Oh, Silly Me of Little Faith!

This year’s theme, No Rival, had a great impact on me as someone who prefers planning, structure, and familiarity. I have been to a lot of TCs and this year was my 15th one. I was pretty familiar with the structure and having already experienced a lot of things over the years, to a certain extent I knew what to expect in general. You would think that by this time around, at just a little over double the age of when I first attended TC, I would be past the phase of experiencing things for the first time. This theme continued to challenge me throughout the entire journey of TC this year as I had to keep reminding myself and stand firm on “Yes, there is no rival to God,” even when I was faced with discomfort from curveball after curveball.

This was my third year as a full-time coach. I have had the blessing of coaching with two solid older brothers the first couple of years, but this year I was the only returning member of my captain-coach team, which started off a strange experience being the only “veteran” TC volunteer out of the 6 of us. I did not know what I could possibly offer as a coach other than to share my previous experiences as a captain and a coach. Thankfully I had a really great team who was well-organized and always on track and everything seemed to be going pretty smoothly and according to plan...until this virus hit. Everything happened really fast.

It blew my mind how TC was moved from RH3C to T3C, which was unimaginable for me, wondering how TC was going to fit in a church that was smaller than RH3C, trying to picture how teams would move about in the halls, or where we would be meeting. TC used to be hosted there a long time ago but that was long before we had this many ministries and maybe even attendance. But as we all know, right after that, we were really in for a big change that challenged us all greatly, which was having to move the entirety of TC online to TC Beyond, which was the first time in TC history ever. I had my doubts and struggles with the whole thing, this unfathomable way of doing TC, and many questions popped into my head about what used to happen - the signature cheering and loudness of TC, the usual TC rundown, worshipping as one giant congregation from all over the GTA in one sanctuary, the waves of coloured t-shirts and flags, meeting our team in person and getting to know them.

Oh, silly me of little faith! God has NO RIVAL. God was the one who gathered the people together on these online platforms of Discord and Youtube and He was the one who brought many of the attendees back for each session. He moved the hearts of people listening to the messages to respond and seek counselling. He showed us His love through the hospitality and service of the parents of the captains with whom we were serving. He gave me a newfound role as a coach to keep our team on track administratively, to keep track of time, do attendance, anything so the captains could focus on leading the group and not have to worry about minor details. He allowed my team to communicate behind the scenes so that my co-coaches and I could give words of encouragement to our captains who were bravely leading as first-time captains and to keep pushing forward. He gave one of my captains courage to overcome a challenging attendee. He caused my whole leadership team to change our plans just to reach out to one lost sheep. He gave me the right words to gently talk to someone in a difficult situation as a moderator. Despite all of the difficulties and trials that each of us faced, everything worked out in the end because everything was according to His plan and He is sovereign over everything.