Church and Skate

The doors to the gym at Gardner's Nike Intermediate School open, and 490 kids stream in, followed by their teachers. One teacher asks another what this assembly is about. The other teacher shrugs. The principal, an older woman in a blue wool skirt and blazer, walks to the center of the gym's floor and shouts into a microphone. "Let's give the Impact World Tour a big Nike welcome!"

Impact World Tour is a traveling show based in Lee's Summit that combines teen entertainment with evangelism. IWT manages four groups: Island Breeze, a group of Polynesian dancers; Thrive, a Kansas City-based Christian-rock band; Team Xtreme, a group of beefy dudes who perform feats of strength such as tearing phone books in half; and GX International, a crew of skateboard daredevils and break dancers. The four troupes have toured more than 200 U.S. cities and have made stops in seven other countries. IWT's theory is that traditional proselytizing is outdated -- for teens to pay attention to the message now, they need something that speaks directly to them. Something like what they see on MTV.

First, though, the folks behind Impact World Tour have to convince kids to watch, and that often takes place in public-school gymnasiums, where performers bait kids with ostensibly nonreligious spectacles. Before the November 6 assembly at Nike Intermediate, 21-year-old Nate Tanner gathers his crew and prays for God's help in spiking attendance at four evening performances scheduled for later that week. "Get these kids stoked and get them to bring their families to the show," he implores.

At a makeshift DJ table on the gym floor, GX International's DJ Tiberius (twenty-year-old Jonathan Bartlett), spins a record on which GX International has laid its own kid-friendly, positive messages over a beat from a Fugees song. Ten dancers bound onto the floor and launch into an ultrasynchronized series of steps. At the end, they freeze, salute the kids in the bleachers and scatter. Then Tanner strides onto the floor and says, "Hey, do you guys like skateboarding?" Two 3-foot-tall ramps are set up at each end of the gym, with a foot-high rail between the two. One by one, skateboarders set off to jump them. "Here comes Alex from Mexico, Missouri, and there goes Jesse Fellers of Montana, and give a hand to Josh, and there goes Shane, our fearless rollerblader!" Tanner puts down the mic and nails a kickflip, skating over the ramp, flipping the board underneath him in the air before landing on it.

"How'd you like that, Gardner?" Tanner asks. "Well, if you like what you see here today, don't forget, it's going to get a whole lot crazier when we put on our real show on Saturday in the gym at Gardner-Edgerton High School at 7 p.m. So don't forget, you're all invited. You gotta come out there and see it."

Tanner and the rest of the GX performers are pumped for Saturday's show not only because they'll have their lights, sound and special equipment in full force but also because they won't have to skate around their Christian mission. "We're not allowed to mention God or Jesus at the school assemblies," says Charity Albers, GX's dance captain. "We're not allowed to say we're Christians, not even speak of it. We can only perform -- without the message."

Thirty minutes west of Kansas City on Interstate 35, Gardner is home to 13,700 souls. In November, Johnnie Craig -- an eighteen-year resident, parent of six children, Chamber of Commerce member and owner of a wireless consulting firm called Integrity Communications -- spoke to 250 people gathered at the First Presbyterian Church about the virtues of Impact World Tour.

"IWT could be anywhere in the world, but God has chosen Gardner," Craig announced. "Is IWT in Gardner because God knows we are the second-fastest-growing community in Kansas and need all the help we can get? Or is IWT in Gardner due to assistance needed with our crime statistics? Allow me to share." With that, Craig listed some of Gardner's crime statistics for the year 2002: 172 juvenile offenses, 48 narcotics arrests, 111 reports of vandalism, 125 burglaries, 154 DUIs, 7 rapes, 26 sex offenses and 4 arsons -- 583 arrests in all.

The town had spent a year planning for IWT's arrival. To oversee efforts to bring the tour to Gardner, twenty or so community members formed an executive board chaired by the same pastor who heads the town's Ministerial Alliance, made up of ten out of Gardner's seventeen churches. People had volunteered their houses to board IWT performers for the week they'd be in town. Others had volunteered to cook meals. The First Baptist Church had become the official headquarters for the IWT staff and performers. The only thing that looked uncertain was the money. The salvation of a town's youth doesn't come cheap.

Four nights of IWT performances would cost the city $38,500. A dessert-banquet fund-raiser at the high school brought in about 150 people. Then each church in the alliance held a "kickoff," ultimately raising 75 percent of the budget, with churchgoers pledging money and making monthly payments. Local businesses such as the Genesis Development Team (a group of builders and developers) and Jabez (another development company) pledged $3,000 after Craig approached them.