My best friend got married a few years ago.
I suspect his mom secretly wanted – for her only son – the big, formal Catholic church wedding with a priest and all the traditions. Instead we gathered in a beautiful meadow in the foothills.
The groom and groomsmen wore flannel shirts. I performed the ceremony, ordained by the church of the internet.
It was a beautiful day filled with wonderful memories, and that’s my point.
You don’t need The Big Production to create a remarkable event.
It’s tempting to believe a fancy venue and skilled professionals will make everything perfect. What you really get, though, is something that looks a lot like every other event.
My friends’ wedding was unique. Their fingerprints, and those of their friends and family, were on every detail. They cared enough about this day to craft something truly special, something they couldn’t just pay someone else to create for them.
They invested time and made the effort to intentionally design the day around the meaningful relationships in their lives.
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Why am I telling you about my friends’ wedding?
As the FREEDOM TOUR grows it’s tempting to wonder if we ought to leave more of the work to pros. Hiring event organizers might be easier and more reliable.
Or maybe it would take away opportunities to serve. Maybe there would be less community involvement, less ownership, less connection.
Maybe The Big Production would make the FREEDOM TOUR look less like a unique, Christ-centered community.
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Maybe you’re not planning a wedding or a bike tour. All of us, though, have big and small moments in which we might go for The Big Production. We’ll get easy, middle-of-the-road, kinda-like-the-rest.
Or we can invest the time and make the effort to craft something unique and amazing.