These Minnesotans are combining faith and fitness in surprising ways

Is it a church? A gym? This Hastings spot is both, actually.

When Chad Kirchoff was hired to be Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church's new pastor a few years back, he convinced his flock to make some big changes.

The basement kitchen and adjacent Sunday school rooms made way for an open space that now fits more than a dozen cardio and weight machines and a mirror-walled weightlifting area. It's a shiny, well-kept fitness center, down to that familiar odor of sweat mixed with disinfecting spray.

You wouldn't know that right upstairs is a regular church, with stained glass windows, rows of pews and a small sanctuary.

The sign out front explains: "ReDo Fitness: A church with muscle."

Kirchoff had to work hard to make the concept not "seem weird" or make people wonder if they were going to "get thrown in the baptismal water."

"Once it started to grow, the mission was to reach beyond the walls and the barriers that people have and to inspire an overall well-being, a mental well-being, spiritual well-being, whatever that might be, in physical fitness," said Kirchoff.

The trademarked Catholic workout called SoulCore involves building core muscles as you pray the rosary. In California, a rabbi leads a combo prayer and exercise class — alternating between singing psalms and dropping into planks and lunges. And in Cloquet, Minn., Body & Soul instructor Judy Swedberg teaches "Dance Blast" and other fitness classes set to contemporary Christian music.

"I love it because it integrates the body, soul, mind and strength that Deuteronomy 6:5 tells us, to 'love God with all our hearts,' " said Swedberg, who trained to be a fitness instructor in the international nonprofit program, which works to spread "the Gospel of Jesus Christ through fitness classes."

"It covers it all on our checklist," Swedberg said. "You get your physical workout, you get your spiritual time, you get your fellowship, you get your socialization, you get your music that encourages your heart and your soul. And you'll laugh. And so people just love that they go for an hour and they can check off all those things that are just making a way for them to do better in life."

Religious scholar Cody Musselman, a postdoctoral research associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University, said there are "many outlets" today for faith and fitness to combine.

"As some traditional religious leaders are anxious about dwindling attendance numbers, fitness is a way of trying to win back congregants or to show that the church or the synagogue can be relevant to your daily life," she said, adding that seminary schools now often include training on starting a "fitness ministry" or a "health and wellness ministry."

A long history

While current secular fitness outlets like SoulCycle seek to provide spiritual connection and community in a way many people find church-like, the faith-fitness connection is actually a very old one, Musselman said. The YMCA began in a 19th-century movement called "muscular Christianity" that sought to make faith more appealing to young men.

Kirchoff, who was one of the founders of the Snap Fitness franchise. secured initial funding from the Lutheran Church Extension Fund and opened the gym to anyone, not just to his congregation. It's free to use, but donations are welcome.

He decided that his church's gym shouldn't display crosses or quotes from scripture on the walls. He wanted it to be a welcoming place for non-Christians to work out, too.

There is a bible by the water fountain, though, and a corner where prayer requests are taped to the wall. On Monday nights he hosts a wide-ranging philosophical discussion group downstairs, as weights clang and ellipticals whir around him.

He wasn't sure about hanging out at a church when a friend first told him about it, but he has become a gym regular. "Over time, I was just like, this is a nice place to go. There's a lot of good people here," he said.

The gym has brought some new faces around on Sundays, but "not as many as I'd like," Kirchoff said.

The toughest part has been asking for help. He needs to maintain enough income from donations to keep things running.

Recently, he started collecting scrap metal donations in the church's parking lot, found community volunteers to help with cleaning, snow removal and other tasks around the church, and requested that regular gym users contribute $15 a month if they can.

He's hopeful about the future.