Skateboard Ministry
Price of Admission to Church's Skate Park: Listening to the Sermon During Water Break

By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 9, 2006

Once a week, a skateboarders' oasis appears in rural Southern Maryland. There are grind rails and a quarterpipe ramp, stretches of asphalt and loud music. There is also talk of God and no shortage of crucifixes.

Saving souls sometimes calls for extreme measures, and to reach local teenagers, the congregation at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Lusby turned to extreme sports.

The ministry began last year when the youth pastor, Dave Showalter, heard neighborhood teenagers complaining that they were being chased off properties and hit with trespassing notices and fines. He went to the church board and persuaded the members to buy a few grind rails -- metal rails skateboarders jump onto to perform tricks with precarious balance.

Early Christians had also been persecuted, he said, and Jesus was in His own way, a cultural rebel.

In their attempt, however, to enter a culture long stereotyped as countercultural, anti-establishment and breaking the rules, church members formed the skate ministry the only way they knew how: with a volunteer committee, attendance rolls and permission slips (which ask for everything from insurance numbers to food allergies).

But the teenagers came anyway.

"They're nice people, I mean, it's a chill place to skate and not get in trouble," said Steve Wood, 19, a longtime skateboarder from Lusby. "I don't necessarily agree with the whole religion thing, but my attitude is, you know, whatever gets you through the day."

Showalter is quick to acknowledge that he doesn't know the first thing about skateboarding. He tries to relate to the kids, however, in appearance -- wearing a crucifix stud in his left ear, a gold chain with a cross and a loud T-shirt that says, "Xtreme Faith." He plays "edgy" Christian music while the teenagers take turns speeding up the ramp and into gravity-defying tricks.

Many of the boys said they are not regular churchgoers. The price of admission to this makeshift skate park is a five-minute sermon during a water break.

It is a job Showalter both loves and fears. "It can be intimidating talking to these guys," he said. "You see a couple eyes rolling, and you feel kind of goofy talking about love and salvation, but telling them the truth is so much more important than seeming cool."

Attendance ranges from a dozen to 40 on a good night. On a recent evening, there were about two dozen, jumping, flipping, grinding and sometimes crashing around the parking lot.

After an hour of skateboarding, Showalter turned off the music and gathered the teenagers around two giant water coolers.

He opened with a verse from the Bible. "This is from a guy named James, who's really an action kind of guy. I think you'll like him," he said, reading a passage on the importance of mercy.

While he talked, the skateboarders sat on curbs with blank expressions on their faces. Some looked bored or indifferent or at least acting like it. A few responded to his questions.

Showalter pointed out how they yielded right of way to each other on the rails and ramps, how the older ones help the younger ones. "If you can take those actions out there into the world, it can be revolutionary. I mean, that's something powerful," he said.

He closed with a quick prayer, and the teenagers then jumped back on their boards. Some said later that the sermon is something they just sit for out of respect for Showalter and the church members, who, unlike other adults, seem to listen to them and take them seriously.

Others, especially the younger ones, seemed to have listened more closely than they appeared.

"They're basically trying to show us how we can be better to people," said Jesse Stotts, a middle-schooler practicing kick flips with a friend. "If you start one thing that helps a person, maybe that person will help someone else."

Showalter watched as Jesse and other boys tried to go higher and higher off the ramp and into the air. With summer ending and the skateboard ministry closing down at the end of the month, he's grateful that his skateboard ministry experiment has reached at least a few kids.

"We needed to win the right to speak to them first," he said, "because as much as these kids need pavement, they need Jesus, too."