Free Surf Flick Features Christ as Life’s Crest

The formula for surf flicks is about as predictable as a sunrise: surfing, vulgarity and girls-a-go-go.

“Changes,” a new surfing movie that arrives in Orange County for a one-night showing Friday, offers some of the same standard stuff: barrel rides and wipeouts, aerials and cutbacks, floaters and 360s.

But the film leaves out the four-letter words and women in G-strings that are de rigueur in the straight-to-video documentaries popular with hard-core surfers.

It puts in a dose of faith instead.

Intercut between spectacular surfing footage are Christian testimoniesfrom the professional surfers on the screen. Eight of the world’s best--Tom Curren, Tita Tavares and C.T. Taylor among them--tell how Jesus changed their lives.

“I did feel that tug on my heart, like this is right . . . God is real,” Taylor says in the film. “I just really felt his truth. So I gave my life to him. . . . I see how God’s never, like, took his hand off me. Like, he’s always been there.”

The movie, which is shown for free, has already played to packed theaters in Hawaii and other parts of California, including Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego County, where 1,500 attended a showing last month.

“At first, our hope was to reach mostly surfers and the surf industry,” said Bryan Jennings, 25, the film’s co-director and co-producer. “But at the premieres, we’re getting even better feedback from people who don’t surf--the moms and wives and kids.”

The evangelical message of “Changes” doesn’t stop with the closing credits. After each screening, Jennings--who’s also a top-ranked surfer--stands before the audience, delivers the Gospel and then conducts an altar call.

“We give people an opportunity afterward to receive Christ,” Jennings said. “Response has been overwhelming.”

The film’s emotional climax is provided by the life and death of Chris O’Rourke, one of the best surfers California has ever produced. O’Rourke died in 1981 from Hodgkin’s disease.

O’Rourke’s surfing buddies--and his chief nemesis--eloquently tell his story. A young and cocky surfer, O’Rourke helped make Windansea in La Jolla a surf spot for locals only. If any outsider paddled out there, O’Rourke would yell, intimidate or, in one case, tip over a surfer’s van and set it on fire.

But after being diagnosed with cancer and receiving Christ, O’Rourke would paddle over to newcomers and welcome them to Windansea. He tried to convert anyone who’d listen, including a hated rival who recounts the story with teary eyes. Because O’Rourke was idolized by so many young surfers, people listened to what he had to say. His impact is still felt by the next generation of surfers who, like Jennings, discovered God through someone O’Rourke touched.

Jennings has big dreams about what “Changes” can do for the surfing subculture.

He cites Ephesians 3:20 as his biblical inspiration: “Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. . . .”

“My way of thinking is to sit around and imagine the big, awesome ways God can use me,” Jennings said.

The plan right now is to screen “Changes” in coastal cities around the world, anywhere surfers can be found. The film will soon be translated into Spanish, French and Japanese.

Jennings said he and his partner, Edward Feuer, got funding for the film--which cost “somewhere under $100,000”--from businessmen who “had money and loved the Lord. Most of them were surfers too.”

Admission to the film is always free. For the Orange County screening, six local churches and the owner of the Port Theater in Corona del Mar have underwritten the cost. Any profits--from sponsorships or T-shirt and video sales--go back into making copies of the video, which Jennings hopes to soon hand out at surf contests.

The video is about to extend its reach inland. A ministry that provides material for youth pastors will send out 7,000 copies of the video across the country in April.

But for Jennings, it’s his fellow surfers he most wants to reach.

“The surfers are so used to looking at two-dimensional heroes in magazines,” said Jim Babbage, a Newport Beach financial advisor and surfer who’s volunteered to help distribute the film. “We’ve seen kids who are going nowhere turn 180 degrees because their role models expressed in this movie what they believed in.”

“Changes” will be screened Friday at 7 p.m. at the Port Theater in Corona del Mar. Admission is free. For more information, call (949) 631-2880.

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William Lobdell, editor of Times Community News, writes about faith as a regular contributor to The Times’ Orange County religion page. His e-mail address is bill.lobdell@latimes.com.