junky car club (repost)

(This is a repost of one of the 1st blogs i ever wrote back on January 4th, 2008. You can read the original in full along with all the comments HERE.)

WHOOOOOO! I’m so excited about this blog today! For the past few years I’ve been on a journey through Scripture discovering what God has to say about helping the poor. In short, I have become passionate about caring for the poor and doing whatever I can to help them. (MUCH more on this in later blogs.) I’m committed to living with less so I can give more to help orphans, giving clean water to communities that don’t have it, the homeless, etc…

While reading Relevant magazine (which I highly recommend you subscribe to by the way) I came across one of the coolest organizations I’ve seen in a long time!!! The JUNKY CAR CLUB
It was founded by Mike Foster, the founder of XXXchurch (which is another pimp organization to be highlighted in another blog. It’s an online accountability plan to keep guys pure from porn – download the software for free at http://x3watch.com/) and co-author of the really fun and helpful book Deadly Vipers: Character Assassins (go buy it and read it today... I'll be writing another post on it in the future.)
I even talked to Rick warren about the junky car club at Catalyst and found out he is a member too. Well, he was speaking from the stage with 11,000 other people in the room and he couldn’t remember the name of the club. I shouted it out to him and we had a quick little “conversation.” So, yeah, I “talked” with him about it. ☺
This thing is the real deal. “The JCC is a community of happy drivers that are politely rebelling against consumerism. We think life is better when you spend your dough on others and not on some pimped out ride. We encourage all members to support social justice organizations and give to those who are in need. Happy Driving.” (from the back of my membership card.)
The JCC partners with one of my fav organizations, Compassion International. So, the idea is that if you don’t have a car payment you can use that money to sponsor a child through Compassion. Compassion is awesome and helps regular peeps sponsor kids in poverty in order to provide food, clean water, healthcare, education, etc… in the name of Jesus and for His sake.

This is SO awesome. I plan to never drive a new car or even make payments on any car, ever. I paid cash (not much) for my 1st car right before I turned 16 – a Honda Civic SI with cool rims, a sun roof, and purple fluorescent lights underneath the car. (I planned to have a picture, but can't find one.) A year later I traded it straight up for an SHO (supercharged Ford)… and then traded it for my current car. I drive a 1989 Cadillac Deville with 187,213 miles, no shocks, and chipping paint. It has affectionately (and maybe not so affectionately) been referred to as the “caddymobile”, “pimpmobile”, “hooptiemobile”, “grannymobile”, and “big ugly caddy”. It is 27 feet long and drives like a tank. I once gave a ride to 12 guys IN my caddy all at one time! Lots of good memories. I’m just praying that it will last another 10 years and 100K miles! That would be cool with me. and if it dies I just wanna find another hooptie for $500 and drive it til it kicks the bucket. If that’s all it takes to make sure a few kids get lunch tomorrow or a village has clean water so they don’t all die from disease… this seems like a no-brainer to me. Think about it… if the choice is between having some nice wheels and an orphan getting to live another month, what’s the logical choice? Do you think there's anyway you could do more for people in need if you didn't have the fat car payment? Please don't think I'm saying that you're a horrible person if you have a car payment... we have 1 ourselves. The bottom line is - what are you doing to help those in need like Jesus told us to? Don't have enough money to help? maybe it's time you sold the Hummer and join the Junky Car Club... Let me know what you guys think of this idea.

So, I’m an elite lemon member… 1 of the original 150 members too. They’ve even got a JCC calendar now. Make sure you check out my blog on Monday because I’m gonna intro you to our buddy Peter who gets to have a fair shot at life because of $40 a month we’re not spending on a dope ride.