Free & Fit - Sharing our Faith & Focusing our Fitness on a more Faithful Friend in Jesus in 2025
Free & Fit - Sharing our Faith & Focusing our Fitness on a more Faithful Friend in Jesus in 2025
Recent Stretch and Scripture session at the
minor Basilica Cathedral in Savannah Georgia
As we grow closer to Christ during the Holiday Season we can forget, as believers of the Way, we are becoming more and more inundated with challenges to our faith. It’s becoming more and more difficult to be a Christian in a changing Western and less civilized culture.
“If we are not careful we just may miss a step, lose our form and become off balance as the temperature increases. If we do not pay attention to our faith, in a world where our consumer experience is a little more important, then we may just experience an indifference in our own faith performance.
Whether you are an avid yogi, cardio junky or disciplined road runner the life of a Christian, in a growing secular culture, becomes more and more about what we should be doing according to our social media trends, our news feeds and our fashion trends and less about reading our bibles, taking sabbath time to spiritually journal or focus intimately on God during our private prayer time. “
Recent Free & Fit article on “How to Become Spiritually Fit in an Unfit Physical World.”
We constantly seek peace in our world, but always seem to rather place blame on the world rather look in the mirror at ourselves. Asking questions like: who are we as the Church today? Unfortunately, these challenges are arising more and more from inside of the Church than outside. We seem to be complaining and explaining ourselves away more than praying and Praising our God for who he is and what he has done by sending his one and only Son into the world. It’s more apparent amongst those who have been hurt and haven’t found Jesus in the healing they seek in today’s Church.
“Survivors have been pushed aside. We're ‘too embarrassing’, we're ‘too awkward’, we're ‘too angry’, we're ‘too traumatised’. [It seems] people want to avoid us. They don't even want to talk about it, never mind respond with compassion and care, or they want to come in with a quick fix. And there is no quick fix.”
Recent Christian Premier article on Church abuse: Church abuse survivor says attending too painful for many
Ghandi famously said that he loved our Christ, but never really understood our Christians! In the past year we have seen scandal, division and discourse in our Churches across Methodist, Anglican, Catholic and non-denominational expressions. It has an impact on us who work in the industry. As Faith leaders we find ourselves having to apologize for people we have never met, explain actions we didn’t perform and defend individuals perhaps we would never endorse. Rather than Church, this sounds a lot more like politics and a far cry from Christs call to the Bride he seeks to be United for Him. The recent scandals surrounding Robert Morris and Tony Evans remind us of Pete Wilson, Perry Noble, Carl Lentz and Brian Houston to name a few. It’s a constant struggle to see good Christian Brothers rejoicing.
“Like many of you, I was deeply saddened to learn of Pete Wilson’s recent resignation as the Senior Pastor of Cross Point Church. In Pete’s own words, he’s tired, broken and has led on empty for too long. So he’s stepping back. This comes, of course, just a few months after the exit of Perry Noble.”
Leadership article on Leading Well from Carey Newiuf “Some Thoughts About The Recent Exit of Two Megachurch Pastors.”
Another concern is the constant need for systems, branding and marketing to grab out attention within Church circles. This came up for me recently when a close contact asked for examples of my own work. He stated he was writing an article for his industry publication and he asked for me to send a picture of me working out in a Church, with a purposeful pose for his next article on the subject and I followed by sending over twenty photographs and took two procures of me working out inside a Church 24 hours later. This made me realize that I am way too brand focused and not Christ focused after panicking to justify my work and instead stand up for who Christ is and why Faith and Fitness truly make sense. The brand, the expression and trademark do not determine the type of person we are in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“But too many were caught up in the excitement and kept on branding. They branded the pastor, the worship band, the youth director – even their missions outreach. One church asked me to create a brand around the pastor’s son (no thanks). At some point, many churches were more focused on their brand than they were on the people they were supposed to reach.
Around that time, I had a friend in New York City who was an enthusiastic member of Hillsong church. He loved everything about Hillsong – the music, the videos, the conferences, the pastors, and the friends he developed there. But oddly enough, back in those days I never heard him talk much about his relationship with Jesus, his love for the Bible, or his desire to share his faith with other people.”
Recent article on the impact of brands over Ministry and Churches:Branding went wrong and how to fix it
In response, and upon reflection, it started to dawn on me that I needed to document, explain and present my work only to Jesus. Not for validation, but for the cause and case for Christ.
As after over a decade of doing fitness classes in Church buildings and outside of Church buildings I had to yet again justify, that we are all doing the working and re-branding it and then claiming it as our own. Instead we need to share it and explain who Jesus is and why he matters to us and how he can matter to others.
“This has brought me back to the basic foundational concepts of running and praying, stretching and praying and reading the Word of God whilst moving with the Body given to us by God. In the Bible it says “For in Him we live and move and exist [that is, in Him we actually have our being], as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’” Acts 17:28 AMP Thus meaning that as God's children we can play, we can move, we can sing, we can dance and we can pray with God's word.”
Free & Fit article on Sport & Spirituality as a part of Spiritual Formation:
Even more recently I met with a couple of friends who had never heard of High School Sports or Varsity Soccer Chaplains. Ironically, another role I had completed and am currently working in. This all leads towards raising awareness of the Gospel and a need to not to fight for the branding, copyrighting or endorsement of our work, but for a need to for repentance of prideful men seeking to rewrite a story others, including many before me, who have already been doing this work paid and unpaid, published and unpublished, famous and unknown.
We must seek to work together, not against one another and to find freedom in collaboration and not a compulsion to seek to be the only one. This is why being a Chaplain, not a first team coach, has been so important to me and why we must identify what it means to represent Christ on and off the field and inside and outside of the Church.
“As a Sports Chaplain, I can check in with players or coaches about performance, mental health and personal, spiritual, physical or social issues, but I can’t be seen to be actively pursuing or attempting to directly alter team affairs which may impact results or directly alter outcomes. Again, quite simply, this is the Head Coaches job. In response to my experience last summer when setting up my new business, I decided to differentiate my coaching from my chaplaincy and distinguish the clear difference of completion.”
Free & Fit article on Chaplaincy & Coaching “https://www.freenfit.org/single-post/free-fit-chaplain-not-a-coach”
After reading various other fitness articles and interviewing industry professionals I wrote a brand new full curriculum in 2022 on the concepts of forming Faith and Fitness as one spiritual practice. I have seen a need to re-establish these basic concepts. It is imperative that the fitness focus is of a more formational faith being reborn in Christ as we seek the second coming of Jesus. Not to focus on our fitness and forgetting our faith all together.
Our very own first experiences of working out in a Church building was in London with the Church of England at St Mark’s Kennington down in the Crypt of a Church, before fully utilizing the Sanctuary and finding our own weekly space every Monday and alternate Thursday back in 2015.
This was all at the same time as when I was serving as High School Sport Chaplain to a sixth form soccer team and year seven girls soccer team in London. These experiences have helped me build relationships here in Charlotte as a Chaplain to a semi professional and high school team with chaplaincy opportunities today in the City I currently live in.
During my University years at General Theological Seminary I completed a complete workout inside of St Peters church based upon Isaiah 9:6 which focuses on the heart of an individual and building a personal formation of fitness focused on a faith in Jesus. You can find that Jesus is our Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace. Our prayers should always be for those who do not know our faith to become followers of the Way. Yet, today, and always, we must pray for our leaders, fellow Christians and others to become more like Christ and less like themselves or someone else they may seek to be who is not Jesus Christ.
The Free & Fit Workout at St Peters in Chelsea New York City from Six Years ago in 2018. Supporting Faith & Fitness recent discovery of the ancient tradition of Monasticism in Fitness.
As we begin our new goals for 2025 perhaps begin to explore ways of incorporating the Faith & Fitness as One curriculum in your own prayer life. Jesus said in John 17:21 “My prayer is not for them alone (his disciples). I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” John 17:20-21 NIV.
The Jesus prayer is our shared prayer. We pray that our Faith and Fitness would become one as we are one with Christ and as we are one with each other through community and fellowship together through our relationship with the Trinitarian God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We participate in faith and fitness to Love God and love all people as one. In Jesus name. Amen.
“So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.”
Lamentations 3:26 NLT
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