Church banned, then welcomed skateboarders
PERTH, ON—St. James the Apostle Anglican Church is probably not the type of church one would expect to start an innovative skateboarding ministry, according to warden Gerrit Jansen van Beek.
In fact, when the cottage country congregation discovered local young people were using the church hall has a makeshift skate-park, they promptly put up a "No Skate Boarders Allowed" sign and hoped the problem would go away.
"We kicked them out essentially," Jansen van Beek says. "We didn't have liability insurance, and they were damaging our folding tables by piling them up and using them as ramps to skip off."
But one member of the congregation—Peter McCracken—saw it differently. Together with Thor Stewart, who runs a skate-shop, McCracken approached the church about setting up skateboarding classes. The church agreed and invested in professional quality equipment. They now run two skateboarding clubs a week during the fall and winter.
"My thought was this is a community where we need young people to be here, and not to send them away," McCracken says, in a YouTube video about the skate church.
"[The] primary goals we have here are better skateboarding and fellowship," Stewart adds, "praising God, and doing what you love, and doing it as worship."
Along with lessons for both children and teens, they also include a prayer and discussion time. Out of the around 30 young people who attend, only a small handful have church-going families.
"I think the important thing is that any church can do something like this," says Jansen van Beek, who now volunteers with the club. "It doesn't take a special church. It's just a matter of throwing the doors open, and then standing back and being amazed."
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