Kickflips & the Great Commission: Varsity Skateboarding and Skate Church KC

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer, your host, and I am joined today by Nate and Dylan, and I'm going to let Nate introduce Dylan. They work together a little bit in a skateboard ministry in Kansas City, if I'm getting that all right, and so they know each other pretty well.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: So I'm going to let Nate go ahead and introduce our guest.

00:00:48
Speaker 3: Nate feel free, super excited to have my buddy Dylan on. We've known each other for years, skateboarded together for years, and we've been doing ministry now together for quite a while and it's been a big blessing in my life. As you guys know, I had a skape ministry here in town for many years, and right around the time I kind of put that on the shelf to start traveling, he was starting his But he's been doing ministry for a long time and it's been a blessing to me, to my son, to a lot of my old friends. I'm just constantly inviting people on Tuesday. So welcome Dylan. Thanks for joining us. Excited to talk about varsity and skate church, KSE and everything that you got going on.

00:01:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me.

00:01:23
Speaker 5: I think one cool thing we could talk about is when we started doing the skate ministry in Kansas City.

00:01:30
Speaker 4: I think it's such a cool not coincidence.

00:01:32
Speaker 5: Obviously God was in it, but I believe we started doing it like the month after you guys had kind of like taken a break from doing.

00:01:39
Speaker 4: It, which we didn't know at the time.

00:01:42
Speaker 5: I remember moving to Kansas City from Springfield and literally it was like, man, we've been doing this Bible study thing in Springfield for so long, how do we finally start.

00:01:52
Speaker 4: It here in Kansas City?

00:01:53
Speaker 5: And I remember it was myself, I want to say, two or three other friends in a coffee shop at an indoor skate park. I had no idea that you guys had recently just like taken a break from it. So it's super cool to see, you know, God knew that needed to be skate ministry in case he's so bad that he's like, I'm not even gonna allow like a little break to happen in between.

00:02:11
Speaker 4: You're just going to keep it going absolutely.

00:02:15
Speaker 1: So Yeah, I'll just ask a couple of questions. I just kind of helped me frame it. I'm not I skateboarded when I was younger, and I use that really loosely.

00:02:25
Speaker 2: I was horrible. My wife knows this, you know.

00:02:28
Speaker 1: I lift just a look athletic, but anything that doesn't involve moving in a straight line in a relatively stable fashion, I have trouble with.

00:02:37
Speaker 2: So so I don't know. I'm wondering what you guys see.

00:02:44
Speaker 1: Is skateboarding sort of a a really is it a growing niche area or is it you know, has it's just sort of gone underground because I remember when I was a kid it was all over the place, and it doesn't really feel like it that way now. I mean, you had movies about skateboarding, and like thrashing is one of my favorite old you know skateboarding movies, right, Yeah, and so you had like thrashing out and you had the you know, a bunch of different like skaters that you'd see at video games all that kind of stuff. Is it still that part of the culture where you know, there's a broad base of people skateboarding or is this more of a niche group of people who are who are just still continuing it and it's a little bit more underground than you used to be.

00:03:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a good question. I do have some statistics that I'll kind of give in some analytics behind that.

00:03:26
Speaker 4: Cool.

00:03:26
Speaker 5: I think when you start and you look back, like when I started skating, it was early two thousands, and I grew up in a small town about an hour south of Kansas City, and I remember when they built the first skate park there. I played a bunch of traditional sports, but I'd never seen like a skate park in person except on like a Tony Hawk game or like MTV. So I remember for me, I was just like so fascinated. And when I share a little bit about my story, I'll share why I was spending so much time there. But when I think back then, I could tell another skateboarder in school.

00:03:59
Speaker 4: By looking at their shoes.

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Speaker 5: It was like me and like three other people right that were like, oh, you've got on vans, you have to skate, whereas everyone else is wearing something a little bit different. Fast forward to today, we've definitely seen an uptick, one with it becoming in the Olympics right in twenty twenty. Yeah, there's an athlete that was on there that when she entered into the Olympic Games from when she ended, I want to say she gained three or four million followers just over those few.

00:04:31
Speaker 4: Days of the Olympics.

00:04:33
Speaker 5: A really cool statistic too, is there's a lot of younger girls that have started skateboarding, where before it's been a pretty male dominated sport. And so the stat that I love to share, there's roughly four hundred and forty million action sports athletes in the US. And one of the reasons that we start our organization and one of the stats we share most of them Christianity, is counterculture to the way that they live.

00:04:56
Speaker 4: Their everyday life.

00:04:59
Speaker 5: I can speak from myself like I am more relevant to go to the skate park when I was younger on a Sunday than I would ever want to go to church, because when I go into a church, nobody looks like me. Nobody's really interested in the things that I'm in. It's hard to have a conversation with somebody else when you're like just so ingrained in the culture of action sports. So really one of the goals with our ministry is how do we be that common ground, that common person and connect with somebody right there at what I would say is their home.

00:05:26
Speaker 4: A lot of people would say their local skate park truly is like their safe space. So how do we get them there, build a relationship and get to know them a little bit better?

00:05:33
Speaker 5: And I think Nick could agree with this, but we're seeing a lot more skaters that not only are at skate parks, but we're seeing people that are more open to sitting down to listen to who Jesus is, whether that's a Bible study or just having a quick conversation.

00:05:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, the cool thing is James, and I don't know if I've shared this with you, but we meet some initial needs right off the bat, and even if it takes a couple of weeks to kind of build the bridge and kind of connect the dots with people and let them get to know. We show up at a park and we're there for the whole month. Every Tuesday in that month at a different park in Kansas City. We always bring pizza over food, and we have a cooler full of water, and so usually if kids forget their water bottles or if they're hungry, they're.

00:06:12
Speaker 6: Like, oh, there's pizza over there. So even if they're skeptical of like.

00:06:15
Speaker 3: I don't know if I want to sit down and do that Bible study thing, but once they skate with us for a couple of weeks, we've seen it where they kind they'll kind of get closer and kind of earshot to listen, and then slowly they'll kind of eventually come over to us, which is awesome. But it's just it kind of breaks down those barriers and it's really cool. Like you said, Dylan, when I first moved here in ninety six, for my senior year, we had one skate park.

00:06:37
Speaker 6: In Kansas City.

00:06:38
Speaker 3: So to speak of how it's grown, James, like, now all these years later, we have over thirty in Kansas City. I used to drive to Lawrence every weekend and any chance I could forty five miles from here just to skate we would save up money, will get a ride, whatever. So it definitely has grown, and I'm so excited. I love how intentional Dylan's ministry is. He also has this share how many people it is Dylan But on Instagram he sent these inspiring little mini DeVos, and it's like a way.

00:07:09
Speaker 6: That I start my day.

00:07:10
Speaker 3: It's always like, oh, I need to read what Dylan said because it's always encouraging and uplifting to me. But these kids are really engaging with it. They're giving prayer requests. It's really cool because, like he said earlier, a lot of these kids don't really have a whole lot of support, and that's why I originally wanted to start skate ministry back in two thousand.

00:07:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just interesting, I think, you know, for somebody like me who has never really involved in it in any serious way, to understand how much it's grown is just helpful.

00:07:36
Speaker 2: You know.

00:07:37
Speaker 1: My only linkage back to skateboarding was like Tony Hawk, and I know he's still around, but I'm guessing there are other skateboarders that I'm not aware of.

00:07:47
Speaker 2: I guess what I'm saying, But that's awesome.

00:07:49
Speaker 1: I think that's fantastic so you go out to these skateboard parks in Kansas City on you know, various days of the week, you build relationships with the skaters who are there, and then how how does skate Church sort of evolve from that?

00:08:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's good.

00:08:04
Speaker 5: So when you look at the mission of our organization, we keep it really clean, clear cut. It's to teach equipment and power, and we do that in a twofold sense. So one is I love skateboarding, I also love ministry obviously, super passionate about following Jesus. So kind of on the surface level of our mission statement when it comes to teaching, one of the things we'll do our free skate camps, so we'll teach kids how to skate.

00:08:26
Speaker 4: The goal with that.

00:08:28
Speaker 5: Is to bring in underserved kids with other organizations we partner with, whether it's Big Brother and Sister, Hope Center, Casey Operation Breakthrough, and let them experience something different, something challenging. I believe that being a skateboarder has helped me learn how to persevere through so much in life. And if you've ever been on a skateboard, if you've ever tried a kick flip, it does not happen in the first ten tries, it takes weeks, it takes months.

00:08:53
Speaker 4: You're going to fail, but.

00:08:54
Speaker 5: What you're also going to learn is how to persevere, how to change things, and you just have a better feeling to win in the end. So we teach them at skate camps. We equip them with free boards, helmets, sometimes shoes, clothing if they need it, and then on the back end of that, we empower them to also be a good citizen, you know, overall, and help encourage somebody else to do something that they love a little bit. On that deeper level, what we do is then we get to know people and we invite them back into what we call skate church. And skate church when we started hearing Kansas City, if I can be honest, was filling a need for me. I knew a lot of people in Kansas City that skated, But when it came to finding like a legitimate Bible study life group with people that I enjoyed being around that we kind of share the same passions, there wasn't anything. So I met two guys that I've kind of known that are faithful believers, and we started meeting at a coffee shop and the mission change and I went a little bit deeper. So now we're just not only teaching people how to skate, but we're teaching them who God is and also how He calls them to live in their everyday life. We're equipping them not only with a trusted mentor somebody that can help guide them through their spiritual journey, but we're also giving people by we partner with the U Version Bible app and be given away over one hundred and ninety thousand devotionals in the last five years, and we're giving out Bibles to skateboarders at skate parks all the time. One of my favorite stories we had a dude come back. He's in his twenties, hadn't seen him for three or four years, and he pulled out this Bible that I got on Amazon and ended up giving him like three or four years ago, and he's like, I still have it.

00:10:22
Speaker 4: I've written all over it.

00:10:24
Speaker 5: Because you always wonder, like am I just giving this? And you know where's it going to end up? And the last thing we do is we empower people not just to know and understand who Jesus is, but to follow out the great commission of Matthew twenty eight and to make disciples specifically where God has called them to be. Man we're a big advocate for the local church and also for our community. I believe you don't have to fly go overseas to make a difference or be a missionary. I believe the second you wake up in the morning and your feet hit the floor.

00:10:53
Speaker 4: That's your mission field.

00:10:54
Speaker 5: And so I always encourage and kind of challenge the leaders of the volunteers or even the people that just attend Skate Chard of like, hey, who's in your life that you see every single day that you can be a missionary to? Who can you be Jesus to? Because you may be the only Jesus somebody else sees. So it did start pretty loosely, but we've recognized we try to be as intentional as we can, just to make sure that we're not just hanging out because I think, you know, ten fifteen years ago, we were very cultural Christians, and I see it now like gen Z and jen A, they want intentional. They don't want the big show we feel good. They really want to know who Jesus is, want practical steps of how to follow him.

00:11:34
Speaker 1: So, like when you talk about skate Church, here's what I picture in my head. So you're going to have to change the perception, right. I'm an Old Testament guy, So I've been over to Israel a couple of times, and you know, when you go up on the amount of olives, you see you kind of where Jesus sat and there's this you know, sort of and what it reminds me of is like somebody standing on the top of a half pipe and everybody else sitting on the inside of the half pipe and delivering a sermon.

00:11:56
Speaker 2: Is that how skate church works? Yeah, like the ramp exactly.

00:12:01
Speaker 4: I would say we've probably done a few like that.

00:12:05
Speaker 5: I also recognize what it's like to be on the other side of when something like that is going on. I was pretty resistant to skateboard for a while, and so one of the easiest ways we can show honor and respect is actually by stepping off to the side of a skate park, still allowing the locals to have that whole space. The last thing I want to do is like come in as conquerors. Right, Jesus came in and is a loving way. He didn't come down and necessarily strike us in that moment, So I don't want to be eating on what they have going on.

00:12:32
Speaker 4: Even from a mental health standpoint.

00:12:35
Speaker 5: Man, I know skateboarding is such like an escape for people, and so there's some people that I hope they get to know Jesus. But the thing they probably need right now is ten minutes of the skate park where they can just blow off some steam. So if we can allow them to be able to do that and then still offer a space where we're there, we can build that common ground, that relationship to share you know, longer, hope, longer peace of just going and skating at the park. We want to be a able to do that as well.

00:13:01
Speaker 3: One thing I absolutely love that I wanted to share is like when we come into a new skate park, say the first Tuesday of next month, when we go out to Least Summit, We're going to run into kids that maybe have never seen us before.

00:13:13
Speaker 6: So kids that I haven't met, that Dylan hasn't met, or vice versa. But there's a whole team of leadership.

00:13:17
Speaker 3: It's so cool to see sometimes and you can speak to this to Dylan, but sometimes on the first Tuesday, kids will kind of be like, what's going on? Why are there is is this a birthday party, like why are they bringing coolers and pizzas?

00:13:29
Speaker 6: And then they'll see us like.

00:13:31
Speaker 3: Step off to the side, and some kids are like sweet, Like now we have the skate park to ourselves because like all of a sudden, fifteen kids just got off the park for ten minutes. Some kids will stay, but then you can kind of see kids kind of edge and get closer and try to get with an earshot and figure it out. I love that we have the opportunity to break down misconceptions because the reality is these kids could have not gone to church ever, or they might have gone to church, and they think it's something that is totally not We have no idea, so we literally get to break down those walls and those misconceptions just through meeting a couple needs, but also just showing up.

00:14:03
Speaker 6: And building relationships with kids. And that's what fires me up.

00:14:06
Speaker 3: If I ever have to miss a Tuesday for work or something, I'm super bummed because it's like my favorite thing in the whole world. So I'm super grateful for Dylan and all that he does with his organization, and it's awesome.

00:14:17
Speaker 6: We're seeing God move where, seeing relationships being built, so.

00:14:19
Speaker 2: It's great well, I sort of get so I'm interested. Dylan.

00:14:23
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier you were talking about, you know, why what skateboarding meant to you when you were younger, And I mean just I was never great at sports, Like I said, I'm not athletic at all. But I found weight training when I was fourteen, and I would say I would speak about it in the same way year speaking about the skate park, like the gym was my home.

00:14:42
Speaker 2: I'd go there after school.

00:14:43
Speaker 1: I'd spend two three hours there in the weight room, Like you know, you just lift, you get some of.

00:14:48
Speaker 2: That stress out, you're enjoying yourself.

00:14:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's other guys there and you're hanging out and you're bantering or whatever. But it was really just a solo activity for me to get away from everything and do something that I was enjoying. And it sounds like that's kind of what it was for what it is for a lot of you know what skating is for a lot of kids now.

00:15:07
Speaker 2: But I'm wondering what your experience was with that. How you why skating was so crucial for you.

00:15:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's a great question. When I was twelve thirteen years old, like I said, our town had built a skate park. And I remember the reason we got into skating.

00:15:23
Speaker 5: I had an old skateboard, maybe from Toys r US or something, you know, I got for like a random Christmas thing.

00:15:29
Speaker 4: It's probably on sale.

00:15:31
Speaker 5: And I had this friend that someone did a trick on Tony Hawk pro skater when we were playing, and my friend was like, I could do that, and we were like, no, you cannot, you can, And so literally like we went and got this board, probably deep from under my bed or out in the garage, and just kind of started rolling around on it. And what I found out later in life is through that time, my father at home, he was struggling a lot with alcoholism and addiction, and actually addiction runs in our families. So having an addictive personality is just something that like I have, and I think a lot of skateboarders have too, or athletes.

00:16:08
Speaker 4: Or high performing anybody, right.

00:16:11
Speaker 5: And so at that time, I actually played traveling baseball, played some football and really enjoyed doing it. But what I found is when I would go to the skate park, there's something different about being alone and kind of challenging yourself. Right, My win isn't necessarily it doesn't matter if it's on somebody else, it's fully me. There's no other teammate that's going to pick me up, there's no other teammate that's.

00:16:34
Speaker 4: Going to fail. It truly is just me.

00:16:36
Speaker 5: And so I fell in love with skateboarding the aspect of that way. But the reason I kept going back to the skate park it was actually easier to see what was going on at the skate park than what was going on at home, because not only was there alcoholism and addiction, but there's a little bit of domestic violence that were going on, and tensions were just high, Like I could feel addition as I walked in and I went home.

00:16:56
Speaker 4: And so a lot of times it was me.

00:16:58
Speaker 5: Going to high school, going to the skate park early in the morning, staying at the skate park until the sun went down, and even led me to a place to where when I was seventeen eighteen years old, started making a little bit of money skating, was kind of working some odd jobs, moved out to my parents' house actually early so my senior year of high school was living with one of my friends who also raced motocross. Was kind of living like the action sports dream. I always tell people I got to live the pro skateboarder lifestyle without.

00:17:27
Speaker 4: The money or like the board or anything like that.

00:17:31
Speaker 5: Like every weekend we were, you know, partying, thought we were doing everything that was going to make us feel good. And I remember there was a specific point in my life. I'd kind of grown up going to church, but I didn't really know who Jesus was. If I could be honest to the church I went to. I saw people act one way on a Sunday and they were completely different Monday through Saturday. And so even as a schooler, it's like this is fake. This seems fake. But I remember there's a time my life.

00:18:00
Speaker 4: Where we were at this party, had skated.

00:18:03
Speaker 5: All day when to this party, and I blacked out and I woke up and I remember everybody had left me, like in the middle of this field, and I remember waking up and everything was just pitch black. And my thought on that moment was, Lord, if you're real, if this is all that is for my life, I don't.

00:18:23
Speaker 4: Want to do it anymore. And if you are real, I need you to show up.

00:18:27
Speaker 5: And the best way that I can explain it to people is it's almost like he increased the brightness of that time by like ten or fifteen percent, just like this beacon of like, hey, just just hold on, and so got up, started walking. Eventually got a way back to the place that I was staying at. Didn't remember a whole lot that had happened the night before, and it actually ended up getting kicked out of the place that I was staying at, so kind of was living in my car for a few days. And literally the next day I had a and call me and he said, Hey, I do this thing called Action Sports Ministry.

00:19:04
Speaker 4: We have an event coming up in Houston.

00:19:06
Speaker 5: I would love to have you join us as talent, but I don't want you to speak to anybody while you're there. And I was like, in hindsight, I was like, for sure, that is exactly what I would have done too. And so this couple I got to go stay with them, got to live in their couch, and there were two things that they wanted from me. They said, Hey, one, you have to go to church with us on Sunday until you have to go to Bible study with.

00:19:32
Speaker 4: Us on Wednesday.

00:19:34
Speaker 5: And I'd never seen anybody read a Bible outside of church. I didn't even know that was like legal, that you could open your Bible.

00:19:40
Speaker 4: Outside of church. But for the first time in my life.

00:19:44
Speaker 5: I got to see a healthy, godly marriage between two people. I got to see people that didn't just talk about who Jesus was, but they.

00:19:52
Speaker 4: Lived out his life in every aspect.

00:19:56
Speaker 5: I got to see legitimate skateboarders that love skateboarding but also recognize it's just a form of worship that we get to have and enjoining of who God is. And so that led me to a place where I ended up giving my life to Christ. Started going to church consistently, and this was about twenty ten twenty eleven. I started traveling and doing events full time, kind of in the action sports space.

00:20:18
Speaker 2: Cool so cool do you find like, as you're working with kids now, do you find that they have sort of similar experiences where do skateboarding draw a certain type of personality that really is not necessarily like wants to be socially ostracized or you know, just totally on their.

00:20:40
Speaker 1: Own, but that they have sort of more of an internal perspective. We might say like I'm I'm going to work toward this on my own and if other people around to help me, that's fantastic, But really it's just it's me and I need to do this.

00:20:57
Speaker 2: Does that make sense as a question.

00:20:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting to see.

00:21:01
Speaker 5: A lot of the people that are in the professional world or are just phenomenal skateboarders.

00:21:06
Speaker 4: I also see them do a few different other sports, and it's golf or endurance running.

00:21:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's.

00:21:13
Speaker 4: Similar of like you're kind of on your own.

00:21:16
Speaker 5: You're kind of pushing yourself progressing forward, but not so much as relying on a team to be able to do it.

00:21:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:23
Speaker 1: My daughter does gymnastics, and so it's a very similar sort of feel like she gets along with her team, but at the end of the day, none of them can really help her or hurt her on a given event, and it's an interesting personality to watch. She also plays lacrosse, and it's always harder for her on the lacrosse field because it's like she's not in control of what these other people are doing and it kind of drives her a little nuts. I think she's getting more and more used to it. But it's just an interesting mentality. It's just kind of interested to see how do people respond to the gospel with that mental because the gospel draws you into a deeper community, and there's some sense in which there's a deep interconnectedness between people, but it almost feels like it'd be more natural because Christian life, you are developing your own character and that's happening within a body of Christ.

00:22:16
Speaker 2: But it is still very much you developing your own character.

00:22:20
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I'm just interested to see, you know, what dynamics you see there having interacted with the church more broadly.

00:22:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, I definitely feel like there's still a community in skateboarding, and I think because it is small, there are people that still get together and you know, I would say more times, and Nate you could tell me if you've seen this, but I feel like more times when you're together with other skaters, you're kind of just hanging out and having fun. You're not really like leaning in of like, oh, I want to learn this thing today and I'm going to do all these steps to be able to get there. At least for me, especially as I've gotten older, I will learn a lot of like newer tricks or we learned older tricks that I've lost over time, gone on my own. But then when you're skating with everybody else, then you're kind of learning like, oh, how do I pick up these things that have already done, or just like even try new things that may not be.

00:23:08
Speaker 4: Difficult but are just more fun to be able to do.

00:23:12
Speaker 5: As far as the Christian aspect of it, one of the things I love about our organization that we do. We're not affiliated with like a single church. So it's not if you show up to skate Church so I'm in attendia Life Church. I'm not someone who's like, all right, you have to go to Life Church. All of our volunteers are leaders. They go to different churches, and my hope is that they start attending skate church on a Tuesday, but we'll go to a church on Sunday, one that's local to them, one that may be familiar to their demographic or how they were raised. And my hope is that you know, one of our five, six, seven, eight, ten leaders that are there that go to different churches will be there at the front, do already be able to greet them, and so it does kind of take them from that. Yes, you're going to grow in your own faith individually, right, it's your own relationship with Jesus, but at the same time, you are using that community aspect of how do we pull someone back into church and overcome that feeling that I felt that was man. Nobody here looks like me or isn't interested in the same thing as me. I think it's harder too in young adults, and I think you guys may feel this too. But you know, you could be in youth group your whole time. Ye're in youth, you graduate now you're nineteen. If you don't have a college ministry or a young adult ministry, you know, are you going to Bob's you know, forty five year old men's group? Like how are you able to connect there? Like that there's wisdom and that's good and you should be there easy.

00:24:35
Speaker 6: That's my age, But you know what I.

00:24:38
Speaker 4: Mean, it's like, what do you do?

00:24:39
Speaker 5: How do you connect in a way of like, you know, I'm thirty four and it's still hard for me to connect with sixteen seventeen year olds at skate now. So to find people that are like interested in the same thing, have common interest, I think it gives them a safe space to be able to have a trusted mentor to be able to ask the tough questions. I don't know if you guys are felt this, But like when I was younger, early twenties and started going to church, I was like scared to ask questions because I felt like if I asked a question out of the Bible that I didn't know or understand, I would be met with the response of, oh, I don't think you have enough faith. And it's like, well for me to wrestle with that individually, if that's what I think I'm going to feel. But if we can bring alongside some other people to build this community, it gives them a safe space to ask those questions and struggle and try to find those answers as well. And it may not be the perfect answer, right, but it's something that even if we don't know. One of the things I share with our leaders is if somebody brings something to you that you don't understand, my favorite response is, hey, man, that's a great question.

00:25:46
Speaker 4: Why don't you take a week do some research on it.

00:25:48
Speaker 5: I'm going to take a week, do some research, connect to a few pastors, let's wrap around next week and figure out what we kind of landed on or what we think theology or the Bible says about it. And I think that takes you from that solidarity standpoint of being a believer to oh, okay, I can grow my faith, yes, with me and Jesus, but also in community alongside other people.

00:26:09
Speaker 3: Nice and one thing I love to add to that, Dylan, And you can speak to this too, And I'm sure relate skateboarding for me from when I first started at a young.

00:26:19
Speaker 6: Age to now.

00:26:20
Speaker 3: It's always not a catch all, but it's a place that if you show up and you've got a skateboard, even if you're not good at your first day, if you are trying, like you're in like there's no judgment. Like I feel like sometimes in sports like it can be clickie and stuff, but skateboarding it's like gonna accept everybody. And you've probably experienced this too, Dylan. But I've been in other countries where there's a language barrier, but you have that common ground with skateboarders, and it's like, Man, if I'm in a city, I don't know, if I don't know anybody, I'm gonna find a skate park because I can make instant friends because it's like that commonality, that common ground. Everyone's so accepting. So I think there's a lot of kids that don't really feel like they fit in anywhere else, and it's like a safety net. Skateboarding's got them. So there's a gallo at my church and you know Tamika Dylan, Yeah.

00:27:05
Speaker 6: I've struggled.

00:27:06
Speaker 3: I've watched her struggle the last couple of years trying to find her way and get connected into the community to our church. Well, my pastor's mom was telling her about skate ministry and so she connected with her with us and we have a text line and I think we have you know, social media that tells like where the kids are.

00:27:21
Speaker 6: But she has loved it, even though.

00:27:23
Speaker 3: She's like, I'm not a good skateboarder and I feel like and so slowly she's kind of been like putting that away, but she just loves being there and like feeling like she's part of something and connecting.

00:27:32
Speaker 6: And so we see that all the time.

00:27:34
Speaker 3: And that's what I love about taking skate ministry to people because a lot of kids might not go to church at first, but through relationship they will after having that common ground and like when we bring church to them, so it's like they show up thinking they're just going to skate at a skate park and they're like, dude, these guys got pizza and they're encouraging us, and then afterwards they're cleaning up the park. We always do that, James the Bible Study, and it's just really cool to build those relationships slowly and that's what fire me up and I want to do it for the rest of my life.

00:28:01
Speaker 4: It's awesome.

00:28:04
Speaker 1: Let me ask this question, is it just a little broader You're working with a lot of younger aged kids like gen Z and whatever is after gen Z?

00:28:15
Speaker 2: What is that gen A or something like that. Do we start over?

00:28:19
Speaker 1: Yep, So gen Z and Jena, do you find that they're asking I think there's this perception a lot of times that gen Z and Jena are asking different questions than previous generations asked when they were like sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

00:28:35
Speaker 2: What are you finding, like.

00:28:36
Speaker 1: Do you find that they have different sort of questions about Jesus, different sort of questions about God and the Church than you remember having when you were that age.

00:28:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think.

00:28:48
Speaker 5: It's more of they're seeing a lot more and so they're taking in a lot more. One of the things that we've talked a lot about is like with gen Z and Jena, I remember getting the Internet. I remember the family computer like at home. I remember logging on to MySpace.

00:29:07
Speaker 4: It so good.

00:29:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, I remember it was like so for me, getting online is like something you do and you like prepare and you plan for it. Like I remember, I literally got Instagram because skateboarders started getting Instagram, and I was like, I've got to be on Instagram because I want people to see these moments that I'm curating. I've seen gen Z and Jena have always been online. It's not just something they do, it's like a part of their personality. And so I think because they're receiving so much information, they just don't know what to do with it. We're leading to this place to where I don't think they're asking new questions, but I think they're being bold enough to ask the questions that we've thought about and we're too afraid to ask.

00:29:49
Speaker 4: There's this really.

00:29:50
Speaker 5: Interesting book called The Anxious Generation, and it talks a lot about gen Z and Jena and how they are literally just being flooded with information but dopamine, and it's leading to a place to where it's like they literally feel paralyzed and can't move. And so we have an opportunity to kind of answer those questions. But also I think it has led them to a place where they're like, just tell me, tell me the truth. Like because I open TikTok and it has four different things about who Jesus is, and I open Instagram and it's four separate different things, and I'm hearing all these things. I need a trusted mentor who can share with me the truth of who Jesus actually is and how he wants me to live my life, especially like everything that's happened in the past week.

00:30:31
Speaker 4: Right, it's like news and communication and move so fast and it's not always after it.

00:30:38
Speaker 5: And so what I think I see from them is they're just so overwhelmed that they don't care where or how to get the information, or how dumb they feel asking the question, which they shouldn't feel dumb, but they just want to know.

00:30:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's just being flooded with everything that's interesting, it really conforms. So I had a sociologist on the show I Don't Know a few months ago, and she studies technology and adolescents and the generations and all that kind of good stuff. And one of the things she mentioned was that gen z Jena seem to be more sensitive to what they are missing out on because they're so immersed in that digital environment. They said, it's people like us, like gen X, you know, and older maybe millennials that don't tend to notice it because even though we've seen both worlds, we're kind of just trying to cope with what we're doing in a digital space, and so we don't really notice all that we're missing. But the gen Z and Jena, because they'd never had it, they're seeing it from a completely different, like a little bit different angle than we are, and they're they're kind of doing exactly what you're talking about. They're trying to seek out and be like, what's authentic, what's real, what's true? Where do I find some stability within all of this mess? And they're starting to gravitate back toward more concrete practices as oppos to.

00:32:00
Speaker 2: Just all digital all the time. So that's fascinating.

00:32:03
Speaker 1: That's that's really uh interesting that that's what you're seeing as well.

00:32:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, one of the things that I'm seeing too on that is the like rebirth of analog analog everything. The past two years, the church that I was working at, we would see anywhere from twenty five hundred to thirty five hundred people on a weekend, and young adults were bringing in Bibles like paper bibles, which are church the one that we attend to help created the Bible app on your phone. So that's kind of what we push people to do is practical, right, But I remember just seeing all these young adults bringing in paper Bibles and I was like, this is insane, Like you practically, it doesn't make any sense. You can just have it on your phone, your care on this big thing in a journal and three pins and markers.

00:32:51
Speaker 2: Right like a back church.

00:32:53
Speaker 5: Basically, yeah, yeah, we always made this joke that was like we can kind of tell who's new in the church on if they bring in like their actual big Bible or not. But what we're seeing more and more with that too is it's not just analog in their Bible, but it's a lot of the way that they're living and practicing what they're doing. Whereas like I'm taking on a lot of like podcasts, different leadership teachings where they rather get the actual physical book that they can feel that they can write in and take notes, which I think is so interesting as well to see the shift of almost pushing away this digital lifestyle that we've created to try to get back and to slow down and spend time and get to know who God is through you know, more traditional practices.

00:33:40
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how encouraging that is. I mean it's just a really.

00:33:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:33:48
Speaker 1: I mean I've done I started out an online education and higher ed and you know now we do a lot with digital and obviously podcasts and stuff like that. So I don't think it's not valuable. Yeah, but I also just know. I mean I can still remember that musty smell you get when you go to the library and at a book, right, And it's like kids should have that memory, right. It's just there's something really tangible and cool about it. And even though you couldn't say this is exactly what benefit it gives you, there's some benefit it gives you, Like I refused to believe there's not, So it's just really encouraging to hear that they're they're headed back to those more analog spaces.

00:34:25
Speaker 3: I love that, yeah, because it's it's got tons of stuff written in it, like when I was a Bible school and like my whole journey, and then it's got skate stickers all over it's over there on my side table.

00:34:37
Speaker 6: But otherwise, yeah, I love it.

00:34:40
Speaker 3: And the cool thing is too Dylan has really adapted. Like when I was doing skate Ministry, Instagram really wasn't launched yet, and nobody I mean I didn't even have a cell phone twas twenty three, so the first few years, like it was literally just flyers at places or just running into kids at skate parks and then inviting them to Tuesday. But like Dylan has has fully embraced and done an amazing job, even me at my age, Like I'm encouraged every single day by his little thing that he sends us. And then you know, I'm seeing the community starting to build, people asking for prayer and just connecting on a deeper level, which kids need, like we said, because otherwise they're just going to be out there and digital land, like you know, consuming all the other things. So it's nice to kind of disrupt and break that up. And how many people do we have, Dylan, Like you've said the number before, we have a lot.

00:35:25
Speaker 5: Of Yeah, I looked this morning, So in our skaters and scripture, there's like four hundred and thirty people that are in there right now that are reading it every day, which is super encouraging coming from someone who worked for the company.

00:35:37
Speaker 4: That created the Bible app. I just kind of started asking people, you know, like, hey, are you doing the.

00:35:42
Speaker 5: You know, first of the day, it's on the Bible app, and a lot of people just they either don't want it on their phone or they just don't digitally want to really be digging through their phone super often. So I was like, how can I create something that's less than four hundred words, it's tangible that I'm already, you know, filling up my cup in the morning.

00:35:58
Speaker 4: How can I just pour out real quick to other people that I hope.

00:36:02
Speaker 5: That encourages them, but I also hope it inspires them to rediverse and be like, oh, I've never heard that before, I've never looked at it like that before, and take time to dig in a little bit deeper.

00:36:12
Speaker 4: Totally.

00:36:14
Speaker 2: That's fantastic.

00:36:16
Speaker 1: I think there's still definitely still a place for the digital, but yeah, it just amazes me that gen Z and Jena are sort of headed back to the analog and that what they're looking for is something that's more authentic, probably even less intense in a lot of ways than what you're describing, you know, with the all the information that sort of comes at them. And I think ultimately that's just a really good helpful movement for gen Z and Jena to be stepping back from those things.

00:36:52
Speaker 5: So I'm sure you've probably seen through the barn and studies, but like physical Bibles are.

00:36:57
Speaker 4: At an all time high when it comes to purchase.

00:37:01
Speaker 5: And then another one that I love and we're really trying to looking at a skateboarding. We're seeing more females in it, but it's still a male dominated sport.

00:37:09
Speaker 6: Is gen Z.

00:37:11
Speaker 5: Males are leading the way and going back to church, which is one of the first generations and I don't know how long where men are leading away. And so it's shifting the way that we should communicate with people. One, if you're a pastor and you're talking to your church, it used to be okay, I'm speaking to a woman to bring her husband, you know, into church, And I think of so many people that I know whose wife is the one that kind of brought them back into church. But it's helping me kind of shift my perspective to these young adults and even some of these you know, mid twenties, early thirties all right, now I should be communicating kind of to the men of what it looks like to bring your family with you into skate church or just into church in general. But yeah, I'm super and just encouraged by that, and then just always trying to navigate with those studies to of like how should we be communicating you know, who's the one person we should be communicating to. I heard I think it was Chad Veach say one time. He was like, every time I go and speak, I'm speaking to the sixteen year old high school student because if I can reach him, I can reach everybody else in the room. Because that's who got him to be able to communicate too, because that's what he said he needed when he was that age. Yeah, so it is this like we get to know and understand the knowledge and me encouraged, but then also use it to be able to reach the right demographic at the right time.

00:38:29
Speaker 6: Totally.

00:38:30
Speaker 2: So it's interesting.

00:38:31
Speaker 1: I'll just ask this question, see if you one of the things I've been a little concerned about. I've seen the stats about men, you know, sort of leading the way back to church, and I don't think there's anything bad that you could say about that.

00:38:43
Speaker 2: But I also think that there's a lot of.

00:38:47
Speaker 1: I'll call it machismo floating about right, And I'm wondering how you think about that from you know, working with these young people, how do you help them cultivate a strong, confident understanding what it means to be a male disciple of Jesus Christ without them sort of falling into that machismost sort of bravado lifestyle. Is that a struggle for the kid you work with, you know, are they looking up to people who are just like, not necessarily even we might not call them bold, we might just call them brazen. Yeah, you know, yeah, I don't know you seen anything like that?

00:39:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think both.

00:39:28
Speaker 5: And so the role that I played when I worked in pastoral ministry was I was our missions and our life group's pastor. So I oversaw through my career life church anywhere from two hundred and seventy five to one hundred and twenty life groups at one time. And one of the things that I would definitely see, like time and time again, is you kind of need something that fits both groups.

00:39:52
Speaker 4: So one you need the.

00:39:55
Speaker 5: You know, the guy who went out and drank last night on Saturday that shows up to church is like, I'm not going to go to like a Leviticus Bible study, but I'll go hang out with some dudes.

00:40:03
Speaker 4: That skate at the skate park.

00:40:05
Speaker 5: So it's always recognizing, you know, what journey are they on and where can we start them and do we have practical things or people set up to be able to take them to the next level. And so with our specific organization, we definitely have these people that come in. Even some of our students are pretty bold in their faith, but I would say they're kind of like that Tier.

00:40:25
Speaker 4: One, Tier two getting to know who Jesus is. They're on fire for the Lord.

00:40:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, And you can see that group when they go out and they skate together. They're hanging together, and you can see the same of the people that are like, Okay, I've been a believer for a few years.

00:40:38
Speaker 4: They're kind of hanging together talking about what they're learning. And then me and Nate.

00:40:43
Speaker 5: And a few other people that are kind of in our crew that aren't skating as big of stuff because we're not trying to get hurt, are spending more time of like and we've been following the Lord for a while, and so we're just thinking about how do we impact these other people to take them to the next levels. That has been so cool of being in ministry for so long as you get to see those kids that used to go to skate camp just for the free food and water and that was it. And now ten years later I'm looking at them and I'm like, shoot, man, this this guy has a family, he's got kids, he's taken them to church, he's left who Jesus is And it's fun to see that from the perspective of people. Nate has pointed into as well, these people that have been going for a long time, you know, all the way back to two thousand and five, that are still showing up now with their families and so what is that. It's long it's the long term games kind of like, yes, we only catch them in the moment, but how do we continue to every single day, every single week, every single month. What's the next step? And so Nate talked a bit about our Men's Bible study, But the reason I started it was because a lot of the statistics that I'm seeing is, you know, how do we take these men that could live the common West cultural Christian lifestyle wile and move to be someone who's actually uncommon when it comes to male Christianity, someone who is bold, someone who is going to fight for their family, someone who's not going to look at those things that pop up on Instagram, someone that's not going to put just the verse in their Instagram bio, but someone.

00:42:15
Speaker 4: Who's going to live it out.

00:42:16
Speaker 5: So we're pretty strategic with the way that we're able to put some of those things in, and we have like practical tools that we're able to do all that stuff as well. But for me, it's how do I find the right people that have that bold faith that can be able to mesh well with the students, the kids, or the adults that are coming and kind of push them to that next level of getting to know Jesus deeper.

00:42:37
Speaker 1: That's awesome what we're about. Out of time and so we're kind of getting the end of the episode. I want to ask you a question that I ask almost everybody who comes on, so I'm just kind of interested to hear what you say. The question is this, what does the church need to be doing today to be and make disciples more faithfully? Yeah, what do you see that we're what are we missing? What do we need to be doing.

00:43:03
Speaker 5: I think one of the things that we will see over the next few years in the church we're kind of seeing on the West Coast. I have nothing against big churches. I worked at a master church for a very long time. If we cannot find a way to build legitimate, sustainable, consistent community within those people, I think that we in pastoral ministry will look back later and say we put on a really good show on Sundays or people shut up and they raised their hand and they gave their life to Christ, and then we kind of left them hanging.

00:43:35
Speaker 4: And so one of the things that I think we.

00:43:37
Speaker 5: Can be able to do is communicate every single week. The church isn't just a building, it's the people. How can we empower the people that are walking into the church to be out and to go into make disciples in their everyday life. For some people, it's going to be the first person you see in the morning, which could be your significant other. For others, it could be the guy you see at the gas station, the Starbucks barista. Like, how do we just take those small things? Because I think with social media we've made it into this well. For me to be a impactful Christian, I need to have four podcasts and one hundred thousand people on following a book every year, when in actuality, it's like, dude, look at Jesus like he had his twelve And if we're trying to build sustainable, deep relationship with people, I think we start with a twelve.

00:44:23
Speaker 4: First.

00:44:25
Speaker 5: It's not fun, it's not pretty, it's not glamorous, it's dirty. But that's literally the life that Jesus has called us too, not a life of perfection or glamorous or anything like that. It truly is taking authority, taking the extreme ownership of I'm going to occupy the space that God has given me as the church, not as the building, but as an individual that walks in through the doors on Sundays, I think the more that we can shift away from the consumer mindset of man, this church isn't for me, this message wasn't for me. My favorite one I'd always hear is like, yeah, ill didn't play my worship song.

00:45:01
Speaker 4: You know this is Sunday.

00:45:03
Speaker 5: And my response was, I don't know if you know that those songs aren't for you, brother, like those songs are to worship God. And so I think with just the consumeristic culture we have is reminding people we're not called to be spiritual consumers, but to be spiritual contributors.

00:45:18
Speaker 4: In everyday life. And it doesn't always need to be like the most incredible, glamorous thing.

00:45:24
Speaker 5: It's take the time to give a word of encouragement to somebody who needs it. I was on a call with some professional eskateboarders on Monday and my biggest encouragement and they all laugh because it's all happened to them. The easiest way that we can love someone else at the skate park is if you're like me. I go to the skate park. I've got thirty minutes to an hour because you know life right, put my headphones in, I want to skate. And every time I do that, there's some child or student who's just like wants my attention. And in those moments we recognize we as the church, we are called to be disruptible, and so just taking the moment and saying, hey, you know what's God calling me to do in this moment? How can I actually be the church? Not just on a Sunday, not just someone that goes to the church, but is a church Monday through Sunday. And that's something I want to share this real quick before we get into But another part of our ministry that we just started and we're going to do in a lot more communication with it is recognizing we're called not just to addition, but to multiplication. And so earlier this year we started something called Skate Church Network and it's a way for us to help empower other people that want to start a similar organization that we have. But years we've been doing this, I'll have people that will ask like, hey, we love what you're doing.

00:46:38
Speaker 4: How do we do this where we're located?

00:46:40
Speaker 5: And so we've created this network of people that share resources, have strategy, and.

00:46:45
Speaker 4: Then a digital community.

00:46:47
Speaker 5: Right now we have twenty three organizations in sixteen states and two countries, and it's just this reminder of like, not all of them are in full time ministry, not them all of them are getting paid to do it, But it's them saying I want to be a contributor to.

00:47:00
Speaker 4: What God has called me to do. I've got two hours on Tuesday night.

00:47:03
Speaker 5: I can sit in front of the TV and watch whatever brain rot they're gonna play, or I can actually go out in my community and make a difference. And one is so much more rewarding than the other one. It may feel like more work.

00:47:16
Speaker 4: In Nate.

00:47:16
Speaker 5: I'll say this and don't repeat it, but there are Tuesday nights where I'm like, I don't know if I have it in me to go like I've worked all day. I've been doing this for close to a decade. Every single time I leave, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is this is why we do it. This is so rewarding every single time. What else would I have done? You know, I'm going to get to the end of my life and be able to look at Jesus and say, man, I recognize as many opportunities as I could that you put in front of me, and I hope that I was able to do something that mattered and made a difference, even in just one person's life. If one person's life is eternally different because of me, that's a win.

00:47:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool.

00:47:51
Speaker 3: I could jump in and say something too that I know Dylan won't say about him. Say it myself, but he is very gifted with digital stuff. Him and his wife are amazing, Like they've really built something that's super creative.

00:48:02
Speaker 6: I think it's dynamic.

00:48:04
Speaker 3: So we'll put in the show notes, but follow Varsity skateboarding, follow skate church case.

00:48:09
Speaker 6: But get involved.

00:48:10
Speaker 3: Anyone that's listening to this, even if you don't live in Kansas City, you can be part of that network.

00:48:14
Speaker 6: You can be inspired to reach out in your community.

00:48:17
Speaker 3: But Dylan does a lot of videos for a lot of like extreme sports companies, and he's just really gifted in the digital space. So I sometimes you tell people, oh, yeah, follow this person, but in the back of your mind, you're like, it's not really, it's not really that greatly, Like I will co sign all day long on everything that they do because it's amazing and it really points people to Jesus. And so I'm super thankful for him in my life and just getting to get plugged in.

00:48:41
Speaker 6: I'm thankful for my son being able to be there. Like you don't know.

00:48:45
Speaker 3: I've told you before, Dylan, but you don't know how much that means to me, Like my son will be like, Dad, I know you're tired, but you've got to come tonight, Like he's dragging me to tuesdays when I feel like you were saying, sometimes it gets like that, especially when we get older.

00:48:57
Speaker 6: So but anyone that's listening will put it in the show.

00:49:00
Speaker 4: Notes.

00:49:00
Speaker 3: Check their organization out is making a huge difference if you're interested in supporting, coming alongside them, praying for them. We have a skate camp coming up for Halloween called Spooky Skate Camp. I'm super pumped and I think, Dylan, you said, we have a few ministry partners that are doing from that group you're just talking about that's going to come in out of town.

00:49:19
Speaker 6: So it's just exciting.

00:49:20
Speaker 3: I love seeing what God's doing and I can't wait for what the future holds.

00:49:24
Speaker 1: Very cool. Well, Dylan, this has been great, Thanks for being here. Thanks for all the work you're doing. It sounds like a fantastic ministry. Obviously, Nate is endorsing it, he's been involved. We'll put the weblinks in the show notes so everybody can get in touch. Just encourage you to check it out because reaching the next generation is something I'm really passionate about obviously, and I think you're doing a great job with it.

00:49:47
Speaker 2: Brother, So thanks for being here.

00:49:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you guys for having me. This has been awesome.

00:49:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, y'all, we'll call it a day there and we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian.

00:49:56
Speaker 2: Take care, everybody, just want.

00:49:57
Speaker 1: To take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for the partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.