Surfing to Salvation: Brazilian Pastor’s Surf Church Sparks Revival Among Portugal’s Youth
Portugal’s youth are coming to Christ in droves thanks to a Brazilian Baptist pastor who turned surfing into a church.
Surf nut, Rev. Samuel Cianelli, moved from Brazil to Porto, Portugal, with his family ten years ago.
The goal? Plant churches.
Cianelli, an ordained pastor, arrived at the Spirit-led concept in 2013 while chatting with his friend, American missionary Troy Pitney (also a deacon).
‘Church Is Not About Buildings’: Surfing Pastor Builds Lighthouse of Faith on Beaches of Portugal. pic.twitter.com/IaqvSCtoX6
— Cia Livros Conservadores / Conservative Books 🇧🇷 (@Livroscons) June 13, 2025
The location’s deciding factors included Porto’s rise as a surfing destination and Portugal’s historic connection to Christianity.
Surf Church during a surf camp in 2023. Image: Surf Church.
Portuguese Disillusionment with the Institutional Church
Another good reason for the move was growing Portuguese disillusionment with the Church as an institution.
Over half of Millennials and Generation Y in the Catholic country now state they have no religion.
So strong is the distaste for Churchian institutionalism that Cianelli won’t refer to the Church in Portuguese.
He said, they do this to avoid the stigma of dusty, “cavernous spaces with emptying wooden church pews.”
He added that, as beautiful as the churches in Portugal are, buildings are not the church. People are.
When not in the ocean, on the beach, or baptising new believers, Cianelli’s church plant uses a garage with a blue surfboard strapped to its roof.
“People from all over come to Portugal because they want to experience what the beaches of Porto have to offer,” Cianello told AP Religion.
“We found in this a good strategy to start a church that combines Jesus and surf.”
Surf Church was born out of a simple love for Christ and surf culture, he explained.
“We didn’t know what we were doing.”
So, we “just watched waves, invited other surfers and beach lovers to read the Bible, sing and pray.”
Meetings were originally held in an apartment. Then a gym near the beach, Cianello recounted for AP.
We did this, he said, “just to break the concept of what church means.”
Prayer, Perseverance, and Back to Basics
Ten years on, answers to prayer, alongside Cianello’s perseverance, are seeing hundreds turn their love of riding waves into worship.
This barefoot, back-to-basics non-denominational church is on the cusp of being a catalyst for revival.
Minus the wild hair, locusts and honey, Surf Church is a magnet for more than Portuguese surfers.
For example, German-born Carola Mehltretter said she travelled to Oporto to learn more about the community.
They paired her up with two visiting Australians and explained that the church was simply “doing what they love, for the One they love.”
Orthodox Christianity in Unconventional Surfing Simplicity
The Church’s stated mission “is to breathe life and reflect light into the surf, skate and student population of Northern Portugal.”
“We intend to do this primarily by investing in personal relationships with whomever God leads into our lives,” the website adds.
All are welcome, as long as they understand the necessary caveat of orthodoxy.
According to the church’s stated values, all are welcome applies to “all races, creeds, orientations, and ages,” with the clear boundary that Christ is King:
“We believe in Jesus the Christ as our Lord and Saviour and that there is no other way to have a peaceful and intimate relationship with the Father than through a relationship with Jesus, the Son.”
“We teach and study the truths displayed in the Bible.”
Surf Church is also triune.
An accountability statement from 2018 expands on Rev. Cianelli’s Christocentric approach to ministry, conduct and the ecclesia.
“We believe that church is not one thing, one time, one day per week,” the leadership team wrote.
“We believe followers of Jesus make up the living church.”
“As a result, we include eating together, reaching out together, and enjoying recreation together as part of our weekly church meeting.”
Every week, communion is part of a church dinner, which is followed by a service.
Some of the Surf Church community. Image: Surf Church.
The goal of meeting together is to foster “Bible studiers, not sermon analysers,” the statement reads.
Surf Church also upholds marriage as being “the holy union of one man with one woman, as Scripture defines it.”
Attached to this, the church asserts the biblical parameters for sexual health and affirms dating as the aim of seeking a serious commitment.
Although church growth has made it necessary for Cianelli to bring more structure to the community, they are still dedicated to the simplicity of operating in the footsteps of Christ.
Described by the BBC as an “unconventional ministry” with a high turnover rate, the multinational congregation’s mission remains intact: “to connect the Gospel with young people through a shared love of the ocean.”
All for the “One who came not be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 20:28)!
What’s not to like?
___
Image via YouTube/CBN News.
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Simple Church. Aah.. I am the vine…
I like simple church, but not church teaching to be too simple. I think this group strikes the right balance. IMHO, if we as a church went back to basics on a ton of things we do for no other reason than “just because” more people would participate. There’s too much expectation, too much doing, not enough being, a whole host of consumer based stuff, that to me drowns out Christ, and costly discipleship.
I love this concept
I’m not a surfer. I’m in Australia which is too far away but I’d love to see it in action. may God bless you all even more.
Me too.
Great article Rod. Your writing style is getting so much better. You were always a good writer but it is the old story of 10,000 hours.
https://readiscovery.com/2014/09/03/the-beatles-and-malcolm-gladwells-1000-hour-rule/
“Today is the birthday of Malcolm Gladwell. He is 51 today. I have been reading David and Goliath, but my favourite is Outliers because of the chapter headed The 10,000-Hour, which begins with the epigraph, “In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours.”
That’s a quote from John Lennon, talking about the Beatles’ early days, performing at a Hamburg strip club called the Indra.
httpv://youtu.be/he0B0VMxCsw
“We got better and got more confidence,” said Lennon. “We couldn’t help it with all the experience playing all night long. It was handy them being foreign. We had to try even harder, put our heart and soul into it, to get ourselves over.
“In Liverpool, we’d only done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours, so really had to find a new way of playing.”
Gladwell quotes Lennon to show how hard the Beatles worked to achieve what they did.
He also quotes the neurologist Daniel Levitin who wrote: “The emerging picture from studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything… In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up and again. ”
Thanks, boss! Always a work in progress. :)