The personal coach and fitness trainer Theresa Rowe has been a productive media creator for years, covering everything from the printed page to the digital landscape.
She has produced a motivational book, inspiring music CDs, a wide range of fitness DVDs and a column for the messenger inquirer. Rowe’s ever-expanding résumé includes her faith-based exercise show “Shaped by Faith.” It’s season four this week.
“Shaped by Faith” is a 30-minute exercise television show that combines a standard television exercise routine with a belief-based theme.
It currently reaches an audience of over 45 million online through eight domestic television channels including NRB TV, Inspiration TV and Parables TV Global7.TV and internationally on Healthy Living Channel in Albania and in India later that year via Grace TV India.
“Shaped by Faith” is not only the title of Rowe’s aerobics show, but also the name of the ministry God established through her at the age of 26, when she became a Christian.
That transformation came when Rowe left Omaha, Nebraska, after open heart surgery to teach a fitness class in Owensboro.
During one of her classes, a student asked her to pray with Rowe and said that God wanted her to pray to heal Rowe.
“I politely declined the prayer, believe it or not,” she said. “I actually had to pick up my younger daughter from preschool so I just said, ‘I have to go, and maybe we can do that another time. ‘”
That afternoon the student passed Rowe’s house and knocked on the door. Rowe looked through her peephole to find the student on the other side, hoping she would leave, but the student kept knocking.
When Rowe opened the door the student said that Rowe must have thought she was strange coming to her teacher’s home, but she had to obey God.
Rowe reluctantly let the student into her main hallway to pray, and it opened Rowe’s heart to God. After that day, she began incorporating scriptures and personal inspiration stories into her training sessions to inspire and shape her audience through God’s Word.
Years later, Rowe took this faith-based approach and developed the first season of the television show of the same name, which aired on October 1, 2019.
As she wrote the exercise programs for each show, she wondered what someone should talk to her about, or what business in her life she needed encouragement. These questions helped Rowe address episodes such as hope, belief, fear, depression, and anxiety.
“In the fourth season I have a lot of topics like ‘Who we are in Christ’, how to talk about our identity (and) to talk about forgiveness. I think that’s a big deal, especially right now, “she said. “I think forgiveness is a big area in which we can all still work, so I made a show forgiveness a theme.”
Other topics that Season Four will focus on are our bodies and how the Word of God says about them and prayer.
And while some televised exercise programs pinpoint their location in a yoga studio or quiet tropical setting, Rowe records and plays Shaped by Faith in her Calhoun home because it’s a comfortable and relatable space for her viewers.
“I wanted people to feel comfortable watching the practice show,” Rowe said. “I’m an ordinary woman who gets you moving. I’m not trying to be a superstar or anything. And I just feel like it makes a person feel more comfortable just knowing (the show) at someone’s home, so if they work out with me they’ll certainly work out at home and most likely not in a gym or Gym. ”
Rowe had other places in mind, but when she prayed about them she said that God kept telling her to do it in her house. When Rowe recorded the pilot and sent it to the TV managers, they accepted it and liked the idea of the show being in a home setting.
With three seasons and a fourth in the editorial bay, both new and veteran viewers can catch up on previous seasons and sweat it out through a number of online websites before the new season airs later this year.
Rowe has no plans to stop producing “Shaped by Faith”.
“I’ll do as many of these as I can. This is a big part of what I’m supposed to be doing right now, ”she said.
