The first thing I do when I wake up is walk my dog Pongo. Most days I listen to the daily Bible readings as I walk, listening better on some days than others.

On the morning Daylight Saving Time pushed clocks forward an hour, we were walking in the 5:45 pre-dawn darkness again. As the Scripture reader continued reading from Numbers, we rounded the corner on Cypress, and my mind wandered to Run for the STARS.

Last year, the disappointments of shut down were piling up. Still, I remember Julie sounding more excited than bummed when she told me that it was going to be a virtual 5K.

Whatever that means, I thought. So I put duct tape across the bottom of my run yard sign, wrote “virtual run” on it with a thick permanent marker and pushed it into the grass feeling cheated. I love helping out at Run for the STARS—working at one of the water stations, being a course marshall, doing social media during the event, cheering everybody on. It’s all good and fun and totally impossible last year.

What a baby.

It was on one of the morning walks last year that I realized that there was one thing I could still do to help—and that was to actually run the 5K myself.

Absolutely not, I told myself.

I imagined myself running at a pace where four-year-olds to 94-year-olds would all be passing me by, all of them smiling and laughing. Meanwhile, something would happen to a foot or an ankle and I’d need to walk/limp the rest of the route. I knew everyone would be nice. But still. I didn’t want to come in first in my age-group, just not embarrass myself.

Or maybe I just prefer swimming.

I realize on a lot of levels, that the world isn’t about me and neither is a 5K. People think about their own running. Or their kids or parents or whatever. They don’t care about me in the 5K. That’s a good and normal thing.

So it was surprising when I came to realize that this kind of inner weirdness was going on in my head. I mean, do I really want to admit this to people? When I was in junior high, I gave up track for trumpet. I was good with that decision, but maybe there is something leftover from when I used to run sprints with the guy who stayed in track and won the all-city meet that year. I don’t know. It surprised me.

Here’s the thing. While walking with Pongo last year, I thought about how I could run the 5K whenever I wanted. No one would be running with me. I could time myself. I could run when I wanted, stop and walk for a bit, run again. It seemed about as low risk as could be. And it would help STARS. I realized that there was a part of me once that liked to run, and maybe that part of me might still be in there somewhere. Maybe I actually wanted to do this. It dawned on me that I could actually run/walk the 5K without an ounce of self-consciousness. I could just enjoy it and help STARS at the same time.

So that’s what I did.

I started by lengthening my walks with the dog. I figured out how many times round our neighborhood I needed to go to make a 5K. I actually ran on the scheduled race day. Early Saturday morning, I got up and ran. I was doing the Run for the STARS without being at the Run for the STARS. My dog ran/walked about two thirds of it with me and I was done before the 8:00 start time of the usual run. (By the way, online registration for this year's virtual run just opened.)

The pandemic shutdown made me do something I never thought I’d do.

There are all kinds of other examples I’ve heard about—taking up gardening, rearranging your sock drawer, writing actual letters, baking yeast breads, cooking more, putting together crossword puzzles, redoing a room in your house or apartment.

But those aren’t the only things people are doing. Some people are sneaking into services; they’re secretly running to churches. Even possibly College Church.

Like me and running, they don’t want anyone to see them. They don’t even want to admit it to themselves exactly. Or maybe they’ve never even thought about it before. Perhaps they’ve never been to a church, but they met someone who goes. Or they drive by on the way to work and they get curious. Maybe they have memories of church, good or bad, maybe mostly bad, and yes, Sunday morning rolls around and . . . click. Welcome to College Church. They can watch from bed, the couch, the deck, wherever.

Put yourself in their running shoes.

OK. No. Absolutely not. But what is it like?

You remember the thing that happened that made you not like church, or it’s not part of your tradition and it would just be too much for your family to take. Or you developed that mental objection or changed political parties, or the emotional hurt never quite healed, or life just got going in another direction until Sunday became a different kind of day than the day you go to church. You think Jesus is better than ok but you aren’t sure about the organized church.

I’ve thought this is such a great opportunity for people to turn to God.

Yet the church, well, self-inflicted wounds don’t necessarily make us seem like the most inviting and welcoming people on earth, which of course, we should be at some level. There shouldn’t be such a gulf between us and the God who loves us and the people we think of in our Jonah-like perceptions of our own personal Ninevites. Why doesn’t God get with our program?

Think about them in their homes. God is there. Jesus is alive. The Holy Spirit starts to get a little buggy. Leave me alone, you think.

We estimate that 1,845 viewers on 671 viewing devices joined the Sunday morning services through our livestream, YouTube and Facebook pages last week. And that was lower than usual. That’s a lot of people.

More and more I’m thinking about those Secret Runners like me who are clicking their way into church. How can they take the next step? What can we do to make it seem like a place worth going; are we as a people a group worth knowing? What about Jesus and forgiveness and this Easter thing coming up?

Tomorrow, as services begin, pray with me for those Secret Runners. Pray that this good news of Jesus would reach them and change their lives and ours.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Zechariah 9:9