Now what?

How do we prepare the next generation, who will live through the brunt of it all?  How do we prepare our children, who will very possibly live through the year 2075?  My answer is simple.  Teach your children God’s Book of Wisdom.  TEACH THE BOOK OF PROVERBS…

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Get to Know Our Panelist Families!

Meet them live and in person at the Family Economics Conference on March 8 – 10. Our panelists bring real-life stories, practical know-how, and years of family-based business experience to our popular Family Economics Conference Q&A Panels. During the panels, they’ll discuss marketing, sales, and advertising strategies; what it looks like to integrate the family into business; how family ministry and hospitality works; the good, the bad, and the ugly of their entrepreneurial journeys; and how to take initiative as a young entrepreneur. Plus, there will be plenty of opportunities meet these families and network in person!

Introducing…

As an entrepreneur gifted in marketing and business development, Aaron Voorhees has been involved in multiple successful business startups. A fourth-generation builder and businessman, Aaron now leads his family in the operation of several business ventures, including a design/construction company.

James McDonald, husband, father of ten, and grandfather of two, serves as pastor of Providence Church in Morton, IL. James has served as a design engineer, operations planner, global marketing director, and a publisher, but his true love is preaching God’s Word and ministering to God’s people.

Jonathan Lewis, 29, is a homeschool graduate, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Home School Enrichment Magazine. Starting with virtually no resources, Jonathan and his family launched the magazine in late 2002, and are now in their tenth year. He writes and speaks from his perspective as a homeschool graduate, and enjoys sharing his home-based business experiences with others.

Since the early 90’s the Anthony Courter household has focused on encouraging family economics, family-centered ministry, and discipling men. By 1995, Anthony established enough passive income to freely give half of his year to others, then purchased SolarPathfinder in 2003. His desire was to show his children how to purchase a business and build systems within the business for passive income.

Bill Roach has served as the Chairman of Generations with Vision since its founding. In addition to assisting in the daily operations of Generations with Vision, the seven members of the Roach family have engaged in multiple businesses including insurance sales, financial services, credit card processing, precious metals investments, and health care products.

Mike Cheney used to be a successful real estate manager in Phoenix before God called him to leave his profitable and rewarding career and come home to his family. First a hot dog vendor in downtown Denver, Mike and his family soon became involved in real estate, investing, event management, and most recently a small agricultural enterprise. As the current director of the national AME Program (Apprenticeship, Mentorship, Entrepreneurship), Mike has a passion to share a vision for discipleship in all kinds of businesses.

Craig and Theresa Bowen are the founders of A Candle in the Window Hospitality Network, a growing worldwide network of Christian households opening their homes to one another and delighting in hospitality. Through A Candle in the Window, the Bowen Family has strengthened their own family economy, and they hope to encourage others to do the same through the blessing of hospitality. Craig, a pastor, and Theresa, a homemaker and homeschool mom, reside in Florida with their five children.

Chris and Mary Miller and their family of seven children and six grandkids live on their family farm in Illinois. The Miller Family has farmed their 1,000 acres and maintained a Registered Angus herd since 1976, and the Miller children are always pitching right into the family business, working alongside their father and mother. Chris’s philosophy is simple: work, serve, and suffer with a great attitude.

Roger Erber, husband, father of eight, and grandfather of eleven, currently serves as pastor of Christ’s Church in Harvard, Illinois. Roger has worked as a project engineer and a self-employed tool and die designer, and has also served on the board of Illinois Christian Home Educators. Roger and his family are founders of the Liberty Day Conference & Celebration. Hospitality has always been a big part of the Erber’s family life, and has expanded to include ministering to Roger’s elderly parents, who live with them.

Wendell Sip lives in Northwestern Minnesota where he farms with his wife Beth, and their seven children. From the early age of 12, when his father died unexpectedly, he has experienced the various challenges and stresses of starting his own business. From financial decisions to training his own children to be independent operators, he has trusted God to guide and direct his steps in business and life.

Nathan Sleadd started his first business at the age of 15. Owner and founder of ZipLineGear.com, he used to balance math homework with customer service. Now, at 22, he has nine full time employees and runs three companies. His work in both e-commerce and retail give him experience from the local to the international level. He and his wife, Colleen, live in Oregon with their two children.

Noah Sanders lives with his wife and son near extended family in central Alabama where he manages a family farm. Currently he oversees the production of chickens, eggs, vegetables, honey, milk, and fruit that go to feed his family and community. Noah is the author of the new book, Born-Again Dirt, Farming to the Glory of God and encourages other Christian farmers through his blog, www.redeemingthedirt.com.

… And these aren’t even all of the families who will be sharing on our panels! Stay tuned to www.FamilyEconomics2012.com for information on the many other entrepreneurial families who will be on our panels.

Don’t miss the chance to learn from the stories of these real-life family entrepreneurs!

A segment of our new Genesis Bible Study Guide:

According to Genesis 5:4, Adam had many other children besides Cain, Abel, and Seth. The maximum number of children born to one woman in recent times was 69. Between 1725 and 1765, Feodor Vassilyev, of Shuya, Russia gave birth to the 69 children, 67 of whom survived infancy.   After the flood (Genesis 6-8), deleterious environmental conditions would greatly effect the human genetic make-up and immune systems.  So it is very possible that men and women enjoyed an extraordinarily robust health before the flood, and this would have produced longer and more prolific child-bearing years.  Taking the average lifespan of the prediluvian people against the average lifespan today, and multiplying it by the average birth rate today (2.43), would yield a pre-flood average birth rate of 29 children and 420 grandchildren per family.  Life was very different before the flood.  It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like to keep track of all of those grandchildren and all of their birthdays!  Moreover, Adam would have been alive when Noah was born, ten generations later (making for billions of relatives).

Over one thousand years of world history is summarized in the form of a single genealogy of the line of Seth in Genesis 5. This is the line of the children of God, beginning with Seth, continuing with Enoch, and ending with Noah. God keeps track of His own people. Much of the righteous line synthesized back into unbelieving lines by inter-marriage through the generations. In the end, God only saved 8 people. According to my calculations, 99.94%  of all of the people born before the flood (assuming a birth rate of 29),  died in the flood waters, for a total of 33 billion people.

33 billion dead people.  8 survived.  Unbelieving minds do what they can do marginalize God’s judgments.  This is what false prophets do best.  They cry, “peace, peace,” when there is no peace.  They dismiss any notion of a worldwide flood, and they assure us that there will be no future judgment.  How much do they want to bet on this?  The souls of millions who read what they write?  It is a high stakes game.

“Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” 2 Peter. 3:6,7.

To order a copy of the Genesis Family Bible Study Guide, click here.

Photo by Winslow Robbins.

Generations Radio 2012 from Kevin Swanson on Vimeo.

With workbook assignments, games, puzzles, and questions, the student is led through each of these topics in a simple and engaging way. We are convinced that this workbook will be useful in grounding both children and parents in a biblical perspective on all things.

Check out this great review of the book by Natalie Klewja on the Visionary Womanhood blog! Also, click here to purchase a copy of the book from our store.

That said, there are various movements afoot in the Christian world attempting to reconcile the Christian’s relationship with a declining Christian civilization in the west.

1. The social justice crowd grapples for relevance in the world, by ignoring God’s laws and embracing the old “socialist” myths.  They’re okay voting for Barack Obama, despite his commitment to infanticide (as the only major political leader in America who opposed the Born Alive bill).

2. The two kingdom group addresses the fading of a 1000-year-old Christian civilization by neatly, (or not so neatly) separating the secular from the spiritual/ecclesiastical.  They do not  like God’s law applied to “unbelievers” or “unbelieving institutions.”  They may seek relevance by involvement, but certainly not by the application of God’s law. (Much of the new two-kingdom movement is a response to a failure to gain much ground in the ill-fated, highly-politicized form of Christian involvement found with the  “Moral Majority” and the “Christian Coalition” of the 1980s and 1990s.  They didn’t realize that we were into this project for 100 years, and the reformation involved an entire social system with the civil government representing only about 5% of it.)

3. The pietists are still trying to save souls, and they don’t have time any more to disciple the nations by “teaching them to observe the commandments of God.”  They are not much different from our two-kingdom friends.

For these reasons, we don’t see many of our Christian friends at the March to Life on the west steps of the Denver Capitol each year.  The pro-life movements draw a relatively small group, and we usually recognize most of the faces year after year.  Where are the pastors?  Where are the 100,000s of Baptists, Presbyterians, Evangelicals, Lutherans, etc. who attend church on Sunday?  Maybe they are receiving the teaching of pastors who were carefully instructed in pietism, two-kingdom theories, and social-justice liberal theology.

But I think I understand the challenges that face the modern Christian.  We are losing the western Christian influence.  Christians are more irrelevant than ever.  The antithesis is formidable.  God’s law is utterly reprehensible to the secular mind.

After years of cogitating on these matters I have concluded that the Christian life is a matter of faith.

Faith will not minimize the antithesis, and reduce the agenda to some “natural law” standard to which all would agree (Republicrats, Libertarians, Marxists, Wiccans, and Atheists).

Faith will not settle for a partial-birth-abortion ban that legitimizes the killing of babies in a thousand other ways.

Faith is not embarrassed to set the standards of God’s law against the rotten socialism, humanism, libertinism, etc. that corrupt our institutions.

Faith has no trouble pointing to Leviticus 18 as the standard in a Harvard Law School lecture on criminal law.

Faith is not afraid of rejection, marginalization, or imprisonment.

Faith does not reduce the gigantic, overwhelming mission of disciple-ing nations in God’s laws to a meaningless emotional experience, or a one-time decision for Jesus.Faith is ok with the mission being bigger than that!

Faith refuses to separate from the battle into Christian enclaves for two-kingdom rationale, for pietistic rationale, or for just plain old-fashioned fear of man.

Faith runs at the enemy with 5 small stones.   Faith says, “Giants in the land?  Come!  We are well able to take them!”  Faith says, “Three hundred men against 30,000!  The odds have never been better!  God shall fight for us.  Let’s go for it!”

Faith knows for certain that Jesus Christ is on the throne, and these “secularists” who are nothing but Christian apostates will never get away with what they are doing.

Faith can see the downfall of these present systems, and the opportunities that lie before us.

The just will live by faith.  There is precious little faith coming out of the seminaries these days.  It will have to come from elsewhere, I trust.

Vision #1 – Get your college degree, get your job, make your $40K, retire at 63, burn your inheritance, draw on social security until they euthanize you in some no-account rest home in the slums of Kansas City in the year 2048.

Vision #2 – The vision we present is to build a family economy and build family relationships across the generations.  Mentor your sons into visionary fathers, prepare your daughters as managers, delegators, and subcontractors.  Don’t ever retire.  Don’t count on drawing on social security.  Live with your children.  Help launch your grandchildren into life. Leave an inheritance for your children’s children.

Family economies WILL survive the economic downturns facing the west, friends.  Family economies have the versatility, the loyalty, the creativity, and the discipleship/mentorship necessary to survive and thrive and the years to come!

The family-fragmenting, socialist, corporate system is bound to fail.  It is a social system that will collapse on its own weight.

SO . . . DON’T MISS CHICAGO 2012!  From what our registration people tell me, we are poised to pack this thing out.  NOW is the time to register, if you are coming.

This conference will have more of everything.  Since this is our third conference, we “know what we’re doing.”  We’re ahead of the game, over previous years.  We know what our audiences want and need.  We have spent far more time pouring over the workshop schedule.  We have more speakers, more panels, more workshops, more vendors, more ideas, more equipping, more vision, and more excitement coming into this thing.

SIGN UP NOW at www.familyeconomics2012.com

Generations with Vision is a ministry that coordinates the work of older men and younger men, many of whom have been mentored in the ministry.  We have poured literally thousands of hours into 15-20 young men over the last five years, with the intent of producing men who know the Word of God and live it.  Our intention is to “practice what we preach,” especially when we emphasize discipleship and mentorship almost every day on the radio program!

We are not the typical “professional” ministry that hires men and women for $35,000 per year for a big machine.  We are a discipleship ministry, and we work mostly with young men. (We do have 3-4 young ladies that work with the ministry as well.)  The average age of our group is probably 19 years old (if you take me out of the mix).  Doubtless, our constituents have seen the “finger prints” of our young men (and young women) on the ministry.  Of course, our goal is produce everything with excellence, and to service our ministry partners with integrity.

That said, one of the goals for 2012 is to continue to shore up the quality of the ministry productions (including web site, publications, and radio program).   We are committed to our vision towards transforming education for Christian families away from the humanist-classical model to a God-centered, Christian approach that draws much sharper distinctions between the thinking of the world and thinking of Christ.  If we’re going to make any progress whatsoever in the worldview war, we must engage this area of education (particularly in the high school years).  We want to put a great deal of energy behind our Christian Curriculum Project this year.   Also, we will continue to the radio program through this election year, examining all things through the lens of a biblical worldview.  Our Family Economics conference will become a mainstay of the ministry as well.  We fully expect the March conference in Chicago to be our biggest yet.

Stay tuned.  There is more to come, this year!