The power of running together

Park Run and the participation principle.

Jessica Norman

Jessica is a Formation Tutor at St Mellitus College, and completing a PhD in Pauline anthropology,

Runners jog along a path into the sunset.

Park Run UK

There has been a surge among Millennials (myself included) in running. After watching the London Marathon this year, a record 840,318 people entered the ballot for 2025. The encouragement, stories and social media increase in ‘running-Tok’ may have been behind this, but I think it says something more profound about society's sudden interest in running.

I started running back in 2019. It provided a space to get outside, clear my head and improve my fitness. It was a hobby, turned interested, turned key personality trait as it became easy for me to converse with people about whether you were a Hoka or On shoe wearer. But my running only really improved when I began to run with people. Quietly competitive, I like being able to mark my pace against those around me. In 2023, I signed up for my first half-marathon, leading me to simultaneously sign up for “Park Run”. Park Run is a free community event that takes place around the UK. At my local park run, an average of 1,500 people turn up each Saturday to run five kilometres around our local park, rain or shine. I was amazed to see people week-in-week-out turning up to run together. This weekly ritual provides a space for connection, community, and, for some, their sense of identity. The hard decision to wake up early on a Saturday morning to make my way to the start line gets replaced by the endorphins of participating in this run with others. There is power in running with others.

But running with people makes it easier to stay the course, run for longer, and keep going to the end.

A recent article in The Atlantic observes the social change that has occurred as the number of people attending church declines. The author noticed that the Church didn’t only provide a space for worship and an opportunity to connect with the divine, but also a narrative of identity, community, and ritual to our weekly rhythm. As the framework of the church is removed from society, we see an increase in isolation and disconnection. As church attendance declines, applications to run 26.2 miles increase!

Spaces like Park Run provide this sense of community and connection that is becoming harder to find in our increasingly digital and disconnected world. A surge in race partipcation speaks of a culture longing for community, connection and identity. A common characteristic trait for millennials is their desire to develop and find meaningful motivation in their goals and what they want to achieve. Gathering with those with similar interests or goals brings out the best in what we can achieve and teaches us about the power of doing things together.

When running on my own, I am always tempted to cut the run short, change my route, and, let’s be honest, go and get a coffee. But running with people makes it easier to stay the course, run for longer, and keep going to the end.

Societies’ need for connection and community is stronger than ever. When St Paul’ wrote to an early church, he frequently used the metaphor of running a race with a goal in mind. The power of the crowd in a race is tangible, both from those cheering you on and those with whom you are running. It is easier to run for longer when I run with people and am encouraged to keep going. As someone who attends church, I can see how it upholds a place in my Christian faith that I don’t succumb to cutting it short or ducking out, as can often be the temptation when I run alone.

A record number of applications to run the 2025 London Marathon speaks of how we all seek community, connection and identity. Park Run on a Saturday and Church on Sunday have more in common than perhaps I initially realised. They each provide a space for community and connection, but each has its own goal and focus on identity. Although the goals are different, the underlying principle is the same: it is better to run with people because there is power in running together.

Article

Change

Character

14 June 2024

7 min read

What’s the point of purpose?

We need a wider understanding of our purpose – grand or small.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

A white arrow on tarmac points towards a setting sun and people walking by a silhouetted lamp post.

Chris Loh on Unsplash.

In his 2009 book Start With Why, the leadership speaker and consultant Simon Sinek encourages leaders and businesses to think about their purpose. He encourages them to answer the question ‘Why?’ before moving to ‘How?’ Sinek’s book is part of an industry, with no shortage of self-help books, executive coaches and university programmes assisting individuals in finding purpose. Surely Sinek is right that a sense of mission (the ‘Why?’) needs to come before the development of a strategy (the ‘How?’ as well as ‘Who?’ ‘What?’ ‘When?’ and ‘Where?’). Yet working out our purpose is not easy. It takes time, effort, listening and crucially, an open mind.

In a ‘purpose economy’ (to use the term coined by writer Aaron Hurst), we risk arriving at fast, superficial, or inflated purposes disconnected from the unique vocations to which we are actually called. Several years ago, I undertook a project, of which elements were shared in the Harvard Business Review. One interviewee stated ‘We are a generation that is ruthlessly comparing ourselves with those around us and our role models at the same time. And if we are not doing something exceptional or don’t feel important and fulfilled for what we are doing, we have a hard time.’ In an age dominated by social media and its emphasis on presentation of superficial images inviting us to compare ourselves with others, these are words worth dwelling on.

This reflection struck me at the time, implying that many people believe that their purposes must be significant. Without grand purposes, we tend to struggle. That interviewee was right. Many of us value purposes involving high levels of excellence if not notoriety, whether pursuing elected political office, climbing the ranks in prestigious industries such as finance or consulting, or entering professions that are well-known and whose value can be readily explained to others (such as medicine, law or accounting).

The problem with an idea of purpose focused on excellence is that only some people will be seen to have worthy purposes. The consequence is more ‘ruthless comparison, in which we all look over our shoulders to what our peers are doing, wondering whether their respective purposes measure up or not. Of course, this issue could be dismissed as little more than a case of early-career angst, in which ambitious self-starters seek to outdo their peers in climbing the career ladder, but I doubt this is a good explanation.

Her calling is not as impressive in the world as the more publicly recognised calling of a profession, but surely the calling is of equal value.

After all, modern workplaces are full of people, across all generations, searching for purpose. More generally, rapid industrial transition over recent decades – whether the loss of the shipbuilding or coal mines (not to mention important parts of the steel industry in recent months) in the UK, or the recent loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States – and waves of technological change leave countless thousands of people feeling lost at sea. A sense of aimlessness is amplified when personal dignity is connected to work rooted in local communities. When this industrial work vanishes seemingly overnight amid shifts in government policy and technological change.

These examples suggest the need for a wider understanding of purpose, which makes room for many kinds of excellence, whether grand or small. Consider the example of a single mother. In comparison to the high-flying politician, business executive or university administrator, her purpose is anonymous. A paid job in the workplace is unlikely to be the source of the single mum’s purpose. Rather, the raising of a family is almost certainly the driving purpose in her life, a purpose which is nevertheless no less significant than those occupying more esteemed, high-status roles.

In the eyes of God, the single parent is called to the vocation of parent (I don’t think there is a difference here between a vocation or purpose), possibly through an unexpected event such as a divorce or passing of a spouse. Her calling is not as impressive in the world as the more publicly recognised calling of a profession, but surely the calling is of equal value. Indeed, from a Christian perspective, the lone parent fulfills a vital role of service in raising children who can help to approximate the Kingdom of God on Earth. Martin Luther pointed it out well: every person has a divine calling providing them with purpose, whether they are aware of this or not.

The idea is that a sense of what we are becoming matters more than the circumstances we find ourselves in.

How then can we define our purpose when elements of culture, technology and other forces tempt us to identify clear purposes as rapidly as possible? To start, it helps to resist the urge to form large and lengthy purposes. Our purposes are often revealed gradually. Even the most profound events altering the landscape of a person’s life must be digested slowly. Tom Wright, in his biography of Saint Paul, writes that after Paul’s encounter with Jesus while on the Road to Damascus, he returned to Tarsus for ten years to meditate on what he had learned. In all likelihood, Paul spent this time working as a tentmaker, working within a ‘small, cramped workshop,’ in which ‘he prayed, he studied, and he figured out all sorts of things.’

It is only ‘by the end of the Tarsus decade [that] Saul had worked out in considerable detail what it meant that the One God had revealed himself in and as the crucified and risen Jesus.’ Paul’s purpose was formed over many years, ‘hammering away’ at what he learned on the Road to Damascus. Had Paul wanted to make sense of his encounter with Jesus in a single go, then his purpose would surely have been truncated, thereby limiting the fulfilment of his unique calling that transformed the world we live in today.

Our circumstances may also limit the scope of our purposes. Our family, geography, gender, and socioeconomic situation all shape the people we become – at least in the short-term. The philosopher Robert Adams writes in Finite and Infinite Goods that ‘One’s actual circumstances condition and in various ways influence and limit one’s vocation. The vocation, however, is not the circumstances, but what one is called to do in them.’

The idea is that a sense of what we are becoming matters more than the circumstances we find ourselves in. The question of who we wish to become is a crucial one, involving personal vision, and Adams sees this question as outweighing extensive consideration given to existing circumstances. Another idea of vocation, proposed by the theologian Oliver O’Donovan, is more gradual. He says that we come to be a certain person over time, without too much planning. Our purposes develop one day at a time. Specific events give us chances to put our purposes into action, but we do not know when these events will occur.

With this approach, clear purposes are formed over time through constant practice, rather than revealed at the outset of an activity.

How then can we find our purposes when they are often ambiguous, intertwined with our personal circumstances, and without too much recourse to self-help books, life coaches or university programmes recommending quick answers?

Our purposes need to be worked out through consistent, small-scale practice of the things we enjoy. For some, this is the playing of a musical instrument, for instance the piano or guitar, two hours per day. For others, this is the constant practice of a given sport in the early hours of the morning. And for others, this is working away on a tricky mathematical problem that simply grips them.

With this approach, clear purposes are formed over time through constant practice, rather than revealed at the outset of an activity. It is then unexpected events – as Harold MacMillan said ‘Events, dear boy, events’ – which shape us. These events may change us, setting us in entirely new directions much like Paul’s encounter on the Damascus Road, or the lone parent following a divorce or death of a spouse. But it is not only the events that create purpose. The seeds of purpose are planted well ahead of time, through practice in relation to the things that bring us joy.

Our purposes, then, should be less a cause of anxiety requiring self-help industries – needing to figure everything out at once – than a reason for play, practice, and prayer, listening to the still small voice – perhaps the voice of God, gently leading us to a settled sense of purpose. This allows purposes we never imagined to reveal themselves to us over time, sometimes merging with – and sometimes out of – our circumstances and personal attributes that are more easily visible.

Rather than search for fast answers to our purposes, we can take comfort knowing that we do not need to do all the work ourselves. We may begin to work out our purpose through action, but trust that our purposes will come to fruition when the time is right.