Bookstore peddling ‘extreme’ evangelism
Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008
BENTONVILLE — Greg Snow pumped the pedals and then, soaring eight feet over the asphalt, flawlessly executed one more back flip for God.
“It’s scary, but that’s about it,” said Snow, 19, of Gravette after he slid his little yellow bike to a stop in the Bentonville parking lot as a crowd watched bicycle riders and skateboarders assault a series of homemade ramps.
In freestyle BMX, short for Bicycle Motocross, 20-inch wheels become rolling platforms for acrobats given to individualistic expression. In Northwest Arkansas, a few teenage BMX riders, along with their skateboarding brethren, are channeling their creativity into a kind of street evangelism backed by a Christian bookstore.
“You can take what kids are passionate about, and you can advance the kingdom of God,” explained Bill Beyer, who owns Skia Bookstore in Bentonville and assembled a team of three BMXers and three skateboarders this spring.
Their athletic stunts attract young admirers, creating opportunities for fellowship on the blacktop, Beyer explained while sipping coffee on the porch of his store. Inside, he sells a range of merchandise, from Bibles to coffee mugs and clothing. The store also markets a line of skateboards.
Team members aren’t paid, but they get merchandise and attract crowds.
Beyer’s rolling outreach team, accompanied by a support crew, completed a 10-day tour in late June, staging demonstrations at a series of skate parks, parking lots and street corners from Northwest Arkansas to Southern California, the sunny hotbed of innovation that’s the cradle of BMX, according to team rider Jimmy Buckner of Bentonville.
For the back story, he recommended the documentary Joe Kid on a Stingray, narrated by Jesse James, a former BMXer now better known as the motorcycle impresario behind West Coast Choppers.
The documentary shows how BMX evolved around the Schwinn Stingray, a low-slung, single-speed bike with a banana seat and high-curving handlebars. Seemingly too short for a teenager, the bike nonetheless became the foundation for the freewheeling art form that’s continuing to evolve decades later. To show how, Buckner, 19, who works as a mechanic at Phat Tire Bike Shop on the Bentonville Square, fed a different movie into the shop’s DVD player. Titled Run BMX Livin’ in Exile, the video unspooled highlights of today’s best riders pulling off flips, twists, jumps, pivots, “turndowns,” “ lookbacks” and “hangover toothpicks.” “ Dude’s name is Sergio Layos, ” Buckner said as he watched the hyper-kinetic video from a perch on the bike shop’s sofa. “He’s super-smooth.”
RISK AND REWARD Approaching a set of stairs, a super-smooth rider does not brace for a bumpity-bump-bump descent. Instead, he jumps the bike onto the handrail and, sliding along on metal pegs attached to the axles, schusses down like a bobsledder.
Brick wall dead ahead ? The super-smooth rider does not pause. Hoisting the front wheel at just the right instant, he makes a bloodless transition from the horizontal to the vertical, proceeding as if the wall were nothing more than the banked curve of a race track.
“He’s a ripper,” Buckner remarked of one rider in the video. A ripper is one to be emulated, Buckner explained, pushing up his sleeve to show off a shoulder tattoo.
“Rip it Like a Rocket,” it proclaimed.
Of course, the more you rip it like a rocket, the more you risk popping it out of its socket.
Buckner knows this well, too. He flipped open his cell phone to show the X-ray photo of a recently dislocated finger joint. He injured it falling into a picnic bench. Previous injuries include ligament damage to a knee, he said.
“I’ve broken arms, a wrist, tailbone, kneecaps,” Buckner said. He paused for a deep breath and continued.
“I’ve had some compound fractures. A lot of dislocations. I need to go get surgery on my left shoulder.... No, the right shoulder. I tore my rotator cuff. If I land wrong, my arm will dislocate.” Buckner said he is saving the front fork from a bike that he crinkled on a curb in Little Rock. “I’m going to put it in a display case one day when I have a fireplace,” he said.
OLYMPIC BREAK Despite the perils, Buckner said that he was drawn to BMX in large part because the community of riders fulfilled needs that he said he missed while growing up. “It meant a lot to me to finally have some people who cared,” Buckner said. He worries, however, that BMX is losing its place as a sport — and a community — apart. “Now, it’s so ‘media-ized, ’” he said. “It’s sort of lost the feeling of being different.” BMX racing — but not freestyle — will make its debut as a sanctioned Olympic event this summer in Beijing. It’s another sign that BMX is taking on a new aura.
“It used to be, everywhere you went, everything was ‘ chill, ’” Buckner said. “You could go and meet some ‘ bad’ people. It used to be like a brotherhood.”
BMX’s power to fulfill inner needs also helps explain how Buckner landed on the Christian team assembled by Bentonville’s Skia Bookstore.
“It’s to attract people and then talk to them about God,” Buckner said.
Using BMXers and skaters for religious outreach is wellestablished. Churches and other Christian groups use it. Beyer, the owner of Skia, which also houses a coffee bar, said, however, that it’s unusual for a Christian bookstore.
Outreach is important, Beyer said, because he considers his store also to be a ministry. He said Skia, whose formula was cited as a success in the April issue of Christianity Today, turned profitable after only five months, but he hasn’t taken any money out of the business. “It’s totally an offering to God,” he said. “We make our money other ways.” Beyer, 38, who also owns a local marketing company, Retailtainment, said he grew up in California on surfing and BMX — and fully appreciates their power to attract young people who might go astray.
REACHING OUT So Beyer acquired a 60-foot trailer, outfitted it with a grill, television and sound system, and painted Bible verses on the sides. The team pulls up, opens the trailer and starts communing with the local youth.
The team announces itself on the loudspeakers and hits the pavement. From the trailer, Beyer gives away items such as stickers and food. Skia doesn’t sell any merchandise from the trailer because he doesn’t want the perception of a commercial rather than religious motive, Beyer said.
The Skia Street Team held its first event this spring at Memorial Park in Bentonville. The team also has traveled to Purdy, Mo., where “we had 11 kids give their lives to Christ,” Beyer said.
Last month, the team embarked across country to California.
“We’re going to pull in and just give and love and go,” Beyer said before setting off on the “Self Destruct Tour,” a name that he said implies giving up selfish desires to live for Christ. The group made stops in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
“They skate with kids and develop relationships that way,” he said. “We’re not there to preach to them. We’re there just to let them know they matter.”
Beyer said he hopes his store’s Web site, www. skiastore. com, e-mails, and MySpace pages will provide for a continuing connection with the young people the group encounters.
Beyer said the team encountered hundreds of youngstes before the tour’s end in Laguna Beach, Calif. The team’s Northwest Arkansas demonstrations also have drawn crowds. Last month at an event in the parking lot of the store, a crowd of perhaps 200 watched as the riders attacked the ramps. Asked between runs whether BMX was a way to make a religious connection, rider Victor Lugo, 19, of Bentonville said: “Yeah. It’s my way.”
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