Jeff has a long history in the world of fitness and wellness, tied intimately to my experience as a child with illness. This was a process of first understanding, then participating in, and then helping to build community around health.  When I joined middle school sports, I realized I was more interested in the whole-person improvement that physical activity engendered than I was in the sport itself. 

I have also had a long interest in ministry vocationally. Growing up in the Church, I agreed with the vision cast by pastors of partnering with people in their journey of Faith toward Relationship with Jesus Christ. I dreamed of eventually being a pastor or missionary from the time I was very young throughout high school. 

These two interests merged somewhat naturally in College where I founded a non-profit fitness ministry in Gainesville at the University of Florida. I learned a tremendous amount through this process and truly felt God’s calling on my life. I began to understand that participation in the work of all of the happenings of commerce, like a tapestry, met the needs of God’s people. I glimpsed a greater reality in the possibility of bringing to Earth the Kingdom of God through regular, sometimes mundane, acts of service. Seeing people get their bodies back, connect in community and even play with their grandkids more freely, felt novel and incredibly significant. In the movie Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell is quoted as saying:

“I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure”. 

I learned recently however that he was inspired by his father who is quoted as having told him:

“You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection. Don't compromise. Compromise is a language of the devil."

Throughout the years of owning my non-profit organization I realized that I did not have the skill set to truly and masterfully serve my community. I became dedicated to pursuing terminal education in the field of movement and realized the masters of movement were Doctors of Physical Therapy. To that end I closed my business and dedicated myself to the pursuit of this goal. 

Along the way I met Leah, ironically at a group fitness class she was coaching at the University of Florida. In the way of things, we connected, and fell in love.

Leah’s story with fitness is similar in many ways and yet in others fundamentally different. Leah is passionate about fitness as a means of counteracting the cultural obsession with self and vanity so prevalent culturally. “Sex sells” is the motto of our culture and women’s bodies have turned from temples of the Living God to convenient vehicles for the pleasure of peoples’ lusts. Many use fitness as means to tweak and perfect their aesthetics as a means of achieving worth in society, the eyes of others, or even to themselves. We unequivocally stand in opposition to this model and believe instead that 

Strength comes through hardship 

Rather than creating yet another gym where mirrors line the walls, the flash of cameras can be seen from people taking selfies, curating their online persona, and young people come to peruse the “meat market”, we seek to create a space where whole people, whole families, and a whole community can come together and learn how to use their bodies as vehicles of empowerment in an embodied spirituality.