Personal Highlights from The (REALLY) Big Show

Deanna and I had the idea back in 2001 or 2002 to flip the typical church talent show on its head and make it into a fun night of variety with an audience voting element to raise money for our youth group, Elevate Student Ministries — back when we were the new/young youth pastors at Destiny Foursquare Church. The twist is that people come to vote for their favorite acts with cash or check. That money is collected to raise money for the next generation ministries of the church, and the top three acts go home with some fun prizes and accolade. It’s been a great tradition!

We’ve hosted many talent shows through the years and, most recently, introduced the idea at Pine Valley Church. At Destiny, it was called the Elevation Talent Show. Here at Pine Valley, we’ve been calling it The (REALLY) Big Show, and this year’s event raised just short of $900 for students preparing to go to summer camp! How awesome is that?!

I wanted to highlight two of the acts from this year’s event for you. First, my daughter Kella performed “One Call Away” acapella with her good friend, Emma. The crowd totally got into it, singing and snapping along…

Next, I pretty much had to record the full version of Zeb Shield’s performance Wednesday night. Zeb was a student of mine when I was the student pastor at Pine Valley and played on my worship team regularly. He completely surprised me by performing a very passionate lip-sync to my old pop song (written many moons ago, when I was about his age), “Make That Change”. Check it out! I can’t watch without laughing and smiling. And, guess what? Zeb won 1st place, receiving the most votes for the night!

There were lots of great performances from the evening. Check out the highlights video here…