connecting God, life and us NOAH ABRAHAM MOSES DANIEL JESUS DAVID the risk/adventure/challenge issue JOHN McCARTHY ...pluck o’ the Irish Production Manager Rob Hare Assistant Editor Henry Cavender Graphic Design Kris Lannen David Renyard www.davidjdesigns.me.uk Photography David Renyard Mark Wankel Websites www.lyfe.org.uk www.biblesociety.org.uk www.christiansurfers.co.uk www.tubestation.org www.switch-valdisere.org SURF introduc- tion Surf lyfe (Life Your Faith Encounters) is about wit, wisdom or worldview from or about some of connecting you, the surfer, with your own the big names and influences in surf culture. life-shaper, God. It’s about meeting with your buddies on the beach, on the slopes, in the pub, As your lyfe crew meets, it is helpful to follow this café, après-ski, wherever, to discover what our simple pattern : shaper has to say about our everyday world. • Read – read the passage to yourself, slow it As surfers and boardriders of all kinds, the down, soak it up. lifestyle we all enjoy can be one of danger, • Reflect – talk about it, share your feelings and adventure, challenge, and of taking big risks. what you got from reading. Over the following pages you’ll find six key • Respond – talk about how to respond and agree people who encounter God in different ways, on practical action. each one willing to take a risk and step into their own unique adventure. We hope you enjoy meeting together in this way, and we pray that you will hear God drawing you Each Bible encounter has a section called local into a deeper encounter with him. And remember… knowledge which will give you some helpful the ultimate ride does exist, you just have to background, and off the lip offers relevant fact, know where to look. GENESIS 6. 5-22 The LORD saw how bad the people on earth were and that everything they thought and planned was evil. He was very sorry that he had made them, and he said, “I’ll destroy every living creature on earth! I’ll wipe out people, animals, birds, and reptiles. I’m sorry I ever made them.” But the LORD was pleased with Noah, and this is the story about him. Noah was the only peson who lived right and obeyed God. He had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. God knew that everyone was terribly cruel and violent. So he told Noah: Cruelty and violence have spread everywhere. Now I’m going to destroy the whole earth and all its people. Get some good timber and build a boat. Put rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out. Make it one hundred and thirty-three metres long, twenty-two metres wide, and thirteen metres high. Build a roof on the boat and leave a space of about forty-four centimetres between the roof and the sides. Make the boat three storeys high and put a door on one side. I’m going to send a flood that will destroy everything that breathes! Nothing will be left alive. But I solemnly promise that you, your wife, your sons, and your daugters-in-law will be kept safe in the boat. Bring into the boat with you a male and a female of every kind of animal and bird, as well as a male and a female of every reptile. I don’t want them to be destroyed. Store up enough food both for yourself and for them. Noah did everything the LORD told him to do. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Noah’s life is shaped by two great floods – the Like us, Noah wasn’t perfect (he once had a few flood of evil and the flood of water. Noah was too many beers and ended up lying naked outside the only person left of his generation who still his tent – (see Genesis 9. 20). However, for a followed God completely. lifetime he walked step by step in faith and loved God wholeheartedly. God calls Noah to build a huge boat – in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from any God makes a promise (covenant) with Noah to water! This is no dinghy, the boat is calculated to keep his family safe. A covenant like this was a be the size of one and a half football pitches and binding commitment and was grounded in the four storeys high. During the building of the boat, relationship rather than law (check out another Noah is humiliated by the taunts of others, yet he covenant in Genesis 8. 21-29 which incorporates trusts God completely despite the discomfort. all creation). the lip Japanese Surfer, Motomitsu Watanabe, died surfing big Pipeline in January 2009. East Coast pro, Noah Snyder, who’d paddled for and missed the last wave, saw the whole thing: “As I raced to off get under the wave, he was grabbing for his rail, trying to get over the ledge. Then the wave got real ugly and he got lip launched out into the flats while still holding his rail, and as I went through the wave there was a loud noise like he might have hit his board. When I ducked the next wave I got sucked over back onto the reef; where he would have been, but his board was broken and I didn’t see him anywhere.” Jesse Hines, fellow East coast pro, added, “Noah, Will, Matt Beacham and I came a couple of days later and prayed with his parents for him and them, we know it could have been any of us.” (Surfing Magazine) TUBESTATION READY TOROCK The location is Polzeath, England; a coastal village The Times described as “The Thumping heart of cool Cornwall”, steeped in surf culture and holding a consistent beach break which, if the conditions are right, can hold everything but the very biggest swells with relative ease. Traditionally a longboard Mecca, the wave variety at Polzeath and surrounding breaks gives opportunity for every kind of surfer, making it a consistently popular destination for travellers and giving the hardcore local crew every reason to stay. WWW.TUBESTATION.ORG This story begins in 2002 in the beachside chapel Tubestation now calls home. With declining use it faced closure and commercial sale – to a tycoon or investor with the bucks to turn it into yet more soulless holiday homes. But then a vision was born, one which continues to unfold today. The vision started with a rescue mission and the compulsion to give the site back to the community it once served – back to the surfers. Tubestation opened late summer ’07. It has been set up as an insane hang out, with all the gear. Water temps can reach a numbing 8 degrees in winter here, so although you might have got changed on the beach you won’t want to hang around for long afterwards in freezing easterlies. Slope over to the Tube though and, with the hot outdoor shower and “come in and drip on the floor bro” policy, first impressions are of instant warmth. The hot chocolates are frothy, the coffees look as good as they taste and the sweet crepes hit your sweet spot. Grab a laptop from the bar and check the forecast, warm up some more with a round of golf on the Wii or a skate on the infamously sick indoor mini-ramp, than fall asleep on a bean bag to the gentle sounds of September Sessions playing on the big screens or some laid back tunes from one of the day-time DJs and sessionists. The vibe is one of freedom and creativity. Further development, all by the in-house crew of surfers and creatives, means that Summer 2009 will see two new big outdoor sun-decks ready to rock, providing a solid-ground alternative to the hammocks that rock gently between the palms, and soul surf company Nineplus are opening a shop here with skate brand Rise Worldwide to help pump some funds into the venue . There’s a deeper element too. Being a totally faith-based with a healthy love your neighbour attitude coursing through it’s veins, it adds an extra dimension to the every-day material stuff. It warms the soul. The old church still meets here, but its been brought to life by a healthy indigenous surf community which somehow makes sense of the yawning divide between surf culture and faith culture. This makes for a seamless and fluid transition between the two. After all, who hasn’t sat out back and been blown away by the wonder of it all? genesis 12. 1-9 The LORD said to Abram: Leave your country, your When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram family, and your relatives and go to the land that went as far as the sacred tree of Moreh in a place I will show you. I will bless you and make your called Shechem. The Canaanites were still living descendants into a great nation. You will become in the land at that time, but the LORD appeared to famous and be a blessing to others. I will bless Abram and promised, “I will give this land to your anyone who blesses you, but I will put a curse on family for ever.” Abram then built an altar there for anyone who puts a curse on you. the LORD. Abram was seventy-five years old when the LORD Abram travelled to the hill country east of Bethel told him to leave the city of Haran. He obeyed and and camped between Bethel and Ai, where he left with his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the built another altar and worshipped the LORD.