Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Luke Melkesian. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Luke , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?

Run With Christ SoCal in itself is a heartwarming story. Each and every week we have stories of how an individual’s life has been touch through Christ and His love. Our mission in Run With Christ SoCal is to simply “Make Heaven Full.” We are looking to achieve this through our love onto one another, loving those as Christ loves us. This can be meeting new people and praying over them, talking about scripture and how it can apply to their lives or even something as simple as a smile and joyful presence. We never know what someone is going through and we believe everyone that shows up to run and find community is here for a reason and is going to leave with just that much more of Christ in them.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Run With Christ is a run club ministry which was founded by Will Garinger out in Columbus, Ohio. Will created this movement as a way to bridge the isolation we are seeing so much of in our current generation. In November of 2024, Run With Christ SoCal was created by Luke Melkesian to bring more of Christ out to the sunshine state. We serve as more than just a run club, we are a movement to make Heaven full. RWC SoCal is a safe, loving, joyful, Christ centered community aiming to bring those far from Christ near and multiply the message of the Gospel. At our clubs we have a short encouraging message, group warmups and prayer, a 3 mile run as a group, and we end with our community hour with ice baths, energy drinks, and most of all community, meeting new people and spreading Christ’s love through individual conversations.
We have a supportive group of leaders who with God’s strength make this whole thing possible! Leaders are there to be a source of energy and joy, pumping up our community while also serving as pillars of support for those going through hard times needing prayer or someone to talk to. Simple to say, our leaders are truly AMAZING!
Run With Christ SoCal simply wants anyone reading this to know they are more than welcome to join us on our next club and we would love to meet them!
Follow us on instagram @runwchristsocal for more information!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We believe our mission and centering all we do around is what helped up build our reputation in the growth of this ministry. Trying to lead as Christ led, we decided as a team that this is a no membership, no payment, no sign-up, completely free, come as you are ministry. We believe leading with this intention has brought us the great numbers we are seeing. In our generation there is a lot of hurt around faith and the church and we knew we wanted RWC SoCal to never be a source of hurt but to be a welcoming, loving community, still standing on the truth of the Bible and the cornerstone of Christ.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Our most effective strategy for growing our clientele over at Run With Christ SoCal was simply be authentic and be loving. Be the light someone may be needing during a time of darkness or at times even a shoulder for them to lean on in prayer. Romans 2:12 says “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” This verse alone sums up our strategy of growth over at RWC SoCal. We understand we are living for something more and we are called to separate ourselves from this world. This angry, judgmental, isolated, violent, and empty world. Each and every one of our leaders understands what a life without relationship in Christ looks like and how their lives were completely changed when they found the Lord! As spoken in the great movie, Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come.” We are doing what we can as a ministry to create the loving atmosphere and the Lord is simply doing the rest, bringing those from all over SoCal who need to hear His message.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/RunWithChristSoCal
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runwchristsocal/

Image Credits

Credit to Jordan Lewis (@jlewshoots_)