What I Learned about Church Going to the Gym

By Mike Glenn

Like most of us, I started the new year with a pledge to lose some weight so I got serious about going back to the gym. Walking in and out of the gym several times a week, I began to see some patterns I recognized. In fact, I had seen these patterns for most of my life. 

Going to the gym is exactly like going to church. 

First, I noticed gyms are always crowded with new members at the beginning of the new year. All the workout stations are filled and there is a line to use every machine. Those of us who have been members for a while know we just have to hang on until Valentine’s Day. After that, gym attendance will dwindle back down to the regulars. Churches, likewise usually have their highest attendance in January. The leadership will start talking about adding space but by Easter, attendance will have leaked back to average numbers and by summer, well, let’s not talk about church attendance in summer. 

The next thing I noticed about gyms is most people who have a gym membership never go to the gym. This is just like church. Most people who are members of a church never attend. Membership numbers are always going to be larger than those who actually show up and workout in a gym. In fact, management counts on people not showing up. The gym management counts on people not showing up. If everybody showed up, there wouldn't be space to hold them. It's the same way in the church when everyone shows up, like Easter, we don’t have room. We design our church space needs on knowing only a certain percentage of our members will show up on any given Sunday.

Joining a gym may be the first step in getting healthier, but it’s not the last step. If you want to get in shape, you have to show up and do the work. There’s no secret. You do the exercise and you watch your calories. Period. It’s the same way in church. Membership isn’t the point. Involvement is. If you don’t show up, nothing changes. But again, showing up isn’t enough. That’s the next thing I noticed. 

You have to do something when you show up. Believe it or not, there are people who go to the gym almost everyday. They’ve got expensive shoes and the trendiest workout clothes. They usually have an expensive water bottle and a towel around their neck, but you’ll never see them lift a weight or get on a machine. They’ll spend their whole time in the gym talking to everyone, high-fiving everyone who walks by, but they’ll never do anything. In the church it’s the same way. There are a lot of people who come to church almost every week, but never get involved. They’ll shake everyone’s hand, bless everyone who comes by, but you’ll never see them do anything. When I was growing up I noticed everyone wanted to be an usher so you could stand outside in the foyer, but never go into the service. If you don’t do anything when you show up, in the gym or the church, you’ll never see the progress you want. 

The next part is interesting. In the gym, everyone is striving for failure. Everyone in the gym is working to the point when they can’t do one more rep. Even the gym rats in the back are working to exhaustion. The bulked up guys on the bench press are pushing until they can’t push the bar up again. The runners on the treadmill are pushing it until they have nothing left. Failure in the gym doesn’t surprise anyone. That's the whole point. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t growing. 

In church, we follow Christ until we exhaust our own resources and faith, then we fail. Gradually we learn not to trust our own resources, but to count on God’s faithfulness. Unfortunately, most of us have to learn this lesson the hard way.  Failure is part of the journey. Too many Christians think perfection is the goal. It’s not. Not in this life anyway. Getter better is. Becoming more and more like Christ is the goal. That means we try and we fail. We get up and we try again. Each time we fail farther down the road. Each time we fail closer to success. If we are serious about our walk with Christ, we’d seek out those moments when we’ve exhausted our human efforts. Those are the moments we’re growing the most. 

Here’s something else gyms and churches have in common. Pain is part of it. We go to work out and we feel great and then, we wake up the next morning and everything hurts. Our legs are stiff. Our chest is tight. “Pain,” the gym rats say, “is weakness leaving the body.” The pain in the Christian life happens when we have to confront those parts of ourselves held captive in anger, resentment, guilt and shame. In order to heal, Christ will always take us back to those moments and when He does, it hurts. Too many of us try to avoid these moments. We’d rather not think about them, but it is only in thinking about them, understanding them and then, being released in forgiveness that we deal with them. No pain. No gain. It’s the same in church and the gym. 

Lastly, you have to come back tomorrow. Coming once a year doesn’t cut it – in the gym or the church. We have to show up and keep showing up until the practice of going to the gym – and to church– is a habit we no longer think about. We just do it. There’s no finish line. There’s only the next day. Sure, the day is coming when Christ will call us home, but until then…we have to keep showing up and doing the work. There is no plan B.