Surfing pastor helps others find God on beach
July 6, 2005
By United Methodist News Service*
The Rev. Leonard “Len” Ripley III may preach from Psalm 23, but “still waters” are not ideal when he’s ready to surf.
The 54-year-old pastor of Folly Beach (S.C.) United Methodist Church spends much of his free time riding the waves.
“When the church members can’t find me, they know there’s good surf,” he says.
Ripley took up surfing as a teenager but abandoned it when he went to college. When he was appointed to the Folly Beach-St. John charge, he got back into it by accident.
“My first week here, I found out two members of my church ran a surf shop,” Ripley says. “I walked in for a visit, and by that afternoon I was in the water with them.”
Ripley was a police officer before entering the ministry at age 40. He had always been drawn to public service jobs, he said. “I had an aching in my bones to serve the Lord but didn’t know how best to do so.”
That same year, he became a full-time local pastor, and in 1997, he arrived at Folly Beach.
Part of Folly Beach’s tightly knit surfing community, Ripley says he leads devotions before surfing competitions and has been known to hold informal worship services for two or three gathered together on surfboards just beyond the breakers. His two passions work well together, he says.
“It’s become another way to evangelize,” he says. “Sometimes you get one-on-one with people and make connections. They understand you’re not out there to beat them over the head with the Bible. They need to see that religion is not this strict set of rules that you have to live by; it’s more of a lifestyle.”
He also sees a spiritual side to surfing. “Look around at the beauty of it and the power of nature. It’s unbelievable to me that you could come to a place like this and not feel something. I have little problem finding God on Folly Beach.”
A visit to a Folly Beach worship service isn’t unlike a service at any small church. An organ pipes out traditional hymns, accompanying a choir that barely numbers in double digits. But folks dressed in their Sunday best share a pew with pony-tailed surfers sporting earrings and wearing flowered shirts and flip-flops.
Ripley fits in, according to Bettie Sue Cowsert, Ocean Surf Shop co-owner and Folly Church member. “He’s not your idea of (a ‘typical’ pastor), but if he was, he probably wouldn’t fit in. This community’s got all kinds of people in it. You’ve got to be really adaptive. The most successful ministers here probably are.”
Ripley says, “People need to see that you can do ministry wherever you are, be it doing something you enjoy or when you’re called to a situation where something bad has happened.”
Too often, the latter is the case when Ripley is volunteering for the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy, an interdenominational support group for 33 public safety agencies in the area. The chaplains ride along with police, fire or emergency service workers to offer pastoral care and counseling for accident or crime victims and their families, as well as the officers and their families.
“As a former police officer, Len knows the mindset of what cops go through and the pain of always being called to tragedies,” says the Rev. Rob Dewey, the group’s founder, adding that Ripley was named Chaplain of the Year in 2003.
“When I was a police officer, I didn’t have this type of support, but I would’ve loved to have (had) it,” Ripley says.
Ripley recalls helping a young female surfer who was found unconscious on the shore. He worked with the police to learn her identity and then traveled to her parents’ home to tell them of her condition. Though initially hospitalized in critical condition, the teenager recovered and began attending Ripley’s church. Later, the minister was asked to marry her mother and stepfather.
“We help people in many different types of situations,” he says. “Oftentimes they do not belong to a church, so I become their pastor.”
*This story was reported by Joey Butler, Heather Peck Stahl and Reed Galin. Butler is managing editor of Interpreter magazine; Stahl is a freelance writer in Nashville, Tenn.; and Galin is a freelance producer in Nashville.
News media contact: Fran Coode Walsh, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5458 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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