Catalyst and The Dukes of Hazzard

Catalyst is one of those experiences where you want to go home and emulate everything you just saw and heard. Deliver one of the greatest talks anyone’s ever been a part of. Get an entire audience to laugh at your jokes…for once. Jump from a 35 foot platform into 12 inches of water.

Dukes of Hazzard was the same way for me as a kid.  I had the pleasure of encountering both last week.  I experienced Catalyst and saw an original General Lee.  Yes, THE General Lee.  When I was a kid I would watch Bo and Luke Duke drive the General Lee and apparently deliver some moonshine.  They were the coolest guys on television as far as I was concerned.  They were rebels.  They didn’t follow suit.  They were always the good guys in the end.  They inspired me, mainly to do ridiculous things with a big wheel and eventually a bike.  Regardless, they gave me the inspiration needed to go out and try something I wouldn’t otherwise try.  The inspiration mostly led to scars.

At Catalyst, we watched and listened to Rob Bell speak with perspicacity and great rhetoric.  Andy Stanley deliver the wisdom of the ages. Steve Fee and Aaron Keyes stir the hearts with their music.  And in my head, I heard Bo Duke give a rebel yell as if he was jumping the General Lee.

Like I said, Catalyst can become one of those experiences where you leave and try to be exactly what you saw on stage.  Or it can be one of those experiences where you leave and you apply what you heard to who you are.  Some will leave and begin communicating like Rob Bell.  Or perhaps begin to echo the style and astounding words of Andy Stanley.  Whoever the inspiration of the week for you was, we will have the proclivity to act as that person did once we get in our environment.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, some may need that to get them to where they need to be.  But the rest of us should resist that temptation.  It’s not who you are meant to be.  Not the character in Your story.  Not Original.

As the week progressed, I began to see the beauty of the story of Catalyst and the story of The Dukes of Hazzard blend.  All the speakers, just like the Dukes, were Original.  They brought their own content and radically altered lives.  They weren’t there to give a message we’ve heard before.  Thats why they were there.  They encourage to be original. To make and live your own story.

The original Dukes of Hazzard was always the best.  Always the one I wanted to be like.  The car I saw was one of the originals.  It told stories.  It had been jumped.  I remember one season they even tried replacing Bo and Luke with 2 other random cousins…Coy and Vance.  They didn’t work.  They weren’t Bo and Luke.  And there’s a reason why people didn’t like the movie.  It wasn’t the original.

We need original people. Original stories. Not replicated versions of others. Not random cousins that don’t belong in the show.

We need You to be You.

After all, that’s the only way we can truly Make Our Mark.

One last thought on the duke boys…anyone remember their CB handle names? What Uncle Jesse would call out to the boys?

Lost sheep…this is Shepherd.