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Can you catch this vision?

Start small. Get some portable ramps, with a trailer or truck. Find towns in a 15 minute radius from your home base which have a skate community but no skate park. Talk to either city officials or a church in that community first to gain there input and support as to it being a good idea to go or not. Get permission from the city or church to use a parking lot where there is enough space to set up your ramps. Go to the same place, same time every week to build consistent relationships. Promote through, schools, local shops, papers, fliers, etc. If a city, school or church is on board they can help promote it. Get as many kids coming as possible, learn as many names as you can and build relationships. Use your time to speak into kids lives on a personal level and also present a short message to the whole group. Be disciplined in doing this.

Give this ministry a name. You can call it simply ‘Sidewalk Skate Ministry’ or ‘Sidewalk Skate Church’, or identify it with the name of your existing ministry. Personally I like the idea of making it clear exactly what people can expect from the name. When you go into a new community you don’t want to confuse people. They need to know if they come and participate they are getting involved in a ministry and they will hear a Christian message if they want to skate. Bait and switch tactics can cause resentment. So try to be upfront about the mission and purpose of your presence. The name is a fast and easy way to communicate this up front and sometimes, but not always makes for a warmer welcome.

Eventually when there is enough success grow that sidewalk skate site into a permanent skatepark ministry in partnership with a local ministry. Then find a new location for starting another Sidewalk Skate ministry location in its time slot. Once a sidewalk Skate Ministry becomes a permanent skatepark it can then launch its own sidewalk Skate Ministry program and continue to spread the same way.

The Format:

  • Roughly 2-4 hr time frame, depending on your schedule and team.
  • Play music, let kids skate, provide protective gear, skate product, food and drink or sell as a fund raiser, Show videos if you have the means. Stop the skating and music half way through, present your message and then allow skating again afterwards.
  • When kids arrive, get parents to sign waivers, which are logged into a laptop each week for quick reference . Give them a wrist band to identify who has a waiver signed while skating. Each week a give away can be awarded at random from names of those who sign in.

For example a board, wheels, shirt, etc.

  • One team can have multiple sites (1-7). One each day with a team(s) of 4-8 people would work. A team can also consist of promising and mature students from your youth ministry or home base. They could be your true disciples who you train up in doing this ministry and eventually commission to run their own sites.
  • A new message can be used for all sites for the whole week. You can add more trucks or more teams to increase the number of sites and kids reached spanning out from home base. These sites also act as great promotion to bring kids into the home base park, ministry or church. You could even deliberately run events at the home base and invite them to it.
  • Run in semesters based on weather and finish out semesters with a comp, or run mini comps the whole semester and award bigger prizes for your finale.

Equipment:

  • Possibly Insurance
  • Truck and/or trailer with portable ramps and stage (or use ramps as stage)
  • Laptop (with waiver, membership program, e-list, downloaded music, videos)
  • Waivers
  • Sound System
  • Helmets and safety gear
  • Skate tools
  • Wrist bands
  • Snack Shop
  • Skate Product Shop
  • Free Bibles
  • DVD/TV