As a teenager in the 1970s, Brett Davis couldn’t imagine anyone being both a surfer and a Christian.

“I didn’t think it was possible for those two identities to exist – the Christians I knew were far from being surfers, and the surfers far from being Christians,” Brett says.

And his identity was already set: he was a surfer. But when he was 16, Brett met a Christian surfer at high school. This had a profound impact on Brett, as his friend shared his life with him.

Brett’s friend “conned him into going” to Cronulla Uniting Church, in Sydney’s south by telling him there were good looking girls there, and the church would let them leave their surfboards there so they wouldn’t have to pay to take them on the train. “I arrived and was surprised that, yes, there were good looking girls, and the minister did offer for me to leave my surfboard there,” Brett recalls.

“My third surprise was I heard the gospel message I remembered as a child.” At that stage of his life, Brett had slowly been becoming disillusioned with surfing as a foundation to build his life on. “Surfing was great, but very changeable, and surfers were often lousy self-centred people abusing their lives with drugs, alcohol and sex.”

The thought occurred to him: “How good would it be to have God in my life finishing high school and launching into the big wide world?” Brett struggled with the differences between his surfing identity and what Jesus had done for him on the cross. “I finally gave in,” he says. “I figured that living to please my friends and pursue my surfing identity ultimately would not take me anywhere, in this life or the next.”

Brett realised that telling God he’d think about him “later” was the same as saying “no”. “I was deeply convicted that I needed to not be saying ‘no’ to Jesus and what he’d done for me on the cross.”

Yet Brett’s decision to follow Jesus still didn’t impact his life the way surfing did. “I felt like a spectator,” he says. “I was quite a surfing evangelist, telling everyone how great it was – but when it came to Christianity, whilst I believed in Jesus, I was not an active participant. I had a Bible I never read, I attended church but never prayed, and had a faith I never shared.”

Brett realised that Jesus should be the most exciting and dynamic thing in his life. “I knew my surfing had to be surrendered. I had been telling Jesus that he had to go from my life for surfing to fit – but what had to happen was that surfing had to go for Jesus to come.”

So Brett surrendered his surfing to Jesus. The decision to surrender surfing was just between Brett and God; he didn’t mention it to anyone. Yet two weeks later, Brett’s surfing friend, who had brought him to church, told Brett about a “crazy idea” he had. He wanted to start a Christian Surfers fellowship group.

Brett says, “I had this intense sense that God was saying ‘I’m giving surfing back to you – but remember whose it is, whose glory it’s for – surfing is not just about you, it’s about me and using it in my service and not just for yourself.’”

In 1977, a group 18 year olds began Christian Surfers. “We were misfits from church mostly,” remembers Brett. “We were struggling with the issue of identity. We felt marginalised from our surfing friends because we were Christians, and marginalised from our Christian friends because we were surfers.”

The era they were living in – the same as that recently illustrated by the television series Puberty Blues – was such that churches viewed beach culture as hedonistic, and not at all the thing that good Christians should be a part of.

“We wanted to bridge the gap,” says Brett. “We believe surfing is a gift from God.” The group started as a fellowship group for Christian surfers, but quickly developed into an outreach ministry to the surfing community. “We all had friends who had never attended church but were happy to go surfing with us. We quickly realised there was a far greater need, and potential, for Christian Surfers to be a mission and outreach.”

The majority of the Christian surfers were attending Gymea Baptist and they raised many an eyebrow when they began bringing “sandy haired, bare foot grommets” to church services. “We told our visiting surfer friends that the best seat was in the front, and they didn’t know any better!” Brett recalls. “So in the early 1980s the front two rows of Gymea Baptist were filled with teenage boys and girls.”

The church accommodated their surfing visitors, and in 1983 when Brett approached the pastor about leaving his career to work for Christian Surfers full time, the church offered to support Brett financially as a missionary. Christian Surfers expanded with amazing rapidity. By 1983 it had became a national movement. Just ten years later, in 1993, Christian Surfers was an international network of independent groups.

“We never imagined that the ministry model and platform we developed would help so many people around the world find a meaningful outlet for their surfing and mission,” Brett says.

In 1999 Brett was asked to officially form an international mission movement. He took his wife, three children and “two large orange suitcases” and travelled the world, setting up Christian Surfers International.

The movement now has over 500 groups in 35 nations and over 1500 volunteer leaders. This week, Christian Surfers released a book which tells their story. The book is called Groundswell.

“There are two kinds of swell, which surfers are familiar with. Windswell is the result of local environmental factors, which come and go. Groundswell is generated from a far off distance. So we use the term “groundswell” to describe the type of things that God does. It’s a term that’s central to our thinking.”

The book Groundswell – the Christian Surfers story is Brett’s personal reflections. His hope is that the book will inspire future generations of leaders. “God uses ordinary people for extraordinary things.”

“Take your passions and God’s purposes and put them together. I hope that after reading this book and my story that you won’t think, ‘That’s a great story, but it’s not me’ – I hope you think, ‘That could be me!’ God uses ordinary people – he can use anyone.”

For more information about Groundswell – the Christian Surfers story visit www.groundswellbook.com