Best foot forward for Elim Missions

Inspired by Race Across the World, Elim Missions is inviting churches to walk, run and raise funds together – until Team Elim has clocked up 24,900 miles. Jack Skett explains

I’m a big fan of the BBC show Race Across the World. For the uninitiated, Race Across the World follows five teams of two as they race thousands of miles through various countries. They aren’t allowed to fly, and they’re not allowed their phones or bank cards. They’re given cash for the amount it would cost to fly to their final destination, and they have to race to checkpoint locations over the course of around 50 days, until they finally reach the end, and one team wins £20,000.

I love watching the journeys of all the teams, how they navigate the difficult transport and language barriers of different nations, and how they grow together in their relationships by overcoming the challenges of the race.

I also come to the conclusion every time I watch it that I could never do something like that! But I did have an idea recently which might be a bit more feasible – and might help us raise some money for Elim Missions.

Elim Missions is a self-funding department of Elim. That means we don’t get any funding from Elim HQ, so we have to raise our budget through regular donations and fundraising events. Over the years, we’ve tried all sorts of creative ways to raise money. We’ve had people cycle from John o' Groats to Land’s End, we’ve walked around the perimeter of London, and perhaps our most well-known fundraising campaign – Pound by Pound – has seen people giving £1 per week for more than ten years.

If you were to walk all the way round the world, you would have to walk 24,900 miles. That’s a long way, but when you break it down and spread it out amongst a group of people, it becomes a lot more doable.

Elim Walks Around the World is our latest fundraising campaign. The aim is very simple: to mobilise people from Elim churches around the UK to do a sponsored walk, and collectively to clock enough miles that we can say we – Team Elim – have walked around the world!

We can’t all walk 24,900 miles individually, but we can all walk a handful of miles. If 200 churches get involved, that’s 124.5 miles per church. And if 20 people from your church walk six miles each, you’ve covered 120 miles! Maybe there are some fitness enthusiasts who will walk (or even run) much further than that.

Hopefully, as you’re reading this now, people from Elim churches are already planning, or even out doing, their walks. You can get involved by heading to our website or donate directly on our JustGiving page by scanning the QR code on this page

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.