Following God's call to transform communities through exercise

Beth Hayward decided not to adopt the usual role of “vicar’s wife” in Bunbury, Cheshire, but to follow God’s call to transform communities through exercise.

After moving into the village, she took the conscious decision not to immediately volunteer herself to lead the Sunday school and join the coffee rota. Instead, she took time out to pray, observe and let God lead her. Following God’s lead, she found herself wanting to transform her community through the local playground and in doing so transformed her own life too.

Beth says: “After being in Bunbury for about six months, I noticed the local playground was in a bad state of disrepair. That seemed incongruous for a place as beautiful as Bunbury. I had a vision that I wanted to transform the space but didn’t know where to start.”

She set out to do a bit of investigating as to why the local playground had been left to fall into such bad shape. 

“I couldn’t understand,” says Beth, “but what I discovered was that the playground had been built in memory of a little boy who had died 25 years earlier and nobody felt they could say or do anything in case of upsetting his memory.”

Beth thought it was her duty to speak with the mother of the boy and see what her view was. Beth says, “Being a vicar’s wife means you can go and knock on doors and introduce yourself to people and so I decided to speak to the mother of the boy.”

Beth found that the mother was immediately supportive and endorsed her vision for transforming the playground. Beth invited her to sit on the committee to oversee the changes and together they embarked on a two-year process of transforming the playground.

Beth says, “We got a group of mums together to observe how our children played. We researched what was on the market already and were unimpressed with what was on offer.”

Beth set about developing a new type of playground for Bunbury. Out of this came Parkletics, an outdoor gym that combines the equipment, natural body weight resistance training and a bespoke app, created with Sheffield Hallam University, to help match your fitness level to a suitable exercise routine.

Parkletics has been installed in tough city estates and is positively impacting on people’s mental health and fitness, helping those with low self-esteem, and bringing people together.


The equipment can be used by people of any ability and level of fitness

Beth says, “The business isn’t exclusively Christian, but it has got Christian ideals at its heart. Parkletics is inclusive, egalitarian, and recognises that everyone’s important and valued. The reason it’s been so successful in communities is that it is a business that has been built to meet a community need.

“I didn’t start this for the Church but because I was following God’s lead and call to transform a local playground in Bunbury. I can’t separate God from my work life, family life and church life. For me, God is in everything that I do. Because of my Christian faith, it feels natural for me to want to bring the community together and to try to show love to people and make them feel better.”

Beth says Parkletics could be a useful outward-facing evangelism tool and says that churches could build communities through exercise groups.

“If churches invested in Parkletics, we could train church leaders to run exercise groups through the app. The Parkletics app allows you to build exercising communities and it would be a great way of connecting people and bringing people together and to show the church as an outward-looking part of the community.”

Beth is married to Tim who is the Incumbent at Bunbury. 

Page last updated: Tuesday 8th January 2019 3:30 PM
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