The Undiscovered Country

2020 has been a weird year w/ lock downs, stay-at-home orders & quarantines; during this time many people were forced to remain at home & some, if not most of them, re-discovered just how much junk they had in the house. When things finally opened back up I wasn't the only one who was more than ready to catch up on Spring cleaning, albeit a few months late… 

I offered to clean up my folks garage for them as there wasn't much room for moving around in it, so I set a date & tore into it. It took a few days as there were several years of accumulation in there: car parts from cars that no one owned anymore, 20 year old inner tubes, misc lawn mower parts, you get the idea. So, there were a couple of trips to the landfill & more trash than usual but in the end, everything was 90% better & much more organized. To show their appreciation, they bought me a jar of honey roasted peanuts (my favorite, it's a running joke w/ them that I work for peanuts). 

Anyway, during my cleaning spree, I ran across 3 old CB radios that they had installed in the various cars they've owned over the years & I just felt in my spirit to ask for them, they said “by all means take them” so I took them. They were filthy so I cleaned them & plugged them in: so far one powered on, the others I'm not quite sure of, 'still testing.

I began thinking about why I wanted them, so I began really praying about it & during that time I began doing some research on CB radios: how the popularity peaked in the 60's & late 70's, then when cell phones showed up they told the CB radio to pack their bags & be out of town by noon, the CB complied… 

However, the prepper movement of the last 15 – 20 years caused a spike in sales & people in general began thinking about disaster scenarios: what if a cell tower went down due to extreme weather, or a terror attack or whatnot, how would family keep in touch? During a natural disaster CB radios are essential for mobilization of help. I read somewhere in the last year alone sales of CB radios were in the millions & surprisingly, many of those sales were from people 18 – 25!

This got me thinking even more: I've always wanted a CB base station but they're pretty expensive, however w/ a little effort you can convert a mobile CB into a home base station, so I did a little experiment w/ my new/old Realistic TRC-435 & behold, it worked! I was able to rig a CB antenna onto a pole & for the first time in 30 years I listened to a conversation between two truckers about a backup on I-94 & they were recommending an exit to take to avoid sitting on the highway for a while; that's useful information in real time.

Then I thought about the ministry opportunities…

Since reading “The Forgotten Ways” by Alan Hirsh, I've been thinking more along the lines of evangelism & ministry in everyday (& not so everyday) things. 

I watched a Youtube video about a retired man in Georgia who just drives around in his pickup truck all day & talks to truckers about Jesus, encouraging them & praying w/ them.

There's 40 CB channels: channel 9 is reserved for emergencies, channel 19 is the “trucker channel” & depending on your area, that leaves 38 channels free. Yes, most people connect online via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or texting but what happens if any of those go down for any period of time or the wifi/4G goes out? The radio waves are always available, ready & waiting for use. Amateur radio is a huge hobby right now, there are clubs all over the country & I'll blog more on this later.

I'm sure my folks are not the only ones who had CB radios lying around, some people in a church fellowship may have them already hooked up or might want to get back into it...

Here's a question for you: what if the Church utilized CB radio to the point where Citizen's Band became known as Church Band?

Choose a channel (& a backup channel):

- What if someone from the fellowship spoke an encouraging word at the top of the hour for a few hours? What if it was rotated between people? You never know who's listening…

- What if the Youth & Children's ministers talked w/ the kids twice a month for 10 minutes via this “new” contraption? 

- What if the Men's Group connected once a week or 2-3 times a month via CB radio? This is especially important during inclement weather. What if they formed a CB club & served people by helping a neighbor w/ yard work, plowing their driveway, pulling them out of a ditch or blessing them w/ food? It's done online via certain apps but it could also be done w/ CB. 

- In the Spring/Summer, what if handheld CB's were used during prayer walks for both safety & to broadcast the prayers to the other groups walking?

- In the Fall/Winter, what if prayer walks turned into prayer drives & a handful of cars cruised each street in the city & broadcast the prayers to the other cars so everyone could pray in agreement & add to what was prayed? It's like a mobile version of corporate prayer...

- What if the church building had a CB base station & could coordinate the cars, the people on foot & even people in boats on the shoreline, everyone praying for the city, community, beach, etc? Depending on the terrain, the range of a base station can be 15 – 50 miles.

Think of it, prayers going out over the airwaves, affecting the atmosphere, affecting your community & you never know who's scanning the CB channels & comes across the channel where someone may just be praying for their city or their street & become intrigued… then a conversation… then a conversion… the possibilities for evangelism & ministry are virtually endless; it's an “undiscovered country”.         

Hamlet: Act 3, Scene 1:

“The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?” 

CB radio is far from dead, it's just waiting to be rediscovered & utilized for the Kingdom to reach others that we know not of. I am seriously praying about starting something like this, after of course I finish all my other projects.