{"id":4396,"date":"2013-10-23T11:02:53","date_gmt":"2013-10-23T15:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/faithmediaandculture\/?p=4396"},"modified":"2013-10-23T11:02:53","modified_gmt":"2013-10-23T15:02:53","slug":"former-pro-skateboarder-jay-haizlip-talks-about-his-rough-path-to-the-pulpit-and-oxygens-preachers-of-l-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2013\/10\/former-pro-skateboarder-jay-haizlip-talks-about-his-rough-path-to-the-pulpit-and-oxygens-preachers-of-l-a.html","title":{"rendered":"Former pro-skateboarder Jay Haizlip talks about his rough path to the pulpit &#8212; and Oxygen&#8217;s &#8220;Preachers of L.A.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n<iframe title=\"Preachers of L.A.: Premieres October 9\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ml8bQDnnkKk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p><b>He said, She Said (Part 1).\u00a0 <\/b><strong>Oxygen<\/strong> appears to have a new hit on its hands with <em><strong>Preachers of L.A.<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/em>its new reality following six successful church pastors from the Southern California area. While generating strong ratings, the show has also sparked a &#8220;prosperity Gospel&#8221; over what some see as the ministers exorbitant lifestyles.\u00a0 The third episode of the series <strong>airs tonight (10\/23) at 10:00 PM (ET)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>I recently had the opportunity to speak with two of the show&#8217;s stars, <strong>Pastor Jay Haizlip<\/strong> and his wife <strong>Christy<\/strong> who lead <a href=\"http:\/\/mysanctuarychurch.com\/\"><strong>The Sanctuary<\/strong><\/a> in Huntington Beach.\u00a0 Their story is particularly compelling considering the struggles they have been through and delivered from. Jay, formerly a hugely successful competitive skateboarder, lost it all as he fell into the abyss of cocaine &#8212; leaving Christy with a newborn child and a choice to make. Namely, she questioned whether she should stay with him.<\/p>\n<p>They spoke with me in separate interviews &#8212; but, as you will read, this is one case of he said, she said that seems grounded in a foundation of faith and love. I&#8217;ll share my interview with Christy with you next week. First, Jay:<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>How did you become involved with this show?<\/p>\n<p><strong>PASTOR JAY HAIZLIP: <\/strong>Well, they had heard about me and they approached me&#8230;When Oxygen picked up the show &#8212; they loved the show &#8212; they just wanted a little bit more diversity.\u00a0 So, they sent the production company to go find somebody. I&#8217;m that guy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>What do you hope to accomplish with it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH: <\/strong>My desire is that people who would never come to church would somehow be brought closer to church &#8212; and, more importantly, drawn closer to <strong>God<\/strong>.\u00a0 There are a lot of people that have thoughts toward God or about God, about church, that aren&#8217;t necessarily accurate. My desire is that people could watch from the safety of their home and as a result of that their interest in God would be sparked. You know, <strong>The Bible<\/strong> says <a href=\"http:\/\/biblehub.com\/1_corinthians\/3-6.htm\">some plant, some water but God gives increase<\/a>. And, so I hope this show &#8212; or, at least, my part on this show does that. It plants a seed, waters a seed and we&#8217;ll trust God to give the increase.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>And the ratings, so far, have been good, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH: <\/strong>Yes, the premiere episode broke a couple of different records (for Oxygen). Episode 2 stayed right there. It didn&#8217;t dip in terms of viewers. Actually, in two categories, it increased. So, we&#8217;re two episodes into this and it&#8217;s staying strong. It&#8217;s making a huge impact.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>Have you received any feedback from your congregation?<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH: <\/strong>From the congregation &#8212; and out of the church, as well. My congregation loves me and Christy and our part of the show&#8230;Actually, this past weekend we saw an increase in people coming to visit our church and it&#8217;s directly connected to our involvement in the show.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>You have a very interesting background. You were involved in &#8212; and quite successful at &#8212; competitive skateboarding.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH: <\/strong>Yes, I was a professional skateboarder.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>Did the success and fame you found in that lead to the drug problem which you have been very open about?<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH: <\/strong>Well, it wasn&#8217;t directly connected to the fame&#8230;If you&#8217;re open to drugs and stuff like that then it&#8217;s readily available to you. But I started dabbling in drugs as a young kid &#8212; smoking pot, drinking. When I was fifteen I first did cocaine.\u00a0 Around that time, I&#8217;m already a sponsored skater &#8212; sponsored by national companies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>So, it was a bad cocktail. You had a drug problem going in and the money from the sponsorships made obtaining them all the easier.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH: <\/strong>Yes. It was definitely the sex, drugs and rock and roll kind of lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>When did you turn toward God?<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH: <\/strong>Well, what happened for me was cocaine got more and more of a hold on me. I still climbed the ladder of success (but) my addiction continued to get worse. What happened was I began to eventually lose everything because cocaine had such a hold on me. I wouldn&#8217;t show up to do things I had been hired to do &#8212; whether it was film for a video or do an ad for a magazine or something. I&#8217;d be out partying with cocaine. Eventually, I began to lose everything. So, I left California and went back to Alabama in an attempt to try to get my life together &#8212; but geographical location didn&#8217;t necessarily help me because the real problem was <em>in<\/em> me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>What was your relationship with your family like?<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH: <\/strong>Well, at that point, I wasn&#8217;t married or anything. My mom was a professional lady. She was a CEO of a hospital. She had been a product of the sixties. She was a hippy in the sixties &#8212; so I kinda grew up in that culture. But, like a lot of people from that generation, a lot them went on to be super successful. My mother was, as well &#8212; but, because I grew up in that environment, it bent me in the direction that I went in. You know, I don&#8217;t blame my mom or anybody like that for the choices that I made. I have to be responsible for the choices that I made and where they took me.<\/p>\n<p>But, what happened was, when I went back to Alabama to try to (fix) my life, things continued to get worse. I ended up being sentenced to two years in prison. I spent six months incarcerated (for) drug involvement. I was in and out of treatment centers &#8212; you know, trying to change my life&#8230;I really tried to work everything (through) everything that the world said was the answer to my problem. None of it really worked for me. I mean, I could abstain from using for short periods of time.<\/p>\n<p>(After getting out of another treatment center) I came home one Sunday morning. I sat on the edge of my bed. I never grew up going to church. I never read a Bible. I wasn&#8217;t anti-God. I just never thought about God. I just lived for myself and thought about myself&#8230;I was married by this point. I&#8217;d been married for two years. So, here I am sitting on the edge of my bed, nine o&#8217;clock Sunday morning. I have a son who&#8217;s not quite two yet and I just broke down crying because I had been out all weekend doing cocaine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>You were married to Christy at this point.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH:<\/strong> I was married to Christy. Fortunately, we&#8217;re still married. It&#8217;s a miracle that she stuck it out with me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: <\/strong>Was she aware of your problem.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PJH:<\/strong> (In the beginning) I was able to keep a good front. She knew I partied. She knew I did coke but I could appear to a lot of people to be&#8230;just a social user. You know, I wasn&#8217;t homeless, living on the street. I could keep a good front. I was a functioning addict but there were definitely times when she would see that I&#8217;d get out of control. I&#8217;d go on these binges that would last for days. Definitely, once we got married then she really discovered (that) &#8220;Wow! This guy&#8217;s got a problem!&#8221;\u00a0 I was trying to change my life and she kept watching me and walked through all that with me&#8230;That&#8217;s a very painful experience, from her side of thing, to walk that out with somebody.<\/p>\n<p>So, when I came home on that Sunday morning after being out all weekend doing cocaine, I sat on the edge of my bed and I just broke &#8212; because, for the first time, I really could see what my choices were doing to other people. I saw how my life was affecting Christy. I saw how my life was affecting my newborn baby.\u00a0 And, when I realized what I was doing, and I didn&#8217;t know how to quit, I just really broke. I started crying and I just looked up at the ceiling&#8230;and I just started begging God. I said &#8220;God, if you&#8217;re real, why won&#8217;t you help me?&#8221; I can look back on that moment and I know God heard that prayer &#8212; and I know God began to orchestrate events in my life that led me up to the point where a few Friday nights later I made arrangements to do a drug deal and God put a man in my path who is a businessman. He&#8217;s now a mayor of a city and he&#8217;s on the board of my church. He&#8217;s still one of my best friends today. God that put man in my path and he began to share <strong>Jesus<\/strong> with me in a way I had never heard anybody talk about Jesus. That night, I opened up my heart and asked Jesus Christ to come into my life and I felt all the hurt, the pain, the hurt of everything I&#8217;ve ever done, I just felt it, literally, come off of me and out of me. It was a supernatural experience and that was the last time I&#8217;ve ever got high.\u00a0 I mean the addiction was completely broken (and) out of my life in that moment. It was a radical miracle and I&#8217;ve never been the same.<\/p>\n<p>____<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note:<\/strong> I&#8217;ll post my interview with Christy Haizlip next Monday.<\/p>\n<p><em>Encourage one another and build each other up \u2013 <\/em><b>1 Thessalonians 5:11<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. He said, She Said (Part 1).\u00a0 Oxygen appears to have a new hit on its hands with Preachers of L.A.,\u00a0its new reality following six successful church pastors from the Southern California area. While generating strong ratings, the show has also sparked a &#8220;prosperity Gospel&#8221;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3632,13,1085,31],"tags":[35,5753,5750,5751,5752],"class_list":["post-4396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas","category-family-matters","category-forgiveness","category-television","tag-1-thessalonians-511","tag-christy-haizlip","tag-jay-haizlip","tag-oxygens-preachers-of-l-a","tag-the-sanctuary-in-huntington-beach"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Former pro-skateboarder Jay Haizlip talks about his rough path to the pulpit -- and Oxygen&#039;s &quot;Preachers of L.A.&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2013\/10\/former-pro-skateboarder-jay-haizlip-talks-about-his-rough-path-to-the-pulpit-and-oxygens-preachers-of-l-a.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Former pro-skateboarder Jay Haizlip talks about his rough path to the pulpit -- and Oxygen&#039;s &quot;Preachers of L.A.&quot;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. He said, She Said (Part 1).\u00a0 Oxygen appears to have a new hit on its hands with Preachers of L.A.,\u00a0its new reality following six successful church pastors from the Southern California area. While generating strong ratings, the show has also sparked a &#8220;prosperity Gospel&#8221;&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2013\/10\/former-pro-skateboarder-jay-haizlip-talks-about-his-rough-path-to-the-pulpit-and-oxygens-preachers-of-l-a.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Faith, Media &amp; Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-10-23T15:02:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John W. 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He said, She Said (Part 1).\u00a0 Oxygen appears to have a new hit on its hands with Preachers of L.A.,\u00a0its new reality following six successful church pastors from the Southern California area. While generating strong ratings, the show has also sparked a &#8220;prosperity Gospel&#8221;&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2013\/10\/former-pro-skateboarder-jay-haizlip-talks-about-his-rough-path-to-the-pulpit-and-oxygens-preachers-of-l-a.html","og_site_name":"Faith, Media &amp; Culture","article_published_time":"2013-10-23T15:02:53+00:00","author":"John W. 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Kennedy","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/e5d5ef9caeb6b01bcbf08ca6de6591c2","name":"John W. Kennedy","description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media &amp; Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations &amp; Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4397,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396\/revisions\/4397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}