Porto, Portugal — Porto boasts beaches, old churches decorated with blue and white tiles, and the famous Port wine named after the city in northern Portugal.
There is also another kind of church, located in a coastal suburb on the Atlantic coast, near a fishing village known for the world’s biggest waves. Parishioners attend services in board shorts, T-shirts, flip-flops, and even barefoot.
They surf before worship.
Surf Church was founded by a Brazilian-born Portuguese surfer and Baptist minister to spread the gospel in a country that was once a devout Catholic nation and a top surfing destination. Today, about half of the country’s young people say they have no religion.
In less than a decade, it has grown from a few families to dozens of parishioners representing more than a dozen nationalities from around the world. Their motto is, “We love the waves. We love Jesus.”
“When you wait for the right wave, it’s the calm before the wave comes, and it’s a peaceful moment, sometimes a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes,” said Pastor Samuel Cianelli, pastor of Surf Church. “That peaceful moment is my deepest connection with God.”
On a recent Sunday, he donned a bright orange wetsuit instead of his traditional priestly vestments and lay belly down on a surfboard on the powdery sand of Matosinhos Beach, showing the young parishioners gathered around him how to paddle, how to “pop out,” how to catch a wave.
“I always loved the waves, and it makes me so happy to see people learning to surf,” said Ulyana Yarova, 17, a week later, after emerging from the very waters where Sianelli had joyfully baptized her and her brother. They were wearing identical white T-shirts that read, “I chose Jesus.”
The Ukrainian teenager fled his war-torn country with his family after the Russian invasion and found refuge in the Porto and Serp churches.
“When you’re standing on your surfboard waiting for a wave, you can start to doubt yourself and feel like you’re going to fall,” she said. “And when you do it right, you can feel confident and peaceful. You can feel that nature and God are holding you in that wave.”
Church members (mostly Gen Zers and millennials) waded into the water smiling, holding red and teal surfboards emblazoned with Surf Church stickers. Some had tattoos of crosses, the only visible sign that distinguished them from the other surfers who shared the waves.
To prepare for the service, they rinsed their surfboards, loaded them into a white van driven by several missionaries in swimsuits, and took them to a nearby surf church.
Churches in Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city, include the magnificent cathedral with its silver altar, the so-called “Chapel of the Souls” with its façade decorated with thousands of white and blue tiles, and São Francisco with its elaborate woodcarvings covered in gold dust.
Instead, Surf Church’s garage features a mural of a gold Volkswagen camper van with a blue surfboard strapped to its roof.
After surfing, church members wearing sandals hung their wetsuits next to racks lined with boards. Some washed their feet with a garden hose or took a shower before gathering in a cozy living room decorated with murals of surfers riding waves and surfboards hanging from the roof to pray and sing.
Hannah Kruckels, a church member, said she never felt so welcome when she attended a much larger traditional church in her native Switzerland. That changed when she arrived at Surf Church as an intern in 2020, where she felt at home and learned how to surf.
“Connecting with something bigger is an important part of spirituality. In this case, it’s God, but it could also be the ocean,” she said after Sunday’s service, which she attended with her Portuguese boyfriend, who is also a surfer. “That’s what makes surfing a spiritual experience.”
Surfing has had religious significance in Hawaii, having originated here long before the arrival of Europeans.
“After prayers and offerings, the craftsmen made planks from the sacred koana wiili tree, and some built heiaus (temples) on the beach where the faithful could pray for the waves,” William Finnegan wrote in “Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.”
People of all ages, genders, and social classes (from royalty to commoners) surfed. But when Calvinist missionaries arrived on the island in the 19th century, they were appalled by what they considered a barbaric sight and banned surfing.
It was revived decades later thanks to Hawaiians like Duke Kahanamoku, an Olympic gold medal swimmer who is considered the father of modern surfing.
Surfers are still “stereotyped as renegades and wreckers,” Finnegan writes, and even today, some beach towns have banned surfing.
For a long time, surfing was reviled as a countercultural movement or mere pastime, and for decades it was virtually unknown outside of California and Hawaii.
But the tide has turned. Surfing has gone professional around the world, most recently as an Olympic sport, and is a multi-billion dollar industry.
Portugal has emerged as one of the world’s best surfing destinations, with the fishing village of Nazaré offering some of the biggest waves for pros, while the beaches near Porto offer uncrowded waves for beginners.
“People from all over the country come to Portugal because they want to experience what the Portuguese beaches have to offer,” said Sianelli, wearing a loose-fitting shirt with a palm tree design. “We found a good strategy here to start a church that combines Jesus and surfing.”
He grew up swimming competitively in the Brazilian port city of Santos, where soccer legend Pele spent most of his career. After an injury sidelined him from competing at age 15, Sianelli took up surfing.
At the same time, he grew closer to his Christian faith. He attended seminary, was ordained, and served as a youth pastor.
At a conference in Brazil in 2013, he met American missionary and surfer Troy Pitney, and they began dreaming of establishing a church in Portugal.
They wanted to capitalize on Portugal’s growing surf culture to attract believers to a once Catholic country where religious activity, especially among the younger generation, is declining, while waves of immigrants from Brazil and other South American countries continue to establish evangelical churches.
They started Surf Church in April 2015 after moving to Porto with their family. Their strategy was simple: catch waves and invite other surfers and beach lovers to read the Bible, sing, and pray.
“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Sianelli said. “We just loved Jesus. We were all surfers.”
They began meeting in their apartment, and from 2016 to 2020, they held services in a gym near the beach, Cianelli said, “to break down the notion of what church means.”
“The building is about people. It can be in the ocean, on the beach, in a gym or in someone’s living room. Or it can be in the space we are in, where we belong. The place doesn’t matter. It’s the people that matter. That’s what church is all about.”
They also did it deliberately. They still don’t use the Portuguese word for church, “igreja,” to avoid the connotation of a cavernous space with empty wooden church pews.
Porto has many “gorgeous, historic” church buildings, Cianelli said. He respects their historical role, but what his diocese seeks is a modern, “living church” built by people.
The pillars of his church are still the same: surfing, community, and the Bible. It took them nine years to go through the New Testament word by word, and they recently started with the Old Testament.
Their dream is to build a surfing church around the world, he said. Or a church that’s connected to mountain biking, soccer or a passion for bringing people together through sports and prayer.
“We’re not just surfers anymore,” he said.
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Associated Press religion reporting is supported by a partnership between The Conversation US and AP with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
