wonderful things that are going on here in Franklin County, including our own banquet and Fall Weekend! In the midst of this Ben and I had talked to a few kids about going to Hidden Valley's club again on Monday night and there was a lot of interest. Unfortunately for us it turned out that it was on the same night I had to be in Wytheville doing program. Ben decided he would take the solo trip with neither of us really knowing how many kids would come. So I headed to Blacksburg to pick up Brendan and Ben Gallagher and made the trip to Wytheville in nervous anticipation of making a fool of myself in front of 100 or so people. Ben Brodin started making calls to see who wanted to venture to Hidden Valley's club.


A Completely Unrelated Picture of the Dodgeball Champions


The banquet ran great. We got more laughs than we expected and the whole thing ran smoothly. Towards the end Steve Schmitt stood up and gave them a picture of what Young Life is and what it would mean to have it in Wytheville. It is a new area with three high schools and three middle schools in the area. Looking forward, we are hoping that enough money will be raised that they can have their own staff person. Who knows, maybe soon we'll see "Adventures in Wytheville" coming around from a new staff person. In the end we were thanked over and over for coming, and left feeling like big things were going to happen in Wytheville. As I drove back, finally allowing myself to breathe after being so nervous, I gave Ben Brodin a call to see who had ended up going with him. I couldn't here a word he said when he answered, but I could tell he was somewhere with a lot of people. After club, its a tradition to go to a fast food place and eat, or just to hangout. In Roanoke all three clubs in the area come together for Bojangles afterwards and I guessed that he was there. Once I could hear him he told me that seven kids went with him, only one of which went with us last time. For those of you who aren't math majors, that means six new kids got to hear what Fetz had to say about who God was. Six kids got to catch a vision for what Young Life could be at FCHS. Six kids got to catch a glimpse of what Fall Weekend would be like. As I drove back I realized that we would be getting back around the same time, so I headed to the high school hoping I'd get a chance to catch them as they pulled in.



Another Unrelated Picture of FCHS's Live Morning Show

 After sitting in my car for 5 or so minutes Ben's car pulled into the parking lot an unloaded half of the gang; the other half had already gone home. We hung out outside of Ben's car in the school parking lot and talked for at least 30 minutes. The guys were stoked about club and we got on the subject of Fall Weekend. One of them was so hyped about it he went to his car, grabbed his checkbook, and secured the first FCHS spot ever. It was awesome. The Lord only added to the moment when I found out his last name was Rayburn, sharing it with Jim Rayburn who started Young Life. Suffice it to say, it was a pretty incredible moment. There are times in life when you just can't stop smiling because you are so excited about what is going on. This is one of those times for me. While I am in the midst of all of this chaos, I wouldn't have it any other way. I can only hope that our first sign up will get the ball rolling in a big way. That it would snowball into more and more sign-ups this week and we move closer and closer to November 30th.

I know this blog had been long, but I can't get over how much has happened. As I talk about controlled chaos I'm reminded again and again the the Lord is in control as the chaos of banquets, Fall Weekends and sign-ups seem insurmountable. But the more chaotic my life gets, the more I'm able to realize who exactly is in control and simply enjoy the ride. I can tell that is going to be the story of my November.