SCL

Our bad boys were vans named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They all misbehaved on a regular basis.

We also ignited some good Uhaul pull-behinds. Surely there’s a sermon filler about these not being good behind a hearse or a youth van…

Bus fires. A bond those atheists will never understand.

Beelzebub’s Cars! Cars! Cars! must sell bikes too. My friend regularly goes on prayer-biking rides around our city, often with a few others, and more than once very bizarre bike break-downs have occurred along the way. Once one of the bike wheel spokes broke through the wheel and blew up the tires sending him head-first over a bridge, after buying a new bike the seat then seat then broke off unexpectedly sending him into traffic.

I just have to say that, at 35, my husband and I went on a trip to NYC last December with a church group on a bus that had no heat. No heat and it snowed the whole way home. Sad but true. That will be the last church trip ever…

Seriously!!! Clearly we don’t care about the safety of our kids!!! We would travel in a church bus that could backfire on command – I swear. We would beg the driver / youth leader to do it – and cars would literally pull over on the interstate for fear it had been a gun shot. Good times.

Bwaha. I have so been there. Twice in one night at the end of a trip from NY to IL. (Yep–our rescue van broke down, too!) At least the cops were only called on us once…

Does it have anything to do with churches not being willing to spend the money on a quality van and routine maintenance? I mean it’s more important that there is fresh coffee and donuts for everyone and maybe an XBOX here and there to be relevant to the kids. But whoa $30 for an oil change… that’s stretching the church budget.

I’d like to see a statistic on the average age of a church van. It has to be around 10 years. For every new church van out there, I’m certain there is one that’s 20 years old that is still kicking.

I used to own a van for youth ministry purposes… their favorite ting to do was to sit on top of the can and wait…

Two words: fleet management.

No one does it at church. And they stick the youth group with the POS that’s called the van.

hahaha, i kid you not, the school bus my youth group used was called the nouguty fun bus and the brakes went out on the way home from a winter camp while going down a twisty mountain in southern camp. fun times.

My fave youth group vehicle experience – stopping for some food at McDonalds in a blizzard…bus won’t start…my adult self and around 20 junior high kids stay the night in the guest quarters at a FUNERAL HOME. Seriously fun times….

We fondly named our youth group bus “The Ghetto Bus”. Funny thing is, when the church purchased a much nicer bus, most of the kids still wanted to ride in the Ghetto Bus for the adventure of it all.

We had Ol’ Bessie and she got about twelve miles to the prayer. I’m not kidding, either. We prayed almost the whole trip that she would not break down on us. And when the church finally got a new van (The Beet Mobile), we were all happy and sad at the same time. I mean, Bessie was old, but she had so many memories attached to her. I like to think she is in some type of church van heaven.

I think that the worst part was that the congregation had been asked to buy a new van a few times and those old tightwads (average age 60) always voted against the youth, so it didn’t get purchased until after Ol’ Bessie broke down carrying one of the tightwads.

I remember those days. When I was in high school, we had an old, blue school bus that we affectionatly named “Puff, the Tragic Wagon.”
It just wasn’t an official youth trip if Puff didn’t have a flat tire, break down, or catch on fire (which happened twice).
Nothing like watching your pastor (also my father) and your youth minister pop the hood and dissapear behind a wall of flames…. ahh… good times.

Scary thing is…when I was on those trips the kids were the ones who ended up having to fix the van! Seriously. Two teenage boys in and under the engine fixing it while the adults watched. Classic.

So this is forever late of a comment, but I just had to mention that once, a tire on our church van caught on fire and (just having been to Colorado) put it out with our nalgenes.

1988 Stuck in Spooner WI for 6 hours on a donated piece of crap buss nicknamed “the big green booger” Back then you had two options for food in Sponner DQ or A&W. Of course none of us had any money left over anyway after blew it all on crap our parents would never let us eat at the canteen.

Years later I thought it odd that we were stuck for 6 hours when Spooner is only 3 hours away. Hmmnnn…

Now I’m a parent and can only dream about the debate our parents had about how soon they had to go and get us or what the offers were to Johnny’s parents pick us up and give us a ride.

At winter camp one year it snowed more than expected and the jr high staff were worried we wouldn’t be able to get out. So we had a “love offering” to buy snow chains for the bus. It cracks me up and also kind of terrifies me that all these college student staff members were trying to figure out how they were going to get a bunch of jr highers out of the mountains in the snow in really crappy church vehicles. We all donated the money we’d brought to buy soda and candy at the camp store. I’m sure my parents would be just thrilled they let me go if I told them that story today!

Haha. Stupid cars. We have the party van/ghetto van and the bling bling bus. The bus was new I think and broke down multiple times, don’t know about the party van but it’s been around since my mom was on staff like 20 years ago. Also only some people are able to open the door and if they can it takes a while. I was just on a trip and my friends dad drove their truck and first one it was leaking oil and then they fixed it and something else was wrong but they got it fixed before we left. On the road some idiot hit the front and now the passenger door doesn’t open and they had to bang out the front so it wouldn’t rub against the wheel.

Dude,
There is nothing scarier than being broken down on a Mexican highway as the sun is going down. You have to love missions trips.

My youth group had two blue Dodge vans from the 70’s (this was in the mid 90’s). My mom showed me a picture once of her youth group standing in front of the same vans…

Sometime in the late 90’s one of them finally died on the way to a New Year’s lock-in during a snow storm. Luckily we coasted to a stop underneath an underpass on the highway and a few youth groups going to the same lock-in (with newer, nice church vans) stopped and gave us a ride.

Also in middle school we drove around the Great Lakes, from Ohio through NY, Canada and Michigan singing at different churches. This was in our “new” church bus (picture a retirement home bus with the wheel chair lift and all). For no reason at all, the glass in the bi-fold door decided to blow out. Free AC for the rest of the trip!

When I was in high school, the church van had a blowout on the way to church camp. Loaded with kids. Going 65 mph. On I-44. While pulling a trailer.

Fun times.

I served as YP for 5 years… I’ve had belts break… brakes go out… rotors catch on fire… and blow outs… had a blowout going 70 on the interestate. Vehicle behind us said the drivers side literally came off the ground. I recently resigned… and the new YP had the tradition continue. One van’s battery died on their latest trip and the other van had a blow out… fun times, man, fun times…

Oh wow. I love these stories.
One time we were caroling and our bus driver forgot to put the emergency brake on when he parked it on the hill. So here we are “Joy to World”ing and the bus is slowing rolling down the hill. Thankfully, the bus driver was able to run and catch it.
Oh, and I already mentioned this but one time we were going to Colorado and two out of three of our vehicles had something wrong with it. No air conditioning. Awful. And backfires used to scare me. We had a slogan “Taco’s driving. God’s steering.” hehe.

I just skimmed the comments, so maybe someone else mentioned this, but the best isn’t when they break down. The best is when the pastor or another member with a prominent role in the church prays over it and recognizes the breaking down as some sort of spiritual occurrence.

“I’m sorry the van broke down on the way to the rally. That was just Satan trying to keep you from where God wanted you to be!”

Really? I thought it was that our van’s been doing these trips since the Reagan administration and now it’s an old piece of junk that doesn’t want to go anymore!

Our bus has no air conditioning or heat, and the exhaust pipe is tied on with a someone’s scarf from a few years ago.

It’s always a fun ride.

I’ve been on plenty of youth group trips (even more with school trips) where it wasn’t really an adventure until the bus broke down for over 3hrs, or it didn’t have AC..

Love the stories, I nearly choked on a drink reading them. Keep ‘em coming!

WV: imingl – the new term for meeting other people.

There were minimal problems with our church vans (other than the one that didn't have air conditioning). The biggest problem I ever had was on a school trip my freshman year of HS. The bus broke down on the turnpike between our town & the state capital. This is typically a 2 hour ride and it took 4 hours to get there and that wasn't even the destination — we had another 1500 miles to go! It took them a bit to get it fixed but then we were on our way.

ours was called “the brown banana” and whenever it broke down… you don’t want to know what spirits we were binding up this time around! (see my comment on #507)

I think our church has a van or two, but for youth camp, we tend to rent a big luxurious “coach” — the kind of bus that has a bathroom in the back.

And those break down, too.

haha – so my youth group was driving down the the l.a. dream center in two professionally graffiti-d 16-passenger buses when the newer one we just bought from microsoft burst into flame at the highest point on i-5 to cali and burnt to the ground in ten minutes. epic… definitely united the group in a way nothing else would have. so we squeezed into the other bus and kept going.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=30471557994&subj=1302274132

Ha! I just got back from my Church teen camp, and a tire blew on the way back. Fortunetly, it was near the Church, so our parents just came over and picked us up.

We didn't have a van. We couldn't "afford" one. One of my Sunday school teachers liked to take my class out for breakfast once every few months. Their family car was a HUGE station wagon that used to belong to an uncle who was a mortician. It at one time was used as a hearse. So…we drove to Perkins in the Death Mobile. True story!

Once on the way to youth camp our bus broke down going up a hill. We had to all file out and walk before the bus started rolling down it….good times.

Sadly, our youth group has never had a van. On trips (actually Bible Quizzing trips, our youth group trips are all in the leader's cars) we use rented vans or buses. But that doesn't stop them from breaking down

So…. I'm like 73 weeks to late on this post, but my youth group had "Big Bertha" that would start maybe 25% of the time. It would randomly eat belts or other various engine components. Eventually, the church outgrew that building and we built up the road and sold the old building. Part of the deal was whoever bought the building, also bought Bertha. I think she is still sitting there 10 years later, in the same spot we left her. Well, instead of buying more vans, we decided to rent, but we must have rented from Beelzebub’s Cars! Cars! Cars! because the rentals were always breaking down as well and would come with random odors and stains. We used to play "Figure out what died in here last time it was rented". Well, we then progressed to chartering buses for trips, but again, we chartered the cheap way. There is a local bus company who's entire fleet was built it what appears to be 1940. On one particular trip to Florida (from Tennessee), during the summer. The air on the bus went out. Instead of waiting for the company to send down another bus for us, the driver decided to just fix it himself. His solution… "Coke bottles propping open the windows". Apparently, the width of the vehicle made it possible to only open the windows on one side of the bus the width of one Coke bottle (the 20oz, not a 2 liter. Imagine the smell on that thing with a septic tank that had not been emptied in several decades, mixed with 60 sweaty teenagers. It was not pleasant, to say the least. One fun note to that trip, though, on the way home (we switched the bottles to the other side), we had a tire blow out. It was the tire immediately below the chemical toilet tank. Poo and pee spread all over the interstate. You should have seen the look on the poor family traveling behind us. They had to pull over and scrape the larger portions off the windshield.

one time we didn't even make it off of our street before the bus's brake lights weren't working, and the engine was smoking… good times, good times…

Our yg first had a van that had springs and pieces of metal sticking out everwhere (several people have ripped pants and skin…the pastor's daughter has a scar from deep cut inflicted by the van.

Then we got a fourth hand bus that had no heat (which made trips to winter camp in the Poconos all the more fun). It broke down several times on trips, most famously we had stopped for lunch about 3 hours from home and at first the leaders were in denial about and repeatedly kept trying to fix it. After several attempts of fixing it, they finally called various parents willing to drive and pick us up. Another trip driving home one of the senior boys repaired the engine with some duct tape.

After I graduated I started helping with the jr. high yg and after summer camp we were driving back and the other yg we go to camp with were pulled over because their bus had broken down, so we gave them a ride.

Hahaa it's so true. Anyone ever locked the keys in the van a couple states away, and had to call the police
so they can use the coat hanger to open the door? great youthgroup times

True story: on the way to IMPACT youth camp one of the other church's from my town saw another church bus on the side of the road and stopped to see what was going on. It turned out the other church was on the way to IMPACT too, so they just combined the groups and let them ride the rest of the way up to the camp. Before they got there, however, the church van that they were currently one blew a tire so they had to stop on the side of the road. For half of the group, this was the second church bus that had broken down in a few hours. Finally they got the tire fixed and both groups made it too the camp right as registration closed. They sure had a good story to tell when they got there.

This reminds me of a story about our old church/school bus. Sometime in the 1970s or 1980s, the church bought this old city bus (which people would try to get on when we went to field trips in the city) for our Christian school. The bus was probably a late 1960s model. I remember going to many sporting events in the bus, but the best time had to be one night after our basketball teams played one of our biggest rivals. That night it started to snow while we were at the opposing team's school. Of course, the bus chose that night to breakdown entirely. After standing around the school for a long time, their principal decided to let us borrow their brand new extended cab Blue Bird bus for the trip home. That was the warmest and most comfortable bus ride we ever had. About a day later, our own old bus was towed back to the school. The church finally retired the old city bus when I was about a Sophomore in high school-they then purchased a regular school bus (ancient) of course. I think that bus was worse than the first and I'm not sure how many games we were late to because the bus driver was out tinkering under the hood while we all waited to get on. It was annoying then, but makes me smile now. I understand that church budgets are tight, but I think sometimes they put more money into these old vehicles over time than they would buying a newer one.