Anglicare Sydney and the running group at St Barnabas’, East Roseville, are encouraging Sydney churches to use jogging to connect to the community.
The 40th annual City to Surf will be the world's largest organised road race with over 70,000 participants when it takes place on Sunday, August 8 and St Barnabas' rector Michael Kellahan has a vision to see churches from all over Sydney enter this year's event as a way of building relationships with their local communities in the months leading up to the big event.
"In 2009 one of our members suggested that getting a group together to train for the City2surf would be a good Connect 09 Project. He was right," says Mr Kellahan.
"Lots of locals were keen to run and happy to find a local group that would help them train. Many more have asked us about doing it in 2010.
"It wasn't about being a star athlete, but being part of a consistent training program to be fit for the race."
For three months leading up to the event the group met a couple of times a week to train.
"We almost always had outsiders coming along," he says.
Mr Kellahan found the training times and the deepening of relationships to be the significant outcome, rather than the day of the run itself.
The team also linked up with Anglicare's Care2run program and easily raised a couple of thousand dollars for youth counselling".
"Connecting is now a part of the fabric of Anglican churches as they transition from connecting in 09 to connect for life," says Anglicare's Parish Partnerships Team Leader, Darren Farrell.
"Our team have recently been genuinely encouraged by the number of churches talking to them about the positive impact Connect 09 had on shifting their focus, and seeing how natural and easy it was for them to do.
"We have heard of many ideas arising in 09 that are still going on; in fact are only looking like growing."
One exciting venture that Anglicare has the privilege of being a part of is the formation of training groups to run in the City to Surf.
"Those training runs on cold dark mornings during winter really bring people together " Christians, their non-Christian friends and members from the community who just want the camaraderie of training with others.
"Experiences like these create strong bonds and provide opportunities for sharing our lives and our hope with others " and we can get fit at the same time, a win-win!"
For more information please contact Anglicare's Parish Partnerships on 9895 8113.
