Conduit June 30- Amish Much?

This whole family vacation thing is so counter to how I was raised. My family never had much money and since you can’t power your vehicle with government cheese or pay for your hotel in food stamps we never went anywhere for the express purpose of relaxation and getting away from it all.

That’s not to say that when we were younger that we didn’t go and visit Grandpa and Grandma in Manhattan, KS. We would load up the green “olsmochevy” affectionately known around town as the “lime limmo” and high tail it to Grandpas house.

This was not even close to a vacation. My grandparents had lots of rules designed to reign us in and to keep us from breaking all the fragile stuff that never fails to add up and surround the parameter of old peoples houses. The worst part of all was they didn’t have cable TV. In those days Cable consisted of somewhere around 13 channels but let me tell you that it sure beat trying to watch the AG report on PBS on a TV signal powered by rabbit ear antennae. (Someone please give me props for using the proper plural of the word antenna?)

There were 4 Tyler boys and the car was wide enough to fit us all 4 across the back snugly. I remember it seeming like it took forever even though it was only a couple hours. There were no seatbelts in the back. We would spend the trip playing bloody knuckles or “getting in each others space” or just punching each other. On occasion, my dad would bring one of us up to sit in the middle of the bench style front seat; again with no seatbelt. This was done in between threats to pull this car over and “beat each one of your bare a___s!”

For entertainment my father, taking a cue from Grandpa, would wait till we weren’t looking and honk the horn in two short spurts and announce that we had missed seeing the roadrunner. No matter that the horn sounded more like a train than the well known “beep beep” of the road runner, we were still taken by disappointment.

My children on the other hand roll in style in the appropriately named Honda Odyssey. While being strapped to their respective seats, we operate a multiplex theater environment because of the different ages of the children and thus their disparate movie tastes . If they should get bored with the movies, then there is the mobile arcade known as the Nintendo DS. Movies and video games not enough? How about jamming some tunes on the Ipod Nano?

If I’m being honest I sort of struggle with this. My wife, to her credit, will declare no movies from time to time on the trip but I have to confess that sometimes I succumb to the easy option of letting them have what they want for the sake of peace and quiet. God forbid that the DVD player won’t work.

As parents the danger is to look to our children and with a sense of nobility to earnestly declare that I am not going to let them “go through what I had to go through”. The irony of that is the stuff I went through is what made me into who I am today. What exactly am I protecting them from? I’m quite certain that many of our great world leaders were raised in homes with no indoor plumbing and they seem to have turned out just fine.

It makes you wonder if there was a reason that Jesus, who of all people could have chosen any time in history to be born, didn’t choose the modern conveniences and technology found in our society.

I don’t feel like taking my kids with me on vacation is spoiling them rotten or turning them into the cliché rich snot nosed Williamson county kid. For starters I’m not rich. And besides only one of my kids has a snotty nose this week. I’m not declaring Amish and moving to Pennsylvania to forego mobile phones and zippers. I’m just asking some open ended questions of myself.

I’m asking myself if what I’m doing for my kids is for them or if it’s for me. I’m asking myself if maybe I’m buying into a world system under the guise that everyone is doing it. My oldest daughter has already announced that she wants a cell phone because “everyone else has one”. (she is 11 and just got done with 5th grade) Will I give into this request?

What I LOVE about Conduit is that it is one part of our lives that I am absolutely sure about. My kids get to see their Daddy and Mommy putting our money where our mouths are. We take careful time to explain to them the mission that we have going and show them the pictures of the children that we are feeding and hold you guys up as examples of Gods people as they should be. All the multi-million dollar youth facilities in America have not stemmed the tide of kids who turn away from the Lord after graduation. The number is well over 70%. This is a staggering and frightening number supported by the research of the Barna group.

I pray that all the noise in their lives here in America doesn’t drown out the sound of Gods voice or the pictures have them so distracted that they don’t see God moving. Alas, I have waxed philosophical.
I hope you don’t mind.

Jeremy Hezlep is going to be bringing the Word Monday night and he is going to be talking about living in the world but not of the world. I have a feeling that maybe some of the stuff he is going to talk about is stuff I need to hear. Jeremy has so much wisdom beyond his years. He did such a great job last time that we had to have him again.

Amy Courts Koopman will be joining him leading worship. If you have not heard Amy sing, you’re in for a real treat. I rank her voice as one of my favorites. There are lots of people who can sing, but there are precious few who have voices you want to hear over and again. I count her voice as one of those.

We'll meet on Monday night at 7:30pm at Journey Ecclesia in Building 8 at the Factory. Come be part of this new thing God is doing. This simplicity of the Conduit. May that same simplicity infiltrate all of our lives.

Blessings,
Darren