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Paintball Points To Jesus

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By DIANA MARCUM McClatchy Newspapers

Published: September 8, 2007

MARIPOSA, Calif. - This is a mountain town where there's a Bible verse painted over a pizza parlor door and a local politician keeps a cardboard cutout of John Wayne holding a Winchester rifle in his office as proof of fealty to the NRA.

But a proposal to bring Paintball for Jesus to public land has some people riled.

'I'm sorry. Maybe I'm missing something in my upbringing as a Methodist, but Paintball for Jesus? God help us all. Seriously, this teaches bad habits of shooting each other,' said Mariposa County Supervisor Brad Aborn, 71, the Wayne fan who was a Navy helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War.

Church youth leader Jeff Tomerlin contends, however, that paintball is the perfect ministry.

His church, New Life Christian Fellowship, wants to play paintball on 15 acres of county land.

'I really wanted to do something for the youth where they could see godly adults acting as mentors. We thought about going the skateboard route, but none of us are skateboarders,' said Tomerlin, 45.

After church on the third Sunday of every month, a group of teens and adults from New Life cooks up a big meal of hot dogs, gives testimonies about Jesus in their lives, suits up in camouflage and grabs donated paint-shooting guns ('markers' in paintball terms).

They have affectionately nicknamed their paintball and Jesus games PBJ.

Tomerlin hopes the lessons of discipline and teamwork that families pick up while playing will have the sticking power of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

'They learn life lessons like depending on each other, and they learn that sometimes if you go out on your own, you get hurt. It can sting when you get hit.'

Most of the time, the paintballers use Tomerlin's back yard. Sometimes they play on nearby ranch land, with permission, when the ranchers aren't running cattle.

The merits of paintball as a character-building church youth activity became a cause of public debate when the church went looking for a more permanent home for the games.

Tomerlin asked Supervisor Bob Pickard whether he knew of any available land.

Before he broke his ankle during a game and his kid went away to college, Pickard played paintball - a shoot-and-duck sport involving spherical gelatin capsules containing dye propelled by bursts of compressed gas.

He thinks it's fun.

Pickard, owner of High Country Cafe and Health Food, immediately thought of a parcel often referred to tongue-in-cheek by Mariposans as the Field of Dreams.

It's county-owned and the site of a future regional sports complex. Some $40 million from now at an unspecified date, a swimming pool, baseball and soccer fields and other recreational opportunities are envisioned on the land.

But for now, it's a shrub-dotted hillside north of town off Highway 49.

'They needed a place to play. We have this land sitting there. I thought it was a no-brainer,' Pickard said with a rueful laugh.

'But the people who don't like the idea REALLY don't like the idea.'

The item was pulled from the supervisors' agenda at two meetings when vocal, grumbling crowds made it clear they weren't in favor of the proposal.

The church's youth group saw Paintball for Jesus as good, clean fun. But many in the community recoiled at linking the Prince of Peace with packing heat - even if disciples are only inflicting paint splatters.

Pickard and other supervisors heard from people who saw the issue as a conflict between church and state, environmentalists concerned with paint marks on trees, residents of Italian Acres - a neighboring retirement community - concerned with possible every-third-Sunday mayhem and the county's planning department, which said the project would require an environmental impact report.

However, the perception commonly fought by paintball enthusiasts - that it is a war game that promotes an acceptance of guns - didn't really surface in the Mariposa debate.

'We're pro-guns. I approve concealed-weapons licenses for law-abiding citizens. We don't have home-invasion robberies here. You know why? We all have guns,' said Jim Allen, Mariposa County sheriff, coroner, public administrator, marshal, warden and head of animal control.

'It's more that most people don't equate church and paintball. But as long as it's family-oriented, I'm fine with it.'

Church members have prayed over the issue and decided not to give up.

'It's just a matter of educating people about the world of paintball and our intentions,' Tomerlin said.

In the proposal, New Life makes a point to say all other churches would be invited and included.

Dianne Fritz, a supervisor and owner of Happy Burger Diner, sees no chance of success for the proposal. 'Mariposa is down-to-earth. We like churches, guns and family. But we're just not ready to combine them all with paintball and Jesus and public lands.'

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