This Sport Outreach Plan aims to develop a business that will offer outreach through adventure sport activities while providing a path toward a more balanced mind, body, and spirit. The focus will be on participants seeking out sport through alternative sport activities. This group may have demonstrated a need for mental health as well as spiritual outreach as well as a desire to return to sport after post-traumatic events and injuries. This program will also be open to guides and other sport enthusiasts that are interested in learning about winter adventure sports activities primarily. There are many adventure sport enthusiasts in the Pacific Northwest region, however, the geographical focus for this outreach plan shall be on adventure sport enthusiasts that seek adventure and outreach programming activities in Alaska. I reside in the state of Alaska and have first-hand knowledge of adventure sports that take place in the region. Peak Experience is a business registered in the State of Alaska.
Target Group
The target group will focus on participants who seek out sport through adventure sport activities for rehabilitation, mental well-being, and or to return to an activity after trauma or injury. Utilizing sport to build on spiritual guidance to support the individual moving forward. Romans (12:1-2) suggests offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship (NIV). Sport is a part of life that God can offer as an act of worship. Combining the outdoors with sport is an ultimate act of worship.
Watson et al. (2015) posit that leisure theorists and theologians have acknowledged that a distinguishing facet of many new spiritualities is the re-emergence of the relationship between religious and spiritual notions, the wilderness, and recreational activities. The target populations are 18 and over, the University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University students, and non-students. The program takes place at my place of business, Peak Experience, and residence in Willow, Alaska, along 150 miles of the Iditarod trail. Researchers Immonen, et al., (2022) posit that many traditional sports have their roots in either religious or mythological backgrounds (e.g., ancient Olympic games) or in competitive aspirations of activities originally rooted in cultural ways of movement with distinctive features in the birth and historical developmental trajectory of action and adventure sports is that their origins can be traced back to recreational activities, instead of competitive or any other externally oriented aspirations.
When participating in adventure sports, pushing to extremes is all part of the process, the leisure, and the connection developed with the earth and with spirituality. There is a feeling of euphoric one-ness with all things and understanding. Great religious leaders have shown us how to address the tension between renewal and failure in all experiences, especially when personal stakes are high: Jesus “played the game” of reckoning with mortality and went to his cross a failure. However, the cross itself has become a source of Christian renewal or resurrection. The Buddha also struggled to accept his failure to find contentment and happiness. Only when he gave up his quest for these things and embraced suffering as the intractable nature of existence did he, paradoxically, find spiritual renewal in enlightenment, or nirvana.
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even the youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on the wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40:29-31). A balanced theology of leisure can be seen as forms of deep play, and an avenue to well-being and growth, even spiritual expression in an aesthetic, creative sense that provides opportunities for meaningful, therapeutic, and exhilarating wilderness activities (Watson, et al, 2015).
Today it should be noted that there is a shift taking place in how not only consumers and clients but also how members and employees visualize an organization and how they choose their vision statement to fit their needs. Any business organization should have a clear mission and vision statement that allows the public to gain an understanding of what the organization is about and why it set out to provide the services they do. The mission statement lays the foundation of the organization.
Mission Statement
Peak Experience offers an innovative and novel approach to reconnecting to the wilderness through participation in recreational activities, adventure sport, and spiritual engagement. Focusing on integrating overall well-being: mind, body, and spirit. The company uses transformational adventure-based experiences that teach individuals how to integrate healing into their daily lives to improve enlightenment and move past trauma and injury. To encourage experiential learning opportunities in providing leadership, servanthood, and community along with experiencing adventure sporting activities.
Vision Statement
Peak Experience was developed to bring adventure sport, wilderness, recreational activities, and spiritual engagement to those that have suffered traumatic injuries, loss, disconnection, rehabilitation, or recovery, to individuals and their support teams to build better relationships and to show them how to move through the healing process and into alternative sporting activities. The company incorporates adventure sport excursions that require learning new skill sets, development of trust through leadership exercises, and development of servanthood. The company assists participants with a new outlook, and a fresh start, and demonstrate forgiveness of self and a return to spirituality.
Organizational Structure
Peak Experience was founded to share with others that healing can occur through returning to sport and the outdoors. Combining the two and incorporating spirituality has guided us to this path of servanthood and outreach. Discovering a new sport or returning to an adventure, allows clientele to push their limits in mind, body, and spirit knowing that they are in a safe place to do so. The company encourages the client to heal and return to balance and well-being.
Peak Experience is made up of five individuals at this time with room to grow and add to our staff as needed to provide the utmost experience for all involved. Peak Experience is registered as a limited liability company and is owned by a non-profit called Dreamchaser Leadership in the State of Alaska. The members each play a role in the structure of the business. Each member has a stake and participates in monthly board meetings. If a member participates in a program that member is compensated based on the stake percentage in the company.
Peak Experience shares the beauty and sacrifice that occurs while traveling by a dog sled team in the wilds of Alaska. Doing so requires trust in oneself, the dogs, the environment, and Jesus. The company thrives on the concept that the backcountry of Alaska is beautiful. The dogs allow us to learn resilience and forgiveness and thereby the sacrifice comes in learning to let go and accept the future.
Programming and Activities
Sport has a tremendous role in many people’s identities. Many of us begin playing sports in grade school, on the playground developing motor skills and fine-tuning them through sport. Some of us develop a love for certain sports along the way and we hone those skills in competitive sports, team sports, and even into adventure sports participation. However there comes a time when we can no longer continue to pursue our chosen sporting activity as an outlet due to unforeseen circumstances like injury, or trauma, or even just aging out of a sport, graduating from high school or college, and not continuing at a professional level.
When designing this sport outreach plan the programming activities were at the forefront of the thought process. Providing individuals with an opportunity to return to sport through adventure sport in the wilderness allows for an alternative form of healing promoting the overall well-being of mind, body, and spirit. With an understanding that many participants come from a variety of sport backgrounds and may be seeking an alternative sport after trauma or injury to provide them with an opportunity for fulfillment and enlightenment. Willig (2008) states that participating in adventure sports permits participants to experience their own existence in novel ways rather than merely being a vehicle of potential self-destruction or a symptom of unresolved psychic conflicts, taking part in adventure sports seems to offer participants a way of extending their range of experience to make available new and potentially enriching ways of being.
While the focus of the programming activities offered is dog mushing other activities and sports will be offered. Adventure sports like hiking, backpacking, camping, mountain biking, winter camping, fat-biking, snowmachine riding, and ATV riding just to list a few of the activities. In addition, these adventure sports include outdoor recreation education and leadership opportunities. All dog mushing equipment is provided including but not limited to; snowmachines, ATVs, dogsleds, ganglines, harnesses, dogs, cookers, axes, straw, fat bikes, and mountain bikes. A list of items that the participant may be required to provide to them can include but is not limited to; personal clothing, camping gear, backpacking, and hiking gear, and if the participant chooses to use their own bikes or machines.
Dog mushing is a multi-faceted sport that many are unfamiliar with. Studies have been done regarding the psychophysical load that dog mushing has on its participants. The highest risk is sleep deprivation and inadequate rest for mushers participating in long-distant races (Calogiuri and Weydahl, 2017). This risk is taken under heavy consideration and the design of the program is not race-based but more, so skill-based. Developing the relationship and trust between the participant and the dog team allows pushing oneself out of a comfort zone and into the unknown providing pathways to connections with spirituality and re-emergence of confidence through skill development. Skills from many other adventure sports are required as part of the training process of dog mushing and therefore those adventure sports are included in the programming activities and educational processes. Part of the programming activities is designed to prepare the participants for the final program, a dog mushing excursion.
All the skills and leadership opportunities occur in the outdoors, allowing participants to develop skills in dog care, camping, assessment, and exploration into spirituality through learning how to survive in extreme conditions. Luke (4:1) reminds us that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness (NIV). Returning to the wilderness is cathartic and allows us to see ourselves without judgment. Disconnecting from our world, returning to simpler ways, and learning to trust oneself is at the crutch of the programming activities offered through Peak Experience.
Sport Evangelism
Sport evangelism is a necessary component of any sport outreach plan. Creating ministry opportunities for youth fulfills church growth principles and expansion to those populations that have strayed away from the church or have difficulty seeing the church as a welcoming community for what they may be interested in: sport itself. While sport is culturally relevant today, sport evangelism provides a platform for churches to expand, grow, and reach community members in ways that create belonging to those who would otherwise not see an opportunity for their interests to be heard or accepted. Romans 12:6-8 provides great reference regarding how sport evangelism programs and ministries can grow through servant leadership and reminds us to serve, teach, and encourage with generosity, diligence, and mercy (NIV).
Peak Experience has been asked to provide a ministry outreach opportunity to evangelicals who meet the criteria of participants dealing with trauma, injury, mental, and well-being issues as a way for them to expand their relationship with themselves and God. According to Kenney (2016), a sports chaplain provides’ care for the sports person and the broader sports community including the coaches, administrators and their families as cited by (Kenney, 2016; Waller et al., 2008). Romans 12:6-8 provides great reference regarding how sport evangelism programs and ministries can grow through servant leadership and reminds us to serve, teach, and encourage with generosity, diligence, and mercy (NIV).
Peak Experience is being designed to provide opportunities for individuals who are coping with loss, tragedy, trauma, or injury, or who need a new outlet in sport to return themselves to a feeling of the whole within mind, body, and spirit. While we hope that the excursions that we develop offer leadership workshops and experiential learning opportunities to those who participate in creating programs that are devotional based, they shall be designed alongside those seeking this level of enlightenment. Church ministries can tailor a program through Peak Experience to fit their devotional requirements, providing a path to Christ as part of the adventure sport excursion.
At this time, Peak Experience has developed seminars and week-long camps for experiential learning and leadership promotion within organizations. Winter Adventure Sport Excursion that takes place along 150 miles of the historic Iditarod Trail in Alaska that takes two to three weeks of preparation participation and approximately seven to ten days of actual excursion time on the back of a dogsled, on a fat bike, and a snowmachine with evening campfire reflections provides the perfect backdrop for devotional teachings. Each day will be unpredictable and challenging, forcing the participant to push beyond doubts and boundaries.
Peak Experience shall seek out a chaplain as a board member who can also guide the development of devotionals and servant leadership opportunities and guide, heal, reconcile, and sustain a connection to Jesus through pastoral care. But what is a sports chaplain? According to Kenney (2016), a sports chaplain provides’ care for the sports person and the broader sports community including the coaches, administrators and their families as cited by (Kenney, 2016; Waller et al., 2008) but goes further in explaining that a broader definition applies in that chaplaincy identifies chaplains as clerical members from a variety of religious traditions that serve outside the physical limits of a particular religious building or setting as cited by (Kenney, 2016; Paget and McCormack, 2006). New research from the Confirmation Project and Effective Camp Research Project demonstrates that camping ministries are often integral parts of Christian education programs and have lasting effects on participants (Sorenson, 2019).
This line of thinking based on the research is the basis for developing devotionals with a servant leader, chaplain, to be part of the Peak Experience business model and offerings. The model developed by the Effective Camp Research Project has five fundamental characteristics that can be easily positioned into the current winter excursion and offer other seasonal excursions to participants. Experiential learning is at the core of all programs offered, the five fundamental characteristics; relational, participatory, unplugged from home, safe space, and faith-centered align with Peak Experience’s mission and vision, and programming activities.
Summary
Peak Experience has set out to provide adventurers with unique opportunities in the wilds of Alaska. During the development of this Sport Outreach Plan, Peak Experience recognized a need to provide participants and staff with the services of a chaplain as a valued team member. The plan also gave way to the realization that sport ministry should be a part of the organizations. Researchers Farkić, Filep, and Taylor (2020) posit that spending time in nature is not only considered leisure, but also therapy (Li, 2018 as cited by Farkić, Filep, and Taylor, 2020). Furthermore, this has long been emphasized to ease stress, curb anxieties and promote inner calm. Nature has been recommended as a space that heals ill bodies and ill minds, and for its benefits, it has been considered a great contributor to people’s psychological well-being and happiness (Hartig et al., 2014; Huijbens, 2016; as cited by Farkić, Filep, and Taylor, 2020). Likewise, in nature-rich destinations, respite, adventure, and compensation for alienated, accelerated, and digitalized lives are often sought.
Nature-based tourism, with a particular focus on slow adventure as one of its forms, may in many ways help to cure ‘postmodern ailments’ by offering spaces for restoration, rejuvenation, and relaxation (Farkić & Taylor, 2019; as cited by Farkić, Filep, and Taylor, 2020), Peak Experience could not agree more with this particular research and thus the development and growth during this exercise has proven to be extremely valuable in our continued development and offerings as slow adventure excursions and sporting activities shape participants psychological wellbeing through immersive guided experiences, ultimately helping participants to re-establish a much-yearned-for connection with nature and spirituality. Ultimately Peak Experience shall contribute to positive tourism, adventure sport, and outreach all of which will provide positive outcomes on mind, body, and spirit revealing how mindful and eudemonic participant experiences are organized by adventure tour outreach programs in natural settings.
References
Calogiuri, G., & Weydahl, A. (2017). Health challenges in long-distance dog sled racing: A
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Farkić, J., Filep, S., & Taylor, S. (2020). Shaping tourists’ well-being through guided slow
adventures. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 28(12), 2064-2080. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1789156
Immonen, T., Brymer, E., Davids, K., & Jaakkola, T. (2022). An ecological dynamics approach
understanding human-environment interactions in the adventure sport context-implications for research and practice. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(6), 3691. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19063691
New International Version Bible. (2011). The NIV Bible. https://www.thenivbible.com (Original work published 1978; 2011, original work).
Sorenson, J. (2019). The logic of camp in Christian education. Theology Today, 76(1), 50-62.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0040573619826948
Watson, Nick & Parker, Andrew. (2015). The Mystical and Sublime in Extreme Sports: Experiences of ‘Psychological Well-Being’ or Christian Revelation. Studies in World Christianity. 21. 260-281. 10.3366/swc.2015.0127.
Willig C. (2008). A Phenomenological Investigation of the Experience of Taking Part in `Extreme Sports’. Journal of Health Psychology. 2008;13(5):690-702. doi:10.1177/1359105307082459
