Catching the Wave - The Monks of Stoke

When I looked up we were in the middle of Siskiyou Lake floating on paddle boards. I was leaning back on my locked out arms with Whit reclining against my chest - laughing uncontrollably.  As the rest of our crew began to open their eyes and sit up, we realized we were completely surrounded by witches - YES WITCHES!! Pointed hats and all. Except instead of riding brooms, they were riding paddle boards - So let’s talk about how we got here.

I’ve heard multiple stories and I’m not sure the exact details, but sometime in the past Chad had a prophetic dream. In his dream he saw believers - a team of them - in crowded secular settings wearing monk robes. These were not regular monk robes however, they were tie-dye and these monks weren’t the monks of any traditional order, they were THE MONKS OF STOKE - on a mission to bring the people the stoke that comes only from the god of stoke Jesus Christ. 

By the time I caught up with the movement, the monks of Stoke had already made appearances at various events. The most talked about was the Coachella music festival in 2023.

The stories were an amazing compilation of testimonies, where random strangers approached the monks in their tie-dye robes because as they explained, they felt safe, they felt welcomed, they felt seen or they felt accepted. They would ask the monks what’s with the robes? And the team would reply, we serve the God of stoke would you like to some of his stoke?

When accepted, they would bring them into the middle of a huddle, laying hands on them. Praying for them, praying for the joy of Jesus to fall on them, then they would throw them up in the air and catch them, celebrating their initiation into ‘The Eternal Stoke of Jesus.’

After our Monks of Stoke history lesson and the creation of our robes - it was time for our first time out in the world.

My First Experience with Tie-Dye Evangelism

Whit and I grabbed our robes and put them into the camper along with a few snacks of nuts and fruit (the entire group was at the front end of a 21 day Daniel fast, nuts and fruit were top of the exciting snack list). We searched our phones for the GPS coordinates and locked into the headwaters of the ‘Sacramento River’, also known as the ‘River of Sacrament.’ We were heading there to pray, take communion, and love the people that we found there. The headwaters is a spring that flows out of a rock Below it is the Sacramento river that runs all the way down to San Francisco. It’s a spiritual place or people like to say a ‘thin place’ meaning that the divide between the physical and the spiritual is noticeably thin here.

In our preparation meeting, Chad had mentioned a few times to be on guard for this or that. After the meeting, I stopped him, told him I was excited about going, that I didn’t have much fear, that I was loving the idea of this adventure, but in full transparency, I had no idea what it ACTUALLY meant to be on guard. I didn’t have the foggiest clue what I was supposed to be doing in my heart and my mind or in my prayer life in order to be ‘responsible.’ 

"I love Jesus and I am really good at loving people and so far I have not been in a situation where that didn’t supply everything I needed." 

He assured me, I would have the same experience here.

Encouraging? - Yes.  But I have to admit I still felt like the least equipped member of the team, and I was concerned that maybe some of my optimism was rooted in my naivety more than my strength.

 Whitney and I didn’t talk much on the way out there. We called my dad to wish him a happy birthday, then when we lost reception going into the Shasta mountains.  We put on worship music and did our best to quietly connect with Jesus inour own way to be ready for whatever was coming next.

 We arrived at the headwaters and it was everything you would expect from a thin place. Drum circles, incense, drugs, campers, homeless looking folks, more skin than clothes, and all sorts of spirits being summoned, connected with, and worshiped.

We gathered as a team,had a bit of a prayer, and a pep talk to make sure everyone’s focus was on nothing but loving people, and ultimately all we were there to do to pray over the headwaters and take communion inspired by a prophecy from Bennie Johnson, and Lou Engle. The prophecy was about a communion revival that started with the Sacramento river and we were gonna take a leap of faith with that in our hearts 

We donned our tie-dye monks of Stoke robes and walked the trail that does a circle around the headwaters while we prayed for Jesus to take the territory.  As we came back into the main area of human activity, one of the monks named Franz stopped and asked a stranger,

“Do you want Stoke?”

The stranger was confused.

Franz explained, “Because I serve the god of Stoke and he wants everyone to feel it. His name is Jesus.  Would you like to feel his stoke?”

My first thoughts were: “Oh we’re starting. I not ready for that. I didn’t know we were going to do this RIGHT NOW. He really just jumped right in there didn't he.”

I was impressed with his boldness, and there was a competitiveness in me that I could feel nudging me to step up my game. I wanted to take bigger risks to see what it felt like to be that bold.

For the next hour or so I was as bold as I could be and made some awesome friends, probably annoyed some people - and one guy really lashed out in frustration that I wasn’t interested in taking on his beliefs.  I’m not sure I changed the course of history, but I did my best to boldly bring the light into the darkness.

And then it was time to move on to phase two…

The 4th Annual Witch Paddle on Lake Siskiyou

Next on the agenda was paddling on the Siskiyou river. We were timing our paddle to match up with the fourth annual witches paddle on the lake. Chad was very explicit that this had nothing to do with telling witches they were wrong, attempting to change their beliefs, or trying to draw some line in the sand between us and them. It was very simple. We were to love them, serve them, help pump up boards, help carry boards to the water, offer snacks  ...stuff like that

Then we were to connect with Jesus, go out on the water and worship Him, and be obedient to whatever he asked us to do.

As funny as it sounds to say, “I am attending a witch paddle” - I was actually way more comfortable with the concept of loving Jesus on the water than I was with the headwater experience. My confidence rose even further when we agreed as a team that Jesus was calling us out there to experience joy, to share joy, to play in his creation, and express our gratitude to the creator for the opportunity.

After we had paddled around for a while, splashed, prayed, and sang worship songs, Abbi shared that she had had a vision of us laying on our boards on our backs and just soaking in the love of Jesus and encountering him floating in the middle of his creation. We were all feeling bold and adventurous (plus we had already taken 25 leaps of faith), so this seemed like a natural 26th. We circled up, we lay down on the boards, and began singing.

Not two minutes into the singing, Whit started laughing. They call it ‘Holy Laughter.’  It’s when you’re experiencing God‘s love in such a real way that your joy peaks at an incredibly high-level and you can’t help but start laughing.

I could’ve bet this was coming. It’s starting to become a pattern of Whit’s to laugh hard anytime the Holy Spirit is released.  I love it!!  I love seeing her so happy & she’s even significantly lighter throughout life in general since these episodes began a couple of weeks back.

We all had a really peaceful and beautiful moment. Everyone was singing a song I had never heard before, but I loved how it felt to hear it. Some of the people singing were amazing singers. Some of the people singing were terrible singers. I’d probably fall somewhere in the middle, but I was mostly just listening. Whit was leaning back against me, laughing uncontrollably, and her laugh was by far the loudest noise coming out of the group. There was a wind blowing on the lake so we were drifting, but no one really seemed to care. We were all focused on Jesus and trying to be as present in the experience as possible.

As we all started to sit back up off our boards, we had drifted into a coven of witches who were paddling the opposite direction.

Franz, who is not one to keep quiet, asked the front witch if she loves Jesus. 

She said “NO, I don’t”  

To which he replied, “Then you must not know him because He is the God of stoke.”

Of course, all of this is overshadowed by Whit’s still uproarious laughter that has not stopped even for a moment. 

Abbi pointed at Whit and said, “That’s what it looks like when you feel him.” By this time, the woman couldn’t help but start to laugh. 

And so it went as we paddled through the 50 - 60 witches, and all the way back to our cars. Whit never stopped laughing, Franz never stopped inviting people to feel the touch of the god of Stoke, and each person we encountered would be confused & skeptical at first, but no one could resist Whit’s holy laughter.

At the end of the day, I have no idea what we accomplished out there in any sort of measurable terms, but I know that we came face-to-face with many other human beings who believed that we were going to bring debate or condemnation in the name of Jesus Christ ...and instead we brought laughter.

And ultimately they ALL joined in.