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Can you believe that fall is already here? On one hand it seems like just yesterday that we were finishing up the 2011 National Championship and yet on the other, it’s amazing how much NCFCA progress has been made over the summer. We’re in a great place to dive into another exciting season of competition.
In the past couple of months, NCFCA has released three new speech events, new event rules for all the speech categories, revised and updated the Apologetics topics, improved the Affiliate section of the new website, published the 2nd annual edition of The Source© (NCFCA’s exclusive debate source book available to all NCFCA Affiliates), and just over the weekend, published updated IE and Debate competition documents! Our Regional Leadership Teams are immersed in planning the tournament season, and practice tournaments are already running all over the country. Busy, busy, busy…
If we are not careful, it is easy to become shortsighted as we get caught up amidst the busyness of the details of preparation and look at speech and debate as just a type of academic “sport” with the goal being the trophies and accolades or the building of a great-looking transcript. Competition is a wonderful thing and provides a level of motivation to refine speaking and thinking skills that other activities cannot match, but we must be careful not to focus too much on the competitive aspect of the activity and let the trophies, standings, and recognition become our goal, instead of equipping students to be able to effectively communicate God’s truth. A good friend once said, “If the awards and accolades become the driving force behind our efforts instead of equipping students for the purpose of godly communication, then at best the trophies are hollow and at its worst, we’ve made an idol of this activity.” A very sobering thought…
Let me encourage each of us to keep our focus where it should be: training students to think critically and graciously communicate truth to the culture, addressing life issues from a biblical worldview in a manner that glorifies God. If the empty win ever becomes the goal, we will have lost everything that makes NCFCA unique and we will have deviated from God’s call for the purpose of the league.
Soli Deo Gloria!
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