Livin It

For me this was excellent. I have to admit I was skeptical to hear a Hollywood star was speaking at our church in Birmingham, AL much less a Baldwin Brother!!! Then I heard him speak! WOW! His story was amazing!

I could relate, especially to Stephen's breakdown of the Christian Channels on TV when we grew up! As I have said to many before... it is not a knock on EWTN or the 700 Club... when you are a 13... 15... 18... year old kid... you just can't relate! In 2004, I was a 33-year-old- man who only dabbled in skateboarding/bmx biking a little as a kid but I had a son who was 8-years-old at the time and thought the X-Games/Skateboarding was AWESOME!!!

In addition, I also liked Chris Tomlin and Michael W. Smith alright (especially at church) but they were no comparison to the Metallica, NWA, Van Halen or my day. And at that time Linking Park was my fav band so who do you think was my son's fav band? This movie made us aware of NUMEROUS other Christian musicians that he and I both thought were SOOOO COOOL!!! This lead us to TobyMac (Stephen had a TobyMac shirt on) led my musical journey from TobyMac to Family Force 5, Thousand Foot Krutch, Skillet, Red, Manafest... then Underoath, Devil Wears Prada... and For Today... now August Burns Red is my favorite band... and they are cool to metalcore kids but share faith through their lyrics.

I LOVE Paul Anderson's description of salvation and I think he might have even worked a "rad" into it somewhere! The reason I am commenting on this 12 years later is I was wanting to look back at a simple way to break down God's plan of salvation into bite-sized steps and I could still picture the words on the wall of his "SkateChurch"

This movie bridged that gap for me and my son (who is now 20-years-old and a film student at Liberty University.) Thank you Stephen, Palau's, Paul Anderson, and all the amazingly talented athletes in these videos!!!