Climb Your Sparkle Mountain: Three Things the Church Must Learn from Peloton
Not surprisingly, Peloton, the at-home fitness company, experienced triple-digit growth in 2020. The already bourgeoning company was perfectly poised , à la Zoom, to meet the needs of the pandemic. The company has mastered digital community. What should the church learn?
Digital Community is Not Community-Lite
Peloton Co-Founder John Foley took the boutique fitness niche of spin cycling into the digital age with the creation of his company in 2012. Soul Cycle had already vastly improved the spin experience of your local YMCA by not only making it more bougie but also by adding the ability to actually compete against others in the class with the addition of a digital leader board. However, it wasn’t scalable. If you didn’t get a precious spot in a Soul Cycle studio, you didn’t work out. Peloton bike owners can work out in home, still see the leader board, and sweat buckets in their living room rather than on a studio floor.
The word peloton comes from the cycling world, referring to the group of riders in a stage race who move en masse together. It’s somewhat ridiculous that the word now refers to thousands or riders linked together by the internet and a touch screen, but Peloton intentionally crafts the experience so that riders who are alone actually feel like they are together. Hashtags–#pelotondads, #PelotonBourbonTribe, #PeloPastors, #PeloTheologians (that last one only has one member) link you to other riders. You can digitally high five those you’re riding with, and you can hope for a shout out from one of the celeb instructors when you get to 100 or 1,000 rides.
Here’s the key: Peloton is owning the online platform, not lamenting that we’re not together. The church can learn a ton in this regard. For one, stop trying to squeeze your old worship service into an online format. Design worship for the screen. Next, build the experience for connection. Every digital touch point–the worship service, the website, an email blast–must include some way to actually connect to another person. And pastors, stop wishing out loud that we’re not all in the same room, and start celebrating that the church can be the church without physically gathering.
Be Honest About Your #’s
A Peloton ride is all about the leader board. I can chase a stranger, a personal PR, or my older brother on any given ride. Placement is based on output, the amount of energy put in via the combination of cadence and resistance. Without these numbers, there would be no experience.
This means a couple of things for the church. The church has always had a difficult relationship with numbers. We know it’s not about how many are coming. But. It’s not like there is no counting in the New Testament. Jesus fed the 5,000, and the early church was certainly aware of how many: “And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2.47). The key of course is that this adding is God’s doing. A church must have its own kind of leader board—certainly not to compete with other churches–that includes tracking not only how many, but how the many are growing. This is undoubtedly more tricky than Peloton’s cadence + resistance = output. Pro tip: this company can help. Regardless, the challenge of measuring mission should not be avoided.
One other thing about numbers: Peloton instructors are good at getting riders to both be aware of the leader board, and to forget about it. That there is a leader board in life is not lost on these instructors, and it should not be lost on the church. The key to letting go of where we are on the leader board—how much is in our bank account, what zip code we live in, where we are on the org chart, etc.–is first being aware of the leader board’s existence. Letting go and freedom follow this awareness.
Our Good News is Better
The Gospel has always been Good News among competing good newses. In the days of the early church Caesar also had his gospel declarations, countered by the Gospel of Christ.
To be sure, there’s plenty of good news proclaimed on Peloton, and the church should be aware of it (Peloton is, of course, just one example; competing sets of good news are all around us). The charismatic and chiseled instructors are also preachers in their own right: “Climb your sparkle mountain!” (What?) “Drop your shoulders, and drop your baggage.” (Nice) “Be a disciple of your best self.” (Blech) “Use your power to empower others.” (That one is actually good)
Here’s the point: the beauty and power and truth of Jesus’ Gospel can only be known when it is set alongside other gospels. “Being a disciple of your best self” sounds pretty inspiring when you’re gasping through a high intensity interval, but it’s downright laborious to actually live out. Jesus’ repeated invitation, “Follow me,” calls us to follow the one who made us and is making us, the one who gave himself for us. Church, let’s follow him, let’s climb his mountain. That mountain is called Calvary, and it is devoid of sparkle. But it is real, and it is Good, and it is what is needed.