Centre Court 2018Last Friday was the 18th Centre Court event I’ve participated in. And boy, was it a crazy game?! Overtime and a nail biter right to the end. (You can see all the highlights at raptors.com.)

For me, it wasn’t just a nail biter of a game. We were also pressed for time and our program. Because the arena needed to be converted for the Leafs game on the following night, we had a firm deadline of when we needed to be out of the Air Canada Centre (i.e. 11:00 pm). So the longer the game went, the shorter our program would be.

We were able to get on the court at about 10:25 pm, knowing we would have to be off by 10:45 and out of the building by 11:00. During our program, we did get around 80 students on the court for 2 rounds of the 90-sec shotclock contest with winners getting a Raptors drawstring bag. (Unfortunately, we were delayed because we didn’t have the basketballs … my bad!) To my surprise, we had both Raptors small forward CJ Miles and assistant coach Jama Mahlalela sharing their testimony with our guests. Always grateful for Herbie Kuhn‘s willingness to MC our event even after such an energetic game.

While I did push some limits with MLSE, I am grateful for their willingness to work with us in this event. Their group sales, game ops, security, ushering, audio-visual and custodial staff are amazing people to work with.

It’s our hope the friends who’ve never really considered Jesus before will start to meet him now, and to continue journeying with the groups they came with to further explore who he is and his message.