The One Love Story

I grew up loving the freedom skateboarding brings. I got my first board at a garage sale at age 4 in Ohio, and skating has been a big part of my life ever since. I love the way skaters look at the world, and I feel like we have a creativity, boldness, and persistence that can make the world way better.  

In middle school I felt like skaters who smoked pot together loved each other more than the church did, but as time went on I became frustrated by the emptiness surrounding skateboarding culture and the negative influences on my life and others. Smoking pot and living for myself wasn’t all it was cracked up to be--I’ve had several friends go down negative roads, and I’ve seen their lives end way too soon. Unfortunately, often my creativity, boldness, and persistence was used in negative ways… 

In college, I got a call that skaters were skating on a concrete slab at the church in North Carolina where I was a youth ministry intern. I immediately went and skated with the strangers and realized that I wanted to invest my time and energy in helping people experience life, so we started “One Love Skate” in 2006 with a slab of cement, a few ramps, and a banner with 1 John 4:9 written on it. I had found life and the One Love through my experience knowing the love of the perfect God—the Most High—who is revealed in nature, in the Bible, and in the experiences of others who know Jesus. I was especially burdened for skaters to know this real love. 

After my wife Nicole and I were married in 2008, I followed back to her home in Maui where I taught school for a year in Paia and then started serving on staff at a church here. In Maui, we have way more skaters than anywhere I had lived before, and the need at the skateparks here was evident. From fatherlessness, to open drug use, to just the hopelessness evident through conversations in the skate community, the need for One Love Skate was stirring. Then I broke my foot. 

With a broken foot, I wrote up some skate-related cards that we started sharing with other people who had a heart for the next generation. My friend Kaipo had a big stack of them in his car, and we used them when we ministered to youth to have conversations about the One Love of Jesus. With my broken foot, God did more to grow One Love Skate than I could ever have done with perfect health. This broken foot was a great reminder that One Love Skate has never been about me skateboarding, but it’s about helping life-group leaders (1L Reps) live the One Love of Jesus as a positive presence in the skate community.  

Sam Peralta also had just gotten back from Australia where he had been doing skate ministry, and we started working together to do regular skate events at all 5 of the skateparks on Maui each year. We had our first ever 1L Reps, Auburn and Mark, who were also interns at Sam’s church. We started doing more skate trips, the county of Maui hired us to do regular events at Kihei skatepark, and we also started using Francis Chan’s “Multiply” material for a regular life group under the vert ramp at Kahului Skatepark. Also, people began taking One Love resources to places like Brazil, the Philippines, Honduras and beyond. Sam helped us really get One Love Skate started and rolling on Maui. 

In December 2015, we became an official 501c3 non-profit organization and have begun working with more people, churches, and organizations to invest more time and energy into making disciples who know and show the One Love of Jesus. Josh & Nicole moved to North Carolina for about a year where we were provided with skateboard ramps in storage do One Love Skate over there and get 1L going in more locations while Sam and his team and friends at Lahaina Baptist Church helped grow One Love in Maui. We also met Brody Addington in North Carolina during this time and his life was radically transformed through the ministry. Brody has now been serving with YWAM on Maui and has shared Jesus’ love around the world including Asia and Costa Rica. 

We want to be shoulder to shoulder with soldiers for God’s Kingdom, and we are excited to see One Love Skate continuing to grow and impact more skaters to use their creativity, boldness, and persistence to show Jesus’ love in their communities.  —Josh Marburger

Resources to encourage you in your walk with Jesus.