Jason – Families are allowed to go out with us anytime on the road. No other group does that. It’s usually the men go and “I’ll see you later”. What used to happen in the group, a long time ago, is that the guys would travel all of the time and then they would set aside one or two trips a year where the families could come along. We’ve changed and expanded that. The families can come anytime they want. They’re welcome to get on the bus and come with us. (laughs) They don’t! Not all of the time anyway. Like my wife – she actually likes being at home. We have a 19 month old little girl and she likes being at home, taking care of the baby and being a mom. That’s fine. In fact, they just went on two trips with us and that was the first time that my daughter has traveled with us.
Kim – How did she do?
Jason – Actually she did great. I was blown away. I thought she would be a lot worse than what she was.
Ian – We don’t feel like you can be a good Christian witness and a good Christian father if you exclude your families from your lives. If you only see them three days a week, what kind of spiritual guidance are you giving them? What kind of spiritual leader are you?
Shannon – This lifestyle can tear families apart and it has. I know at least a couple of guys in the group have said at least once, “Man, I wish I had of had a lot more time with my dad.” Two or three of us have had parents that traveled a lot or did similar types of things and we don’t want to do that with our kids. At the same time, I’m not going to lie, we love an occasional weekend trip with just the guys. It’s a lot of fun. A guys week out.
Kim – No watching what you eat.
Jason – And video games galore! We’re video-gameaholics.
Ian – We’ve got four Xboxes on the bus.
Jason – We’re disgusting. In fact, Ian and I carry game systems with us wherever we go now. We’ve got the new hand-held game things. We’re never without a system.
Ian – You can put in there PSP because we’d like to look cool among our peers. (laughs)
Jason – Exactly! Seriously though, I guess another thing that is close to our hearts is World Vision. We’ve partnered up with them and we absolutely believe in what they do. Trying to change the world, one kid at a time is just …
Shannon – Over the past year we’ve seen about 700 or 800 kids sponsored through our ministry, which is really cool. We don’t play large crowds most of the time because we’re mostly in churches, so our average crowd is usually maybe 500 people. But we share the need and we’re blessed with people responding. We really believe in it and we all sponsor kids. It’s just a real cool thing. In fact, I just got an email from one of the representatives and they want to find out where all of our kids live because they’re making plans to take us to a spot where we can actually meet the kids that we’ve sponsored and get some video of us with the kids.
Ian – As long as we’re talking about side ministries, let’s hook our wives up for a second. They’ve been involved in a jewelry ministry that has been supporting an orphanage in Nicaragua for the last couple of years. They’ve sent down $10,000, right along the lines of World Vision. They hand make the jewelry. I tell you that to say that our wives are as much a part of this ministry as we are. I’d like to give them some encouragement.
Shannon - But even if they didn’t do that, anybody that has spent any time in ministry knows that if you’re wife isn’t in support of your ministry, then you just can’t do it. It’s a different lifestyle and a different calling. I don’t consider it a burden at all though. I consider it a privilege. I think we all feel that way and I think our wives do too. But at the same time, it’s not a “normal” lifestyle. It takes a special wife to be able to be supportive of it. And special kids too. My kids are 14 and 12 and they’re very supportive of it. My son goes along all of the time – he’s our raadie. He’s a hard worker.
Kim – Getting the whole family involved makes a big difference. My husband is my photographer and we rotate the kids as gophers! The kids love it and the upside is that they get to see that the artists are real people who don’t want to be on pedestals.
Shannon – Oh yeah, I’m normal. I get to leave here and go mow my yard! But you’ve got to be somewhere, right?
