Senior pastor, other members are training for the Chicago Marathon.
For 17 San Clemente Presbyterian Church members, running in the Chicago Marathon Oct. 7 will be more than just an athletic achievement.
The group hopes to raise at least $15,000 from the 26.2 mile marathon, enough to purchase a new well for Nkhoma, a community in Malawi, Africa that the church is sponsoring. Its part of an ongoing commitment by San Clemente Presbyterian, which has pledged to work at improving conditions in Malawi for 15 years, said Senior Pastor Tod Bolinger. The project is being worked in conjunction with international relief agency World Vision.
We sat down with Bolinger to talk a little more about why the church has dedicated itself to Malawi and how they're going about doing so.
Q. The church has committed to a 15-year project in Malawi. What's the goal of this project?
A. It's basically to do the complete holistic transformation of this incredibly poor area in Malawi. They'll have a school – that's already being built – water, healthcare, AIDS awareness and education, Christian care for families. They've lost an entire generation of adults, it's a pandemic. So you have kids being raised by other kids. So now we're equipping families to take care of their own children so they can raise them up. By the end of 15 years, they'll be a completely self-sustaining community able to overcome those areas of poverty. And we're hoping that as a church, we'll have ongoing relationships, where more and more members can go be affected by it. When we started this, none of us knew where Malawi was. Now, it's really an essential part of our church's vision. For our local community, who really wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves, they could see a church doing more than paying attention to our own needs, but saying, come join us and we'll give you vision for the way in which God wants you to work in the world, and make a difference in your own life.
Q. How did your church become a part of this marathon?
A. World Vision, our senior organizing partner, has a large fundraiser where they have more than 500 people running for World Vision projects around the world. They use the Chicago marathon because it's one of the biggest in the world. There are 45,000 runners in a 26.2 mile marathon. They contacted us and asked if we wanted a team, we said yes, if it helps fund our project. It's my third one – I ran the Orange County Marathon, and a year ago, Iron Man Canada.
Q. How much have you raised so far?
A. We're almost at the $15,000 benchmark, which is about what it takes to put a new well in. People in the community get to prioritize the donations, but we thought, if we can raise money on top of the support we're already doing, it'd be better. Each of us running is sponsoring a child there at $35 a month.
Q. How do you train?
A. We've done some of our weekly long runs together so we know each other, but the rest of the time we run on our own. We've got this Internet board we use to keep in touch, post our workouts and encourage each other.
Q. For your church, why Malawi? Why is this country so important?
A. When we started rebuilding these buildings (the local church campus), we wanted the church to be more than just a bunch of nice buildings on a hill. So when we raised funds, we committed to try and develop a few new projects. One was the pandemic in Africa as a way to keep our people aware of the world. We live in a really beautiful area. There's a bunch of people who moved here who said they're biggest fear about living here was their kids would become calloused to the needs of the world, too isolated in that Orange County bubble. We want to be a church that says, 'We love living here and we love our community, but there's a big world out there, and we're the blessed people who could make a difference.'
Q. You've been over there and met Malawi residents who your church has helped. What's their reaction been like?
A. At first there was some skepticism. There's been a lot of American non-government officials there. Lilongwe (Malawi's capital) has been a center of poverty that the UN has said needs attention. Jeffery Sacks wrote a book centered around it … Bono went there. Madonna went there. I think because we're coming in and we're not just this government drop-in, we're not just, 'Let's raise money and get out,' there's a growing appreciation for the fact that we're in it for the long haul. We listen to them. We came to them, talking to their leaders. We said, 'The first thing we want to do is set up wells for you – your children have dysentery.' The leader of the villages said, 'How about you build a school? Then our children will grow up and know how to solve that problem.' They're first desire was to build a school. I went there and saw a stack of bricks they had made seven years ago that were rotting because the government ran out of money to make cement. A year later, our team went back, and those bricks were being built as a school. All it took was a partnership to get things going. We want to be genuine partners. We're doing this on several fronts: Locally with a Hispanic ministry and a community learning center. We really want to be a church that says we take our faith seriously and want to live it by blessing those who may never come to our church.
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