Home Outreach Leaders Articles for Outreach & Missions Why Your Church Needs to Host a 5K

Why Your Church Needs to Host a 5K

I love how three or four times a year we attempt to mobilize our whole church to serve our community. Whether it’s through relief work after a major storm or doing an “extreme makeover” of a local soup kitchen in 24 hours … these have been some the proudest days of my entire life.

These are a lot of work to pull off … but I wish more churches would experience the benefits that come from serving together like this.

Last weekend, we hosted our third 5k for the clean water cause. We had 2,000 people participate with us … that represents about 80 percent of our Sunday morning attendance.

The whole day it was threatening to rain, but it held off so we could have some fun for a good cause. As we put this project to bed, I am again amazed that more churches don’t attempt this sort of thing.

Here are some benefits that I see from a mass mobilization effort like this:

Out of Your Seats.

I love seeing our church get out of our seats and onto the streets. Something magical happens when we get out from behind the walls of our services and into the community.

Events like this force us to directly engage with the public we are attempting to reach … not just on the day of the event, but in the months leading up through the prep.

It moves us from “come and see” to “go and show.”

Different Leaders.

Every time we do these sorts of events, it’s fun to watch a different set of leaders step up and help. There are people that will give themselves to a large project like this that is time bound that aren’t interested (or available) to serve on a normal serving rotation.

These leaders have added so much to the life of church … we’d be missing out without them.