'Action Sports' Ministry Targets Self-Isolated Teens
by Allie Martin
November 4, 2005
(AgapePress) - - A ministry that reaches out to skateboarders and "extreme sports" enthusiasts is making a big impact for Christ. Several years ago a group of skateboarders and wakeboarders in South Carolina began holding demonstrations and giving their Christian testimonies in an effort to reach out to young people. The ministry became known as "SouthTown Riders." David Tolentino, team pastor for SouthTown Riders, says many teenagers who are considered outcasts have been touched by the ministry.
"The reason why action sports started in the first place is because kids didn't want to be involved in the regular team sports like soccer and baseball and football -- so they kind of took up their own thing," Tolentino explains. "It's a very individualistic thing [with kids feeling that] how I do is how people look at me."
Such an environment is ripe for ministry, he says. "People are really seeing a need to minister to those kids who kind of out-cast themselves and help reinforce that by [isolating themselves from] society."
The ministry now holds crusades which include demonstrations as well as testimonials, and focus on specific areas found in the group's mission statement: discipleship, evangelism, and worship. Toward that end, SouthTown is coordinating construction of parks for action sports to draw teens.
"In the next five years we're trying to build a complex to [encourage] kids from all the country and all over the world to be a part of SouthTown's ministries. So we're in the process of building skateboard and wakeboard parks," Tolentino explains.
The focus will be on urban areas. "We're going to try to do this centrally located in the Charlotte area," he says. "We just want to hit a more urban area and offer underprivileged kids [the chance] to be able to come in, so we've chosen Charlotte to be our home base -- and we're trying to keep it as urban as possible."
SouthTown Riders has just released a devotion called "Fire in the Core."
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
