Over the last ten years, the Parkrun movement has exploded in popularity. Beginning in Bushy Park, London in 2004, it is now running in 23 countries, including Woking Park in our parish. At the moment the route is fully in our parish; previously it crossed over the Hoe Stream into Old Woking parish. On some Saturdays, several local churches are represented, with ministers from at least four. I think churches can learn several important things from Parkrun.
Before going too much further, I should say that I have only been to a handful of different Parkruns, so there may be some sweeping generalizations in this post.
A truly inclusive community
At St Mary of Bethany Church, we try to be an inclusive community. Church is one of the few places where you find all different ages and stages of life rubbing along together. We aim to have no barriers of social class, ability, ethnicity or life experience. We hope that everyone feels welcome here, whether it’s your first time or you’ve been attending for the whole of your life. Most churches think they are welcoming; fewer actually offer a really warm welcome to strangers. If you’re not sure whether your church does, try bringing a friend – let the friend go in and sit separately from you, and afterwards ask them whether they were welcomed in. You may be surprised at their response.
Parkrun is a genuinely inclusive community; it doesn’t matter how fast you go, how old you are, whether you walk, run, jog or do a combination, and so on. It is always a 5km run, not a race, where it’s completely fine to complete the course in 17 minutes or one hour. People run, jog, walk, push baby buggies or bring their dogs. Some people are members of athletics clubs, many have run longer distances, including marathons. There are often people standing on the sidelines cheering runners on – in this respect it’s a bit like the London Marathon, but without the agonizing pain or free bananas. You can be a part of things even if you’re just there to cheer people along. All Parkruns are free of charge, and many have a race for children as well (Woking’s is 9am Sunday morning – perfect for our 10.30am church service!). Often people meet for coffee afterwards in a local café.
At its best, church can be like this: an inclusive community where everyone matters and we all have something to offer, to give and receive from each other. I can think of many examples of this. In our own church, it’s the person with Down’s Syndrome who is on the welcome team, the family from south Asia who we’ve supported through hard times, the person struggling with addiction who finds confidential support. In practice, though, we sometimes act like some people are more important than others: we might put the minister on a pedestal or defer to the regular stalwart who has been there forever and always sits in the same seat (and woe betide anyone who gets there first!).
A real test of welcome in a church is how good you are at welcoming people who neither fit your core demographic nor the people you are aiming to reach. I learned an important lesson years ago, when an ethnic minority family stopped coming to our church after several weeks and I realized we did not have their contact details; we would normally get these when people seem to be settled. I have been avowedly anti-racist since my childhood in right-on north London, but I had to recognize that this was unconscious bias at work. At their worst, churches can be like clubs where only the regulars are really welcomed or valued and visitors are ignored. Churches which are like that should definitely be more like Parkrun.
Mutual support
At Parkrun, people support each other. The volunteer stewards often call out encouragement. As you take your final sprint, there are generally people cheering you on. Parkrunners don’t generally snipe at each other, ignore each other, barge into slower runners or put other people down. Woking Park is quite mixed and friendly; I went to one in London which was more reserved. Because it is a run, not a race, to turn up is to win – participants celebrate being out of bed, outdoors in the fresh air on a Saturday morning (although, of course, many people there do treat it as a race). You can come as you are, which of course is part of the beauty about running. The only equipment you need is a decent pair of trainers; apart from that, nobody cares what you’re wearing, unless it is particularly new or colourful and they would like it themselves, in which case they will affirm you.
Churches are often like this, but not always. It’s often said that the Church is the only organization which exists for the benefit of its non-members. At St Mary of Bethany Church, you should come just as you are. No special equipment is needed and we give out free Bibles to anyone who needs one (we have lovely easy-read ones too). The thing all of us can keep on learning is to welcome and celebrate everyone equally, and to understand that just walking through the door can be a major barrier for people who have never been to church. That’s why we are keen to run as many events as we can in church, because someone who walks into a church building for the first time is more likely to walk in again for something else.
Parkrun also relies on volunteers. It is completely free to take part, with the costs of equipment and administration covered by advertising and sponsorship. Many volunteers are runners who give back some of their time – someone suggested to me when I first started at Parkrun that I volunteer for one week for every ten that I run, and that feels like a good rule of thumb. But there are some volunteers who never participate; they are just there to help. Parkrun vocally affirms its volunteers – they get a big round of applause at the beginning of each session.
Churches and our leaders constantly need to affirm our volunteers. All too often someone will tell me that they’ve been helping with something in their church for many years, and no one has ever said thank you. In general, people serving in church are doing just that: they are trying to serve others and serve God. They are not doing it for thanks or recognition. However, it’s vital to appreciate each other and the work that people do. It is a dispiriting experience to give time, energy and effort to a job and then have nobody say thank you, or even have people complain about something you’ve done (spare a thought for the audiovisual team when the tech goes wrong in a service!).
As a leader, I’ll be the first to put my hands up and say I haven’t always said thank you enough; it takes time, resources and intentionality to do this properly, and there are always other calls on all of these. It may not be appropriate to have a round of applause at the start of every service, but we have developed our own alternatives: tea and cake with our toddler group team once a year is one of my favourites. I always think this is part of having a spirit of celebration, and in any organization, as the popular leadership saying goes, what you celebrate, you propagate. If people can see that serving is fun and that we celebrate volunteers, they will be more likely to step up and help.
Celebrating milestones
Milestones are an important part of life in any community. Milestones get celebrated at each Parkrun: there’s a round of applause for everyone running their fiftieth, hundredth or, these days, their five-hundredth Parkrun. We pay tribute to members of the community who have died, whether it’s the chap who always comes and sits on the bench to cheer people on, or the dedicated runner who has kept moving right to the end.
I love being part of a church which celebrates milestones with people. One innovation I introduced at St Mary of Bethany when I arrived is the birthday chocolate. (Like most new things I’ve done, I nicked the idea from another church.) Each Sunday, if it has been your birthday since you were last in church, you can have a chocolate. Other celebrations qualify: a new baby (to be clear, the parents get the chocolates, not the infant!), a big wedding anniversary and so on. I reserve the right to refuse if the celebration is tenuous or if people have a suspiciously high number of birthdays in a short time (yes, this does happen)…
You know what you’re getting
One of the beautiful things about Parkrun is its consistency: no matter where you go, the essentials will be the same. The course will be 5 kilometres long. There will be a newcomers’ briefing about 15 minutes ahead of the start, to help you if you’ve never been to that course before. Then there will be a main race briefing for everyone immediately before the start. The online results system will log your time, date and venue and send you an email soon after the event. All of this makes it very safe to go to a new Parkrun; when it comes to the basics, you know exactly what you’re going to get.
In this time of so-called ‘Quiet Revival’ (the recent increase in reported church attendance among young adults), some of the expressions of church which are growing most quickly in Britain are the ones which offer a similar degree of consistency, in particular Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. It is possible that this consistency of worship experience is part of the appeal. I remember a Roman Catholic friend living in Sierra Leone commenting to me many years ago, that they preferred going to Mass rather than one of the more Pentecostal churches locally. In that context, the Catholic church provided reliability and consistency, while many other churches would pop up quickly, and would offer theology and practices which were susceptible to change from the culture.
Don’t get me wrong: I think it is a beautiful thing that the Church comes in many different shapes and sizes, and this is something very special about the Church of England. For many of us, though, this means we have to work a bit harder to explain to potential visitors what our services will look and feel like. Ruth Bushyager, Bishop of Horsham, recently complained at the Guildford Diocese Church Growth Conference about church websites: it can be remarkably difficult to work out what time the main service happens and where the church is. When we redesigned our church website, this was the main thing I noticed when I was researching. This is such basic information – you should be able to find it easily from the homepage. More and more sites now include a simple guide to what to expect when you turn up to a service. Again, this helps to reduce the barriers that newcomers will have to cross.
So, Church of Jesus Christ: be more Parkrun! Embrace inclusivity by being honest and vulnerable when you have failed to include someone well. Celebrate and support each other in the ups and downs of life. Remember the milestones which can encourage everyone to join in. And be consistently great at what you do: authenticity, community and the weird and wonderful experience of worshipping Jesus together.