If this was your “family car” growing up…you may have been a fundamentalist.
23 thoughts on “Vans”
Oh yes..that WAS my family car growing up! 🙂 When you have 12 kids…what else can you drive?
Extra points for wood paneling.
I actually learned to drive in one of these. There were “only” seven kids in my family.
Extra fundy cred if the van was pulling a trailer.
Ah, yes. We spent an entire year pulling a 29-foot travel trailer behind ours once.
I drove the van once, before I had my license. Scary, since I was scared to drive anyway! Didn’t attempt that again…but what else can you do, when the baby wants to eat and the van’s full of kids, and dad’s not along to drive?
I’m the oldest of 11 and can totally identify with this…fortunately we still had the full size van when I took my road test for my driver’s license.
My parents’ extended van has been everywhere (including a road trip with 10 kids to Alaska) and is well over 200k. Thankfully, it’s looking like it’ll be the only extended van they’ll ever have had to deal with since they’re just about small enough for a minivan again.
When I saw the title of this one pop up in my RSS feed, I immediately thought the shoes and was like “No way Fundies like VANS!”
But vans? Totally.
Lots of windows, lot of seats, extended wheel-base, actual hub-caps with chrome wheel inserts, painted white, beige or silver = family/church van
No windows, short wheel-base, “mag” wheels, jacked up in back with 70’s in front & 60’s in the rear, dual chrome tail-pipes, painted black, orange or red = Four wheel mattress
I know these vans are practical for the 12-child preacher’s family and their ilk, but I think every fundy church has at least one family that drives these despite having only one or two kids. Mine had several.
I think the families that drove the 15 passenger vans with only a couple of kids were under peer-pressure to look as “godly” as the families with a dozen. :0)
Since in that world…godliness is how many kids you have!
Don’t forget, it was also somewhat Godly to drive the old-fashioned Chevy or Ford station wagon with the wood paneling on the side. And the van also. Been there. Done that. Ugh.
Bonus points for Bible verse bumper stickers! extra bonus points if it said “Be fruitful and multiply”.
we paid 200 dollars for ours.
more bonus points if your license plate says “fulquivr”
My family never had a van – guess we weren’t fundy enough! Still, I remember a class discussion in Bible college about the wisdom of having a lot of kids if you’re planning to try to raise support to go on the mission field. It was quite a debate!
@Amanda. You have to take into account that there were only 3 of us too…haha.
For some odd reason, I always enjoyed road trips in em. Dunno why…
spacious?
Double duty as transportation for the bus ministry.
Our family van doubled as Dad’s work van. Part of our Sunday morning ritual was to put the seats back in it.
Awww yeah… Also: Homeschool Bus.
Or Catholic Carriage.
My family had one until we kids starting going off to college (Mommy, am I really allowed to goto… college?).
And the pastor at my present church has one! And yes, it does double duty as the church ministry bus for when not enough teens show up for “teen evangelism” for the bus.
Comments are closed.
A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.
Oh yes..that WAS my family car growing up! 🙂 When you have 12 kids…what else can you drive?
Extra points for wood paneling.
I actually learned to drive in one of these. There were “only” seven kids in my family.
Extra fundy cred if the van was pulling a trailer.
Ah, yes. We spent an entire year pulling a 29-foot travel trailer behind ours once.
I drove the van once, before I had my license. Scary, since I was scared to drive anyway! Didn’t attempt that again…but what else can you do, when the baby wants to eat and the van’s full of kids, and dad’s not along to drive?
I’m the oldest of 11 and can totally identify with this…fortunately we still had the full size van when I took my road test for my driver’s license.
My parents’ extended van has been everywhere (including a road trip with 10 kids to Alaska) and is well over 200k. Thankfully, it’s looking like it’ll be the only extended van they’ll ever have had to deal with since they’re just about small enough for a minivan again.
When I saw the title of this one pop up in my RSS feed, I immediately thought the shoes and was like “No way Fundies like VANS!”
But vans? Totally.
Lots of windows, lot of seats, extended wheel-base, actual hub-caps with chrome wheel inserts, painted white, beige or silver = family/church van
No windows, short wheel-base, “mag” wheels, jacked up in back with 70’s in front & 60’s in the rear, dual chrome tail-pipes, painted black, orange or red = Four wheel mattress
I know these vans are practical for the 12-child preacher’s family and their ilk, but I think every fundy church has at least one family that drives these despite having only one or two kids. Mine had several.
I think the families that drove the 15 passenger vans with only a couple of kids were under peer-pressure to look as “godly” as the families with a dozen. :0)
Since in that world…godliness is how many kids you have!
Don’t forget, it was also somewhat Godly to drive the old-fashioned Chevy or Ford station wagon with the wood paneling on the side. And the van also. Been there. Done that. Ugh.
Bonus points for Bible verse bumper stickers! extra bonus points if it said “Be fruitful and multiply”.
we paid 200 dollars for ours.
more bonus points if your license plate says “fulquivr”
My family never had a van – guess we weren’t fundy enough! Still, I remember a class discussion in Bible college about the wisdom of having a lot of kids if you’re planning to try to raise support to go on the mission field. It was quite a debate!
@Amanda. You have to take into account that there were only 3 of us too…haha.
For some odd reason, I always enjoyed road trips in em. Dunno why…
spacious?
Double duty as transportation for the bus ministry.
Our family van doubled as Dad’s work van. Part of our Sunday morning ritual was to put the seats back in it.
Awww yeah… Also: Homeschool Bus.
Or Catholic Carriage.
My family had one until we kids starting going off to college (Mommy, am I really allowed to goto… college?).
And the pastor at my present church has one! And yes, it does double duty as the church ministry bus for when not enough teens show up for “teen evangelism” for the bus.