Nearly New Years

For the past six years I have been privileged to be involved with an event called Nearly New Years. It is a long standing tradition that started way before I was working out in Brentwood. A few churches would get together at the end of the year and have a fun night together to celebrate the New Years. The event has been growing and last year we reached about 350 which overcrowded the Brentwood Nazarene Church. In February I took a job at the Franklin Nazarene church just down the road from the Brentwood church. This gave us the perfect location to host this year's Nearly New Years. This was also the first time I was to host the event without my dear friend Jason Underwood.

This made me nervous, but I absolutely love this event so I was excited at the same time. I went through all the planning sessions with Derek and Jason, and even brought Daniel our speaker in for one of the planning sessions and yet I was still nervous. It wasn't until the morning of the event that I finally was able to calm down. By around 1 pm that day I had finally received enough confirmation emails from other churches all around Tennessee, that I was able to stop worrying if anyone was actually going to come to this thing. It was now Game Time! I didn't put on my Tebow eye black, but it sure felt as if I had. I headed to church and began to look over the final preparations, as helpers from all over the state were showing up to help me finish my little odds and ends.

As people started showing up we had different games for them to play like 9 Square, Corn-hole, Basketball or Table Tennis. Finally after registration, we all came together to watch the first ever Middle School Dunk Contest at Nearly New Years. Then we played a Game of Angry Birds Live. After that we moved into a great Worship Service with the band Vinyl Thief and our very own speaker from the district Daniel Meadow. After that we served pizza and passed out 6,000 glow sticks. We turned on the Justin Bieber and tossed out a 8x8 foot beach ball. They played a game with that ball and prepared to pack up and head to bowling alley. Once we got there, we bowled, played arcade games sang karaoke and took photos in our very own photo booth by Derek Whitten. After that we headed out to the sportsplex which gave us fun times playing laser tag, ice skating, playing broom hockey, basketball, dodge ball, volleyball and whatever else you can think of that has to do with sports! We ended the night and I swear it was 11 am before I got home. The next day didn't even exist for me and that was just fine. We ended up having about 500 people total this year and it was a blast. I guess all that worrying and praying paid off. Well I want to say thanks to everyone who helped with this event. It just doesn't work without the hard work of the amazing youth pastors and workers that the Tennessee district is blessed to have! Hope to do it all again next year! Until Next Time -Just Jon