A film commissioned by YFC’s ‘Ethos’ project – a series of short films for young adults.
Tagged: skateboarding
The Beginning
I was 15 years old, expressing my views rather loudly as normal at my youth group.
That week I had been skateboarding on Nottingham city centre’s Market Square with my friends as usual. Two policemen had approached our group and informed us that we were not allowed to skateboard here, and if we continued, our boards would be confiscated. I told the policeman I would stop skateboarding if he told the mountain bikers across the other side of the square to stop cycling. He told me it ‘wasn’t the same’ and refused to continue the conversation.
Later that day we went to a church car park, only to be greeted by a big sign saying ‘no skateboarders’. Not even ‘no skateboarding’, but ‘no skateboarders’. I was really angry. More than just a little bit angry. It wasn’t about not being able to skateboard where I wanted, it was about people’s attitudes and prejudice towards skaters, towards young people who were ‘a bit different’, it was about people’s irrational fear of subcultures. It was about a church that was supposed to love young people, but instead put up signs to keep them away.
My rant became a preach, as I told my friends about the Jesus I knew, who didn’t just love subcultures and marginalized people, but who actually made a conscious and deliberate effort to seek out those people. The Jesus who stepped into peoples boats, who went to all the places no one would go, who got into trouble because of who he hung out with and what he said.
Then came the idea.
A project, run by Christians, not just to include subcultures, but to actually work with them.
It was a great idea. But I couldn’t do it. You see I wasn’t good enough. I was one those ‘annoying’ kids in the youth group. The one who did lots of stupid things and distracted others, the one who questioned everything, the one who was always too honest, about everything. The one who had been through a lot of bad stuff. The one who the youth workers breathed a sigh of relief about when I didn’t show up.
Two years passed, and I was half way through A levels I was failing. My tutor suggested I explored other avenues, my teachers said I wouldn’t amount to anything because I couldn’t focus and apply myself. I had to leave, or they would have made me leave. Which to be honest, was fair enough. Most of the time I turned up stoned, and when I was there I was arrogant, distracting and sarcastic. I lived a double life of being a Christian who went to church on Sundays, but failed miserably to put anything I believed into practice during the week.
Suddenly, glandular fever hit. All I could do was lie in bed and think. I thought about me, I thought about God, I thought about my life. I thought about where I was headed. And I thought about that day, at youth group, about that idea. I thought about those skaters, on the market square, rejected by the church. And I knew I had to make my choice.
I left Nottingham at 17 to take a gap year with the only organisation who accepted year out volunteers under 18 with no money. I was placed with a church, and a Youth for Christ centre. Within six weeks I knew youth work was my calling. I gave up skateboarding, but skateboarders remained burned on my heart. I couldn’t avoid them. I kept thinking about that idea. Someone should do that I thought. But not me, because people like me don’t do stuff like that. I’m not good enough.
I did a second gap year, and during my second year, the national director of Youth for Christ at the time, Roy Crowne, came to speak at an event in our city. We had dinner with him, and I told him about my idea. I got excited as he thought it was good, and said ‘you should do it’. He asked me whether I’d ever written my idea down.
That night I poured my heart out onto a piece of A4. The project would be called ‘One Eighty’. It would provide young people with great skate facilities, but most importantly, it would allow young people the opportunity to turn their lives around, to change their minds, to move from a life without God to a life with God, to ‘One Eighty’.
That night as I slept, I dreamt of a skate event, that I was running.
I saw a set of double doors, with glass windows.
Beyond the glass windows was a massive group of skaters, queuing down some steps, onto the road, waiting to get in. To this skate event, to the first ever ‘One Eighty’.
The next day I marched into the venue and told Roy about the idea. I expected him to take my idea and make it happen, but what he said in response definitely surprised me. He vaguely glanced at the piece of paper I had spent nearly all night working on. And he just said one sentence, and walked off, which I will never forget. “You better get on with it then. Because if you don’t do it, then no one will”.
I had another choice to make.
More time passed, and now I was nineteen years old. I had arrived for my first day at work at Bath Youth for Christ, as their new ‘Skate Outreach Worker’. My job was to turn this idea into reality, to make One Eighty happen, as my placement as part of my youth work degree. I had no qualifications. I was a teenager. I still wasn’t very good at being a Christian during the week. All I had was a desk, and a chair. That was it. No money, no team, no resources, nothing. A broken, unqualified, insecure, lonely teenager, full of pain and questions and anger and fear.
I did a survey of local skaters, to find out their views and needs. I spent time at the skate park getting to know people. I introduced myself at the skate shops. I wrote a business plan. I worked out how much money we would need. There was a lot of zeros. I told the trustees what I wanted to do. They were amazing, and were up for giving it a go. We agreed to hold a test event, where we could try the ramps we wanted to buy, and see whether the need was really there. If there were more than 100 people, then we would go ahead and launch One Eighty as a project.
The launch event date arrived. We had a great venue, we had the ramps hired, we had the volunteers, we had a logo, we had the press coming, we had a great DJ, we had the local skate team coming to give a demo, we had everything. One hour until we opened, and everything went wrong. The DJ was stuck in traffic, the people bringing the ramps were lost, I had forgotten about five hundred things. Half an hour to go and everything arrived, we just about got it all up and running in time.
Five minutes to go and I remembered that I hadn’t put up the signs on the front door. We hadn’t arrived through the front door where the young people would be arriving, we had entered with the equipment through a side door. I walked very quickly with the signs in my hand, and as I approached the entrance my heart leaped out of my chest, and I dropped the signs on the floor.
I saw a set of double doors, with glass windows.
Beyond the glass windows was a massive group of skaters, queuing down some steps, onto the road, waiting to get in. To this skate event, to the first ever ‘One Eighty’.
My dream just came true. That had never happened before. We saw 400 young people come through the door that day. It was absolute chaos. I loved every second of it. I wasn’t sure, but I think there was a need for a skate project. I think there was a need for ‘One Eighty’.
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The Big Black Truck
Having a mobile skate park in a trailer that weighs over a ton is great, but also involves some slightly annoying practicalities, such as needing quite a meaty vehicle to tow it. At first I’d recruited some local volunteers with tow bars on their cars to help us transport the trailer whenever we had a session.
After a couple of burnt out clutches and near death experiences, we decided we needed our own vehicle. We put an advert in our newsletter, and amazingly someone from a local church gave us a vehicle that could tow the trailer easily. This became lovingly known as, ‘the Shogun’; a ten year old automatic three litre four by four. Here she is:
We had our own vehicle, nice one God. But it was ten years old, and it wasn’t long before the dashboard did its own little disco every time you put the key in, and lights came on I didn’t even know it had. In the end we had to ignore the lights, because we didn’t really know what was actually a problem and what was just the disco. Then came the genie lamp sign. This was the light that just stayed on all the time, no matter what we did. Apparently some people call it the oil light. Anyway it became obvious the car was on its way to motor vehicle heaven and that we needed to think of something fast, because without a vehicle, our project doesn’t really work. I had a plan that we could just put another advert in the newsletter, and that, just like last time, a nice big free four by four would arrive on our doorstep and save the day. Guess what? That didn’t happen.
We had some visitors from another youth project, and I was sharing the vehicle problem with them. I told them my next plan was to look around some local garages and find a cheap old vehicle that would do the job for a bit longer, meaning I wouldn’t have to raise loads of money and do anything that scary. A youth worker from the visiting project, said to me;
“What vehicle do you really want? What would be the absolute best vehicle you need for this project?”
In a moment of fantasy we discussed Land Rovers, Hummers, Nissan Navaras, Monster Trucks, Helicopters, newer Shoguns, and loads of other massive four by fours that would do the job perfectly. We looked at websites, watched YouTube videos, and laughed and joked about our dream vehicle. After saying something like ‘oh well, back to reality’, my other youth project friend said something that challenged me to my core;
“You are saving the lives of young people. What you are doing is of the highest importance and you should have the very best equipment to do it with. Our God is big, and nothing is impossible for him. Don’t get a cheap second hand vehicle, ask God for what you want, and what you need, and he will give it to you”.
He was totally right. Which was really annoying.
So after lots of research and thinking and dreaming, we decided that the vehicle we needed and wanted, if money wasn’t an issue, was a brand new Nissan Navara. Brand new, they cost £25,000. That is well over what the project cost to set up in the first place. Oh crap. Where am I going to get £25,000 from?
I decided I needed to test drive the vehicle. Mostly because it would be really fun, but also because I needed to see it. I needed to sit in it with God and ask whether was just a stupid idea, or whether it was really something he wanted for us. I phoned up our local Nissan garage, and arranged a date to go and test drive it along with Max, our year out volunteer at the time.
As we walked into the garage and registered our arrival, I became aware of some strange looks from the staff. I suddenly remembered what we must look like. A couple of youths, with big baggy jeans and hoodies are not their usual potential brand new four by four customers. They looked a bit scared, like they thought we were going to rob the place. They made lots of checks, looked at our ID and seemed happy enough. It probably didn’t then help when I told them that we would be purchasing the vehicle in about two months time, and would not need finance as we would be paying the full amount. The sales assistant paused for quite a long time and said, “OK then”. At that point we didn’t have a single penny of the money and I had no idea where it was going to come from. But I had to speak out in faith that we did have the money, the money was already ours, and that the vehicle was already ours.
Test driving it was just the most ridiculous amount of fun ever. Oh and also, it totally did the job we needed it to, towed the right weight and had a large storage space in the back. We wanted one, and we were going to get one.
I got on the case with grants, and found two that were eligible. These would take us up to about £19,000, if we got the grants. ‘If’ is a big ‘if’ in the world of grant applications. As part of the grant process we researched how much it would cost to get our logo and details on the side of the vehicle. I was sent a picture of what it would look like. I added a bible verse and I stuck it on my wall, knowing that one day soon I would replace it with a real photo of our own vehicle. Sometimes you need to visualize how you want something to be, as well as talk about it.
We prayed. We filled in forms. We waited. We prayed the Shogun wouldn’t die.
The first grant we applied for was for £7000. A few days after the deadline has passed, I got a phone call from the grant administrator, who told me that in their grant criteria, it clearly stated that they did not fund vehicles. My heart sunk as I waved £7000 goodbye. Then she said something very funny;
“Next time you make an application to us, please make sure you read the criteria properly. This time however, we have decided to make an exception to our rules because we like your project, so we will be awarding you the full amount of £7000”.
Ching ching! We were one step closer. £18,000 to go.
Then came the youth bank fund. We had helped some One Eighty members apply for some money on our behalf. We had applied for £12,000, which was a lot of money for one project to receive from a relatively small grant. We were short listed however, and had to take the four lads to a grant panel to give a presentation on One Eighty and why we needed the money.
It was really simple. All we had to do was pick up four young people in the Shogun, take them to a youth centre and let them give their presentation. Then the grant people would discuss it and send us a letter in the post. Then hopefully, we would get the £12,000 and be almost there! It started to become real, it started to feel like we might actually do this.
I was using the Shogun that day for an event site visit, and had a couple of hours to get back to Bath, pick up the young people and a staff member, then head straight to the presentation. No problem, plenty of time.
After the site visit, I got into the Shogun and started to head back to Bath. I looked at the dashboard, and then came the disco. But it was a different disco. Then there were noises. Strange noises.
I was still ten miles from Bath, and things were getting worse. There was smoke, and more noises. I started praying, “Not now, not today, please”. More smoke started coming out of the bonnet and I knew I had to stop. I pulled over in a bus stop and popped the bonnet, staring at the engine, because that’s what you do when your car has broken down and you know nothing about cars. The smoke was still coming out, and I didn’t know what to do. We didn’t have break down cover, I was in the middle of nowhere, and I had about an hour before I would have to leave to go pick up the lads. The car was still working, so I decided to keep going and hope it didn’t explode. I drove really slowly, and the disco now had a smoke machine.
I made it to a village a few miles nearer, and pulled to a stop at a pedestrian crossing. The lights turned amber and as I put my foot on the accelerator, nothing. Beeping from behind, more smoke, the car wasn’t moving. It had died. I burst into tears as cars started to go by me, and no one offered to help. I looked around at where I was, and of course by complete coincidence and nothing at all to do with God, I was right outside a massive car garage. Within thirty seconds I had four mechanics pushing the vehicle to safety, and within two minutes I knew exactly what was wrong with it. The crank on the engine had gone, which in other words means, the Shogun had gone to motor vehicle heaven. In less than one hour I was supposed to be picking up four lads from all over Bath and taking them to a presentation that might mean we would get £12,000 towards the new vehicle that would ensure the survival of our project. Even if we did get that money, we still had £6000 more to raise which I had no idea where to get. I cried again, a lot. All over the four nice mechanics. They looked a bit awkward. After I’d stopped crying I began to think of a plan. We had to make that presentation. We just had to.
I took out my phone to call Max at the office, battery low. Rubbish. I got through, and tried to very quickly and clearly explain the situation. I was still going to be a while getting back to Bath on the bus and I needed him to figure out a way of getting all the lads to the youth centre as well as me and him, with no car. He was only 18, possibly the most laid back person I had ever met and I’d never really given him any serious responsibility before. I didn’t know whether he’d be able to pull it off. After more crying he seemed to understand it was important, and he said he’d sort it. Then my phone died.
The bus ride was 15 minutes, but it felt like three hours. God knew we needed the car, why hadn’t he stopped it from breaking down until after the presentation? What were we going to do if we didn’t get the money? How were we going to run One Eighty for however long it took to get the new vehicle? Why had I thought I could do this? I have no clue what I’m doing. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this anymore.
I took out my iPod, and I put on some music. I calmed down, and I stepped out of the emotion of the situation, looking at the facts. God loves me, God has chosen me for this, God is with me and loves this project way more than me. He knows we need that vehicle and he knows we need to get the lads to this presentation. We’re going to get there, we’re going to get that money and everything’s going to be OK.
When I arrived back at the office, my jaw dropped. On my desk were two piles of paper, they had the names and phone numbers of two of our trustees, who had agreed to use their cars to pick up the lads, and us, and take us to the youth centre. There were maps and directions for both cars, it was exactly what we needed, and perfect. Max got a high five.
We went to the presentation and made it on time.
The lads did a brilliant job, and gave an excellent presentation.
I walked out of the building with a cheque for £12,000. A trustee just happened to bring his camera, and captured the exact moment we found out we’d been successful:
There were more tears, but this time, they were tears of joy. And if it’s possible, there were tears of confidence, tears that God is everything he says he is, that all things are under his control, that nothing is impossible for him, that he is faithful and will come through. Tears because we are going to get that car.
The next day was so mixed, as I had the celebration of winning the grant, but the nightmare of figuring out how we were going to tow our trailer around until we had enough money to buy our new big black truck. It could still be months and we needed it now.
Then, God spiced things up a little bit, because he obviously felt the last few days had been too boring. He told me to order the new vehicle. It was no audible voice, but a strong sense that I just couldn’t ignore. I tried to fill my day with other things, but I kept feeling it. Order the vehicle, order the vehicle. I think my reply went something like, “WHAT? You have got to be joking. We don’t even have all of the money yet and I don’t even know where the money is going to come from. Also I’m probably going to get fired if I order it”.
Order the vehicle. Order the vehicle.
I phoned the Nissan garage and ordered it over the phone. It would take six weeks to arrive and they needed a £7000 deposit with the other £18,000 payable on collection. Guess how much money had just cleared in our bank account from our first grant? £7000. Done.
As I put the phone down, I felt sick. I’m going to get fired. We’re going to go bankrupt. The treasurer is going to have a heart attack.
I’ve got six weeks to find £6000.
There were no more grants to apply for. I didn’t have any rich friends. I wasn’t really experienced in bank robbery. So it had to be God. I’d done everything I could, I’d fought with everything in me. It had to be God.
A few days later, a church was having a giving day for Bath Youth for Christ. They told us what they had raised every year and what they were expecting to raise this year, and our director budgeted accordingly. They raised £2000 more than we had expected. This had never happened before. They were surprised, we were surprised. We had £2000 for the vehicle.
£4000 to go. Five weeks left.
A week later I phoned the garage and negotiated £1000 off the price if we put the garage’s name on the back of the truck.
£3000 to go. Four weeks left.
At this point I started to panic because I was totally out of ideas. There was literally nothing left for me to do other than pray. It was incredibly scary.
About a week later I walked into the office, turned on the computer as normal and checked my emails. I had an email from an old friend who now managed a large internet florist company. She read the newsletters and knew we wanted to get a new vehicle but had no idea of the events of the last few weeks. She told me she wanted to donate some money from the company, that she had prayed about how much, and that she had decided on an amount.
Would £3000 be OK?
More tears.
In the same week, a garage offered us the use of an amazing Land Rover for as long as we needed it. For free. It even had one of those remote starts, so you could start the engine from almost a mile away. This was completely pointless, but great fun to scare people with. Another local man gave us £2500 for our insurance costs. We had more than enough. More than enough.
Within another two weeks our vehicle was ready, and Max and I went to pick it up. I will never forget that day as long as I live.
As we pulled into the garage, I saw it. This big, black truck; spotless, beautiful, ours. We didn’t owe any money for it, we didn’t have to give it back, it belongs to us. It’s ours. As I looked at it, my whole body tingling, I closed my eyes as they filled with tears, and I promised God I would never forget what he had done for us. Because it’s easy to forget. I don’t ever want to forget.
I remember paying for the final amount, putting my pin into the machine as it asked me to pay £17094.22.
I remember the face of the sales assistant as we told him the story of the money.
I remember when he put the keys in my hands.
I remember him talking through the engine and the spare tyre, but I wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. I was just smiling.
I remember him saying we were the youngest people he had ever seen buy a brand new Navara.
I remember taking it straight to the petrol station, and the attendant saying, “nice truck”.
I remember driving back, with the stereo on full blast, laughing and crying and singing and shouting, full of the presence of God, feeling happy for Max that he was taking the other vehicle back at the time.
I remember driving past people and seeing them looking at the brand new big black truck. Our brand new big black truck.
I remember sleeping soundly that night.
I remember the picture on my office wall.
Most of all, I remember feeling that this was all really about something else. Something much bigger.
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Fourteen Times
When I used to skate, my friends and I would occasionally travel to Storm Skate Park in Derby, a massive indoor skate park. Nothing like this existed where we lived; it had some of the biggest ramps I had ever seen, and I would always come back with bruises and cuts!
One day we arrived, and this was going to be the day I ‘dropped in’. This means literally ‘dropping in’ to a half pipe or quarter pipe from the top. The skater usually starts in a tail stall position on the coping and from there tips the skateboard down and into the ramp. In skateboarding this is one of the easiest and hardest things to do. It doesn’t take a lot of technical ability, it just takes guts.
So there I was; my helmet, elbow pads, knee pads and wrist guards all velcroed on as tight as they would go. My hands were shaking, sweat beginning to make its presence known inside my helmet. I watched all the other boys gliding up and down each ramp, making it looking as simple as brushing your teeth, or turning on a light. Words echoed round my mind about what I was about to attempt. Bend your knees, lean forward, just go for it I thought.
I edged closer to the ramp, the no bigger than 5 foot ramp seeming twice as big from the top. I positioned my board on the farthest point I could stay stationary, counted to three several times, closed my eyes, tightened my muscles and I dropped in.
I soon realised that closing my eyes wasn’t the best of ideas, also because I was so worried about everything else I had forgotten to lean forward and so I slipped backwards, knocking my head on the tough and unforgiving wood surface. I was stunned and hurt by the fall, but more by the laughter I heard echoing from what seemed to be the whole skate park. I skated away, sat down and took off my helmet. Maybe I would learn to ‘drop in’ another day. I didn’t have the guts to try again, and the time came to leave as an announcement came over the PA system that the park was closing in ten minutes. I ran over to another area of the park to grab my helmet, and looked to the top of the vert ramp, the highest ramp in the park. A small boy, no older than primary school age was standing at the top with his skateboard ready to drop in for the first time. I watched him as he tried and fell, cutting his elbow. I then watched in absolute amazement as I saw the boy get up, pick up his skateboard and try again. And again and again. Fourteen times in total! I almost shouted out loud when he dropped in successfully, driving his fist through the air, thinking no one was watching.
Ten years later…
Thanks to some lovely changes in the law, my age means I cannot legally drive a car and a trailer, without taking a separate ‘B&E’ trailer test. So we had to get me some trailer driving lessons, and book a test.
Now, let’s just say that there may have been a few times I had accidentally driven the car and trailer together before realising it was illegal, so I was quietly confident that the lessons and trailer test weren’t going to be that hard.
I was wrong. So very wrong.
First, comes the manoeuvre, where you have to reverse the trailer around a cone, and then make sure the back of the trailer is in a 400 mm box. If it is slightly out of the box, you fail. If you get out to check it, you fail. Just like real life.
You had to take the test in an unloaded trailer, so this meant unloading almost a ton in weight of ramps out of the trailer, into a storage unit, then driving for 45 minutes to the test centre.
The lessons went well, and I was happy I was going to pass the test. I wanted to, as it costs almost £100 every time you take it, as well as it being major hassle to unload all of the ramps and load them back up again two hours later.
The day of the test arrived and we drove the car to the storage place, hooked up the trailer, drove it around the corner to the storage unit, unloaded the ramps and drove to the test centre.
I failed the first test. We drove back, loaded the ramps back into the trailer, returned the trailer to its parking space and booked another test.
The second test day arrived. We drove the car to the storage place, hooked up the trailer, drove it around the corner to the storage unit, unloaded the ramps and drove to the test centre.
I failed the second test. We drove back, loaded the ramps back into the trailer, returned the trailer to its parking space and booked another test.
The third test day arrived. We drove the car to the storage place, hooked up the trailer, drove it around the corner to the storage unit, unloaded the ramps and drove to the test centre.
I failed the third test. We drove back, loaded the ramps back into the trailer, returned the trailer to its parking space and booked another test.
The fourth test day arrived. We drove the car to the storage place, hooked up the trailer, drove it around the corner to the storage unit, unloaded the ramps and drove to the test centre.
I failed the fourth test. We drove back, loaded the ramps back into the trailer, returned the trailer to its parking space and booked another test.
At this point I wanted to give up. We could just rely on volunteers to tow the trailer, couldn’t we? I felt humiliated and exhausted by it, I had cried over every single HGV test examiner at the test centre and now they even recognised me. My back ached from carrying those stupid ramps. Our bank account was hurting from the cost of the tests. Every emotion in me told me to run away and never look back. I had tried my best and it just wasn’t happening. Nothing in me wanted to go back and take that test. Nothing.
Which is why I booked the fifth test.
The fifth test day arrived. We drove the car to the storage place, hooked up the trailer, drove it around the corner to the storage unit, unloaded the ramps and drove to the test centre.
I passed the fifth test. And did a very silly dance.
Sometimes when you feel like giving up, your next attempt is the one that will succeed.
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My Back Hurts and There is John
I knew the call would come one day. Youth projects don’t last forever. The timing of the call was interesting. Everything had gone wrong for me. After leaving my job running One Eighty I found it difficult to figure out what was next. After a couple of jobs that just weren’t me, I went to house sit for my parents whilst they were on holiday, to finish my MA dissertation and get some space to decide what to do next.
Ring ring.
After much thought and prayer…skate culture has taken a real dive…attendance numbers are really low…idea for another project that seems more needed…One Eighty is closing in two months.
I put the phone down after saying all the right things and meaning them. I had left the project, it was no longer my decision what happened to it and I trusted them to look after it and do what needed to be done. I knew they would have thought, prayed and discussed it lots, so I told them that and put the phone down.
Then I sobbed. It was over. It was all over. I was gutted.
The last One Eighty event was to be at Greenbelt 2011. One Eighty had run the skate park there for about five years and it always marked the end of an academic year and the start of another one. I made my decision to resign there. Greenbelt was always about beginnings and endings. So it made sense.
I just had to see it. I had to say goodbye. I arrived on site and walked up the slope to the familiar spot the skate park was always housed in, accompanied by the beautiful sounds of skateboards hitting ramps and wheels hitting concrete. And there it was. Nothing different, just those ten little pieces of wood and metal, that I had spent seven years of my life with.
I felt like I should be having some big profound moment, where thousands of memories flooded through my mind, where I thanked God for all he had done and marched off into the distance with a smile on my face, ready for my exciting future. Instead I had two thoughts.
My back hurts and there is John.
I’d started having problems with my back in the last year of my role with One Eighty. The lower right side of my back would just start hurting, and it became difficult to bend or pick things up off the floor (a major skill in youth work). It was worse after a day of lifting the ramps, but I just kind of ignored it. It got worse. It started causing pins and needles in my right foot. A couple of years later and after MRI scans, physiotherapy and a nice lady called Lauren explaining in big words with a spine model how basically I had trashed my back from years of lifting things that were probably too heavy for me, it was clear One Eighty had taken its toll on me.
Should I have been more careful? Probably. But sometimes there isn’t an option to be more careful. One summer during the school holidays, we had lots of bookings, and only two staff. In those early days our expert staff team, was me and my mate Hannah. Most days we would have an event in the morning and then an event somewhere else in the afternoon. So the schedule of the day would go something like this; drive car to trailer (which weighs one and a half tonnes), hitch trailer to car, drive car to event. Unload, bolt and check ten different pieces of equipment – ramps, boxes, platforms and rails. Unload and set up skateboards, helmets, safety signs and barriers. Do skate event for two hours. Unbolt, set down and load trailer. Drive trailer to next event. Unload, set up, set down, drive home. You get the picture. It was hard work, every day. One day we did three skate events in one day, and I had to pray during the last unload because I had just completely run out of strength. Also Hannah kept making me laugh because she is funny and you can’t lift things when you are laughing. Seriously, try it! There wasn’t anyone else.
I remember one year we had to use a different youth centre to run one of our sessions in as our normal one was being refurbished. I got there about half an hour earlier than my two staff (strong men this time!) to find the hall full of chairs, tables, a table football game and trampoline. If I had waited for the lads we would have not been able to set up in time. So I moved it all. Which was probably a bit stupid but I didn’t have a choice.
So back to Greenbelt. My back is trashed. Because of this project. I don’t feel all nostalgic and proud, I feel a little bit pissed off and I start thinking about whether it was even worth it. What did it even do? The project no longer exists. What was the point? A trashed back for nothing.
So I moved on to my second thought. There is John. That year at Greenbelt John was on the One Eighty volunteer team. I watched him lifting ramps, helping younger kids, making sure things were safe, doing things without being asked, laughing and joking with the other volunteers, and I remembered when he first walked through the door at One Eighty.
He was ten years old, a very nervous and shy boy who was just learning to skateboard. He started coming along every week. He wanted to do our Switch course. He met Jesus in a way that was relevant to his life. He decided to follow Jesus. He became a Junior Leader. The next year he brought his friend Adj to the Switch course. On a weekend away John gave his testimony. I just fell apart as I watched this shy boy turn into a brave and bold preacher, clearly and concisely telling a room full of his peers about how God had made such a difference in his life. Adj decided to follow Jesus. I think I did it was so good.
I remember after it had happened we split into small groups and John and his friend Ben prayed for Adj. It took everything in me not to burst into tears because I think it was one of the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard. It was real. It was from his heart and he wasn’t afraid to pray it loud in front of all his mates. But I shouldn’t cry because they might get freaked out and it’s not very cool. I looked across at my colleague Dave who had tears streaming down his face and that was it, I couldn’t keep it in and Dave and I just stood there crying like babies, whilst John and Ben prayed for their friend. It was one of those moments you know you will never forget. A moment that is so special, so holy, so absolutely nothing to do with you, that all you can do is fall to your knees in awe of this crazy God who let’s you see and be a part of stuff like that. Wow.
That is John. Now sixteen years old. Shy boy turned bold preacher man. A disciple of Jesus, making more disciples of Jesus.
I sat there and wondered if it was all worth it. There aren’t many stories like John’s. Lots of the young people who ‘decided to follow Jesus’ are long gone.
Tens of thousands of pounds, seven years of my life, a wrecked back. All for a project that doesn’t even exist anymore.
Now I know you can insert all the cliches, about the seeds that we’ve sown, the other skate projects we’ve inspired, the leaders we’ve trained up…but right there in that moment all of that wasn’t important. What was important was the question going round and round inside my head.
Was it worth it?
All the hard work, all the tears, all the mistakes, all the everything…was it worth it?
Was it all worth it just for John?
Yes.
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