Open the Sunday worship bulletin at Fairfax Presbyterian Church, and alongside the prayers, scripture readings and hymns you'll find an invitation to have your blood pressure checked and announcements about church members running 5Ks and marathons, as well as a notice about an upcoming workshop on balance exercises for seniors, offered by an 80-year-old juggler named Don Rapp.

Our focus on physical fitness in Fairfax, Va., represents a growing trend in American houses of worship. Congregations are now reclaiming the ancient biblical truth that human beings are created with a unity of flesh and spirit, not with an antagonism between the physical and the spiritual popularized by dualistic Greek philosophy. After thousands of years of separation, body and spirit are coming back together.

A 2007 survey of more than 6,000 American congregations, conducted by the National Council of Churches USA with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, revealed that 70 percent of churches provide health care services to their communities.

An example is the One God Ministry in Fairfax, which sponsored a "Family Wellness and Spiritual Revival Forum" last month, with sessions on diet, exercise and disease prevention. "We as a church body are providing a lot of spiritual wellness to people," says Johnson A. Edosomwan, pastor of One God Ministry, "but we recognize that the aspects of physical and mental wellness are important as well." Spiritual vitality is not much good without physical health.

The growing desire among church members to make a connection among body, mind and spirit bucks a Christian tendency to see the soul as valuable and the body as less important, if not totally depraved. "In thinking of body, mind and spirit, I feel that it is important to stimulate each and keep the three aspects well balanced," says Thomas Larsen, an aerospace engineer and member of Fairfax Presbyterian. "I should take good care of my body, which I believe is God's temple."

In 2006, Larsen joined a group of 40 church members in monthly meetings that I led along with my colleague Vik Khanna, an exercise specialist certified by the American College of Sports Medicine and the chief executive of Galileo Health Partners in Ellicott City, Md. Called "Ten Commandments of Faith and Fitness," this program encourages endurance exercise, strength training and good nutrition, to improve participants' overall fitness. It seems to be working: One woman thanked us for helping her to complete her first 100-mile bicycle race.

Across the country, congregations are adding full-service fitness facilities to their buildings. Fellowship Church, in a suburb of Dallas, provides basketball cages, a rock-climbing wall and a walking trail around a lake. Its ministry includes a variety of sports clubs and team competitions. On the grounds of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., is Samson's Health and Fitness Center, a facility offering athletic leagues and massage therapy. Its motto: "Total Health, Total Person."

Many churches and synagogues, including a Baptist church close to where I live, hold regular sessions of "Christian Yoga." The unity of mind and body embraced by yoga practitioners is an attractive dimension of this ancient Hindu spiritual practice, as is its promise of stress relief, stronger muscles and improved flexibility. Their promise of physical strength, coordination and self-knowledge have made the martial arts very popular as well - and led to the creation of an international organization called Karate for Christ.

What does this focus on physical health have to do with spiritual vitality? As a Presbyterian pastor, I spend a lot of time studying the New Testament, and I can't help but notice that Jesus sees the body as a good gift of God; he rejoices in the pleasures of touch and taste and other bodily sensations. Jesus comes on the scene in the Gospel of Mark as a man of action: curing the sick, casting out demons, cleansing a leper and healing a paralytic; clearly, he cares deeply about the health of human bodies. At the very end of his ministry Jesus gives the gift of his own body, saying, "Take, eat; this is my body."

Henry Brinton is the pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church and co-author with Vik Khanna of "Ten Commandments of Faith and Fitness" (CSS Publishing, 2008).

The Fitness Trinity

1. Endurance exercise: This is any exercise that requires you to use the biggest muscles in your body: those connected to your legs, hips and buttocks. Endurance exercise can include walking, swimming, running or riding a bike; ideally, it should be done at a moderate to vigorous intensity, for at least 30 minutes at a time, and at least three times per week. People who are new to activity can accumulate their 30 minutes in smaller increments over the course of a day, such as three 10-minute walks.

Jesus was a walker, traveling by foot from town to town, I often recommend that church members start with walking, which creates an opportunity for us to also exercise our spirits as we socialize, talk and pray. Many find that walking with a partner is a great opportunity to do some soul-searching and have conversations that might not occur at any other time. Such activity is not limited to Christians: The Buddha described numerous benefits of walking meditation.

2. Strength training: This can be done using weightlifting machines; lifting free weights, such as dumbbells and barbells; pushing against the weight of your own body, through push-ups or pull-ups; or stretching elastic tubes or bands. The loss of strength and muscle mass that comes with aging is markedly worse for people who do not do strength training. It is vital to nurture a reservoir of healthy muscle mass that will help every aging adult meet the challenges of daily living and continue enjoying recreation.

Working your muscles against resistance can improve vitality at virtually every stage in life.

3. Nutrition: My colleague Vik Khanna recommends that people eat from the garden - the Garden of Eden, that is. This means a Mediterranean diet grounded in fruit, vegetables, whole grains, heart-healthy fats and lean protein. This goes right back to the Book of Genesis, in which God says, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food."

Adopt a face-of-the-clock strategy to meal planning: Imagine a plate to be a clock, and then fill the section from 12 to 6 with fruit and vegetables, 6 to 9 with lean protein, and 9 to 12 with whole-grain carbohydrates. Foods should be dressed or cooked in modest amounts of heart-healthy fats, such as olive or canola oil.

- Henry Brinton