Finding Community
Where do you go in Sydney, to find community? To find a place where you are accepted no matter your age, your skin colour, your weight or you accent? Where do you go for connection, for help, for rebirth, for affirmation and spiritual empowerment? Where do you go to find people who are constant companions, positive and supportive? Where do you go to find purpose, meaning and a like-minded group of people who turn associates into friends and show kindness of a type rarely experienced online?
I would love to tell you that the answer is church. But the Sydney Morning Herald tells me that the place people are going is outdoor fitness groups.
An article this week titled “Come to train, stay to connect: Fitness is the new religion”, we’re told that as more Australians disconnect from their religious heritage, fitness brands are stepping in to fill the void and provide connection, meaning and hope.
One fitness group leader says she can see how it is compared to religion. “It has become something sacred and meaningful to many people, something that gives people a purposeful pursuit and a like-minded community of people to connect with multiple times a week. We even have our ‘temples’ and ‘sacred places’ for you to visit – whether that’s a gym, or a running community, or hiking trails to seek out.”
So what do we, the church, do with this? Well I have had five thoughts.
1. Ask, what can we learn from outdoor fitness groups? I joined Parkrun in 2016 and I have never felt so welcomed, included and involved in something so quickly. The information about what to do and where to go was incredibly clear and most of it came from other random people, not the leaders. I felt connected from my first run.
2. Be curious rather than critical about people who join outdoor fitness groups. Why did they go there for meaning and connection? Ask friends who are part of one what benefits they get from being a part of it. Ask those who are not believers if they considered joining a church to find community. What do you learn about people from these conversations?
3. Why not join an outdoor fitness group as an opportunity to show people that there is something deeper in life than the endorphin rush of a good exercise session. Yes, exercise can be missional! As you do, remember 1 Timothy 4:8, “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
4. Remember that our main game is gospel proclamation not community creation. Sadly, sometimes people will leave our community because they reject the gospel. Equally sadly, sometimes people will leave the gospel because they have been rejected by the church community. We ought not change our priorities in light of fitness groups but we ought to remember that gospel proclamation creates beautiful gospel communities and if that is not happening we need to ask why.
5. Pray! The latest McCrindle Research tells us that a silver lining of COVID-19 has been a reprioritisation within many Australians’ lives. The focus has shifted from materialism, and the accumulation of more, to people and community. Our nation’s social health has been impacted and it is clear that people are seeking connection with someone or something beyond themselves in greater numbers as we move out of the pandemic restrictions. Pray that God might use you to connect someone to him and his gospel community.
Well, I’m off for a walk (that’s about all I can do at the moment) and as I do I am going to pray that as we gather again in-person, we might be a beautiful reflection of the community that is found in God himself - Father, Son and Holy Spirit in perfect like-minded unity. See you soon!
