Every Father a Prepper?
This is the second part of Chapter 3 in the unfinished Book: The Ruling Household.
Here’s a link to the first part of Chapter 3 and the book’s The Intro.
“And God said to Noah,.. “Make yourself an ark..” (Genesis 6:13-14 ESV)
I’m sure most of you have met that special kind of guy who is always preparing for the apocalypse. That’s the guy we laugh at when things are good and run to for help when things are bad.
But one of the dynamics of building a multigenerational family is that in some generation, probably not too far in the future, things are going to get bad. So how does a family prepare for the chaos that hits society every hundred years?
Be like Noah and build an ark with your adult sons.
Fathers are built to think about contingency plans. Contingencies when the electricity goes, contingencies when there’s a fire, contingencies when the food supply is threatened, contingencies for pandemics, depressions, and wars.
Unfortunately, too many of us choose to trust the government for every contingency which works great…until it doesn’t.
The Jewish people have long memories and understand that disasters come in waves.
That’s why the Talmud, the series of books that make up the Jewish oral law, has this passage,
“Rebbe Yitzchak said, A person should always divide his money into three: one-third in land, one-third in commerce, and one-third at hand."
This approach, often referred to as “Talmudic Investing”, creates stability for the family because you have a third in business to take advantage of economic boom times, a third in real estate to survive through economic busts, and a third in something easy to transport for when things get so bad you have to get out of Dodge.
“But I have four little kids and we’re living paycheck to paycheck and now you’re saying I need to build an ark?”
No, friend, if that’s your situation you are not in the season for this kind of ark building.
We have to start with the issues most likely to cause family problems. Your pathway to ark building may be saving a few months of salary into an emergency fund. Next it might be building a business to allow you to make money in a way not always tied to your time. Then you may buy your first investment property. But when you’re beginning to experience a greater degree of financial independence, don’t lead your family into an ever-increasing standard of living, build an ark for the coming flood.
Tool: How to Build an Ark
We live in an unstable world.
Between the chaos of the world and the vulnerability of the family God has placed a father.
Seasons of instability are often blessings that help us see what really matters.
But if we don’t properly prepare these seasons of blessings can be times of real danger.
I have this picture of looking down at a neighborhood of about a hundred houses when a catastrophic event takes down the power grid but a few seconds later you see the lights flickering back on in half a dozen houses. These houses are arks. Each one of these families is fathered by a man who has prepared to make his homes self-sufficient in times of chaos to protect his family and to bless his community.
Ark building is not a command that we must follow but Paul describes it as a goal each of us ought to have. He lists some goals in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 “Make it your goal…” and the final one is that “you will not need to depend on others.” This goal of physical self-sufficiency is not for the purpose of being isolated but he makes clear it’s to allow us to be maximally generous.
The family who is struggling to survive through continual financial dependence will be unable to be maximally generous with those in need.
So building an ark begins by simply making it a long-term goal.
Our family has a series of steps toward preparing our ark and here are the steps:
Create an emergency fund of 2-3 months of living expenses
Have a month's worth of emergency food in the house.
Get out of any debt not secured by assets.
Stop living paycheck to paycheck by making most of our money through cash-flowing assets.
Have a secondary heat source for the house (wood-burning stove).
Install a secondary electricity source and improve every year (generator, house batteries, solar)
Install a secondary water source (cistern fed by gutters)
Have a means of food production (chickens, garden, indoor micro farm)
Our family hasn’t felt led to go full homestead. For ministry reasons, we live in a central location in our city and our street adjoins an urban area so we’ve had to get creative about how to move our family toward increasing physical self-sufficiency.
As a father, I love going to bed at night knowing that my family is sleeping in a kind of ark that can withstand some tough storms and rocky times ahead.
We don’t live in fear.
We seek first the Kingdom of God.
And we follow Paul’s command to move toward a lifestyle of self-sufficiency plus generosity.
Just listened to this episode. It's great that you're including different income streams/financial capital.
If self reliant bothers you, consider survival or disaster preparedness. While the prepper community has a stigma for being paranoid and some people are, there's great wisdom in being prepared and regardless of how prepared we might think we are, very few people are truly self reliant.
Your general list of things to do was pretty good but one that most people forget is practice. You can't just buy a generator and never use it. The last thing you want is to be learning to use something when your life depends on it.
Medical training and continued use is vital.
Communication is often overlooked. If the grid goes down your cell phone isn't going to work and you either need a way to communicate with your team (HAM radio, meshtastic, etc) or you need a PACE plan that everyone is versed in and can implement.
Water storage is useless if you don't also have a way to filter and purify. 3000 gallons of stagnant bacteria filled water is no good to anyone.
Team/Community - No one is really self reliant and if your city has experienced a dark sky event, has a prolonged power outage, etc then eventually you're going to need a team in close proximity for both safety and survival. Find ways to befriend your neighbors and consider discussing some basics with likeminded folks.
Bartering - Having items to trade or barter could be a huge benefit
Planning: Does your family know what to do in case of an emergency? What would you do if your car broke down in your city, or out of town? What if there was a national disaster while you were several hours away from home? How would you handle an active shooter in public? What if the city electrical grid stopped working and there was no water?
Coming up with a list like yours and working through each item to get things in order is a great idea. This is a set of skills that have been highly ignored by many Christians.
Love this! I’d love to figure out how to execute on step 4, creating a cash flowing asset