Surf, Sand and the Savior

At Surfer’s Chapel in Huntington Beach, members don’t worship surfboards and pray for big waves.

But services are Saturday nights instead of Sunday mornings, when surfers would rather be riding waves. And members often bring their surfboards and skateboards with them.

The pulpit is shaped like a surfboard. There is no dress code, so casual surf clothing is perfectly OK. Some attend services barefoot. Baptisms are in the ocean. Even the church motto, a quotation from the Book of Psalms, includes the surf: “Mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty.”

Surfer Bill White and his wife, Bonnie, of Anaheim, founded Surfer’s Chapel in mid-1993 as a way of attracting the surf and beach crowd to church. “The church matches the lifestyle we’re trying to reach,” he says.

But White, now 48 and pastor of the 40-member congregation, emphasizes his church’s serious purpose. Surfer’s Chapel is “a church first, surfers second.”

Church member Frank Starr of Costa Mesa agrees. “Our worship is for God, not for what we do. Our true desire is to know God better--not to know how to surf better.”

Nonetheless, there were image problems at first. Naming the church Surfer’s Chapel troubled some officials of the Foursquare Church, with which the chapel is affiliated. They rejected the name several times before White won them over.

White said that because surfing is a subculture, surfers often feel uncomfortable walking into a traditional church.

“What I liked about it is it fit my lifestyle and I can carry my beliefs in that lifestyle,” said Starr, 46, co-owner of a shower-door manufacturing company.

“It’s a church of casual people who truly love God and are seeking closer and stronger relations with God and have fun at the same time. Christianity doesn’t mean that you can’t also have fun.”