PAVONES, Costa Rica — Chandler Brownlee stood atop a cluster of rocks protruding from a secluded stretch of Costa Rican beach, Bible in hand, gazing at one of the world’s most coveted surfing waves.
He was on the hunt — not for the perfect wave (that’s always a given), but for surfers who were ready to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.
Born and raised in Florida, Brownlee, 52, is a real estate agent, an avid wildlife conservationist and the father of three daughters.
But he is also two other things that can seem contradictory: a former Baptist minister and a hardcore tatted-up surfer. Those identities combine to make him a senior member of the Christian Surfers organization, an international group of missionaries who love to surf.
As dusk fell, he watched the tide calm and surfers retreat to the shore. Walking away from the beach, he came across three sunburned Canadians hanging out in their beat-up recreational vehicle, sharing a joint.
“Where you guys comin’ from?” he asked.
“Squamish,” one of them replied, a small Canadian town north of Vancouver, British Columbia, nearly 5,000 miles away. “We were in Nicaragua. We’ve been driving for over a year. Sometimes it’s been dicey. But man, the waves down here.”
A big grin broke out on Brownlee’s chiseled face, framed by salt-and-pepper stubble.
“That’s why surfers make such good missionaries,” he said, shaking his head jovially. “They’ll sleep where they can, eat whatever they get their hands on. They don’t mind roughing it, being patient for the perfect swell, the perfect wave, an opportunity to talk to someone about God.”
The Christian Surfers organization tries to bridge the connection that surfers feel with nature — a spiritual pursuit even skeptics recognize — and show them how that feeling is just a hair away from forming a relationship with God.
The interdenominational group has more than 175 chapters in over 35 countries, including Japan, Norway and the United States. In Costa Rica, one of the world’s best surf spots, it founded its newest chapter this year in Pavones, on the southernmost tip of the country on the border with Panama.
Pavones, with a population of about 4,000, is home to the second-largest left-hand wave in the world. Its main street is called Perfect Waves.
The town’s isolation, lack of infrastructure and dirt roads attract only the most committed surfers — a dedication that Brownlee hopes to tap into. In his mind, even if you trek out here and catch the perfect wave, you may still feel empty inside.
And that’s an opening for God, he said.
“Gringos are always trying to find themselves through ayahuasca,” he said. “But what about knowing the Lord instead?”
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The surfing missionaries know that they have to tread carefully or they may scare people off. So they swap button-up shirts for swimsuits, tattoos and barefoot living.
For possible converts, there is no pressure to go to church. Rather, the missionaries aim to be a “bridge from the beach to the church,” as their motto states. The cover of the “Surfers’ Bible” they distribute does not bear a cross, but an enticing barrel wave.
“When you tell surfers to come to church, they think pews, stained glass, organs,” Brownlee acknowledged. “We aren’t trying to mass proselytize people, but to bro out with ‘em, love on ‘em, catch a wave with ‘em.”
Amid the psalms in the “Surfers’ Bible” are testaments from surfers about how God has affected their sport, including Bianca Buitendag, a South African surfer who won silver in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. Knowing that God loves her “unconditionally” helped her take losses more easily in competitions and move on, but learn from the mistakes, according to her testimony.
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Christian Surfers was established in Australia in the late 1970s to counter the discrimination its founders faced on the waves and in the pews. They were shunned by the church for their tattoos and flip-flops and the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll stereotype of surfer culture. But surfers also shunned them for their Christian beliefs, perceiving them as uptight, judgmental and decidedly uncool.
The group’s members come together to surf when the swell is good, and when it isn’t, they hang out over hamburgers or beers to connect over the sport and discuss Scripture.
The Christian Surfers organization is relying on one family, the Leons, to broaden its presence in Costa Rica. On a recent evening in the town of Esterillos Oeste, Kyle Leon was cooking a vat of pasta and getting ready to host a group of children and young adults for surf videos and a Bible study led by her husband, Dennis.
Kyle Leon, 43, joined the Christian Surfers in Santa Barbara, California, in the 1990s. She was one of the only female surfers on the water at the time and probably the only religious one. But she “didn’t love youth group” and felt the games were “silly and infantile.”
That changed when Christian Surfers came to Santa Barbara.
Pretty soon, she was hitting the water every week with other devout Christians before walking up the beach in their bathing suits to youth group meetings, where they hung out around a fire and discussed the Bible.
During her last years of high school, her father moved the family to Esterillos Oeste and introduced Christian Surfers to Costa Rica. That is where she met Dennis Leon.
Dennis Leon had recently joined the Pentecostal church when she arrived with her family. “But I had to quit surfing,” he said. “The thinking was you couldn’t be a surfer and a Christian because surfers were potheads.”
Eventually, he was able to reconcile his love for Jesus with surfing after meeting Kyle Leon and her family. He says he now uses the sport as a way to evangelize in a more real, less uptight way.
“Jesus didn’t use a church,” he said. “His followers followed him through nature. Remember, his disciples were the fishers of men.”
As night set in, a group of teenagers and young adults walked up to the Leons’ house atop a hill overlooking the water.
Amid the full-sleeve arm tattoos, exclamations of “dude!” and bathing suits, it was easy to forget that everyone was gathered for Bible study. A small cross hung on a wall, next to a towering surfboard. Stickers on the doors to the Leon children’s bedrooms featured their favorite bands and the flaming logo for skate magazine Thrasher.
“This is not an intimidating place, like a church building can be,” said Kyle Leon, gesturing to the living room where kids were splayed out on the couch and dogs ran in and out of the house. “This isn’t scary. And that’s our main goal here as missionaries. You don’t need to believe to belong. But you can belong before you believe.”
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The group watched surfing videos as they chowed down on spaghetti, gasping as the world’s most famous surfer, Kelly Slater, rode Tahitian waves.
Then, it was time for Bible study.
Dennis Leon sat on a wooden bench in the living room and opened up his Bible as the room went quiet, the young devotees looking up at him from the floor. He went on to compare the Apostle Paul with Slater before tying the sermon into what they could do to draw on their love of Jesus, surfing and nature in order to serve their communities.
The Leons run a church called Pura Vida — a Costa Rican saying that means the “pure life” — that holds worship services on the beach during the dry season and under a roof with no walls just next to the town’s basketball court when it rains.
Of the crowd that gathered in the family’s living room, Dennis Leon estimated that 40% had not accepted Jesus “yet,” he said, lifting a finger to the air.
But that could change.
“They feel less pressure coming here than a church,” he said. “This is just Dennis’ house.”
Soon, it was time for everyone to go home.
“Lord,” Dennis Leon wrapped up, “thank you for the opportunity to be together, to eat food together and to talk about surfing together. Amen.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
