How are Your Relationships?

Life gets busy. As a pastor I have to continue to remember to be with my people. I have a deep desire to preach truth with passion, creativity and with excellence. I have a desire to make sure our church greets people with love as they enter the foyer. I want to go to the next conference and learn a lot and come back and unleash on my city. I want to change the world! I can have all of these things, but if I do not have love, I have nothing. If I do not love the people in my church, then all of this is in vein. If they are not sitting in my living room playing with my kids and eating off my table, then what am I doing?

I am in the middle of rethinking, reFocusing and reanalyzing my relationships. I am beginning to pour specifically into a few leaders at my church. My goal is that my family and I would love them, mentor them, equip them and lead them well. The goal is that they would do the same to the people serving under them. If this is a trickle effect, then I believe God will use this to change our city. The neat thing is I did not even come up with this idea. I read the Bible. This is how they set up church: The pastors (apostles, elders) prayed, preached and equipped a leadership team. The leadership served and took care of service needs in the church.

Who is in your life? Who is mentoring you? Who are you pouring into? Lets not get caught up in all of the "stuff" of ministry and forget the people. Invite someone over this week to eat with you.

Stuck, with the Gospel.

I feel like I am stuck with the gospel. What I mean is that I live in a very traditional and religious city and when I talk with church people about the gospel, I get a half-hearted smile and head nod as if they have known it their whole life. Yet there is no movement or passion in their eyes, much less their lives. Then I have the world that is hurting, yet many seem like they know they are hurting and open to truth, but are not ready to get over their lives to take on His life and His cross.

I think there are some stuck like me. Here is my encouragement to us. Be real, honest and open to the church people and the lost. Maybe by our lives and the genuine relationship with Christ in us, they might be moved. And two... live by faith. Going to church is not faith, its habit. Meeting someone and knowing their name and sharing hope is faith. Trusting in God that He would use you to change someones life for Him, is faith. Let's not walk by sight because it can be very disheartening in our city, but walk by a different life and different calling, a calling from up above. Make a difference before you die and do not let your life pass you by without having God moving radically through it. On our knees praying, soaking up God words to us and walking by faith. Lets do it.

Cute Little Christians

If you have grown up in the Christian life, you may not realize it, but many of us have grown up with a cute little Christian life. We listen to our Christian music and wear our Christian T-Shirt while driving in our car with our Christian bumper stickers. Pretty cute huh? "Not really" says the world. What is Christian about that. The world needs and wants to interact with real people. People who cuss and cut. People who struggle with their marriages and their money. In our "cute" little lives it can come across like we are perfect inside and out. The world see's us as phonies. So what do we do?

Try this: Be real. Get help where you need it, because even though you may be seen as perfect, you know that you are far from it and have so many areas where you need to be fixed. Interact with people. Get out of you comfort zone and go talk to people who may not look, smell, dress or act like you.

Notice Jesus. He was anything but a cute little Christian. He was a man, a radical, associated with sinners, prostitutes and scum of His day. And what do we do? We go to church.... are you kidding?? Seek Jesus, not tradition and change Christian. If you are not a Chritsian, I would like to appoligize for my life and the lives of many Christians or "Christians". I hope I would change and start to be more real and honest with God, myself and you.

People are always searching...

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$1,000

What would you do if someone just gave you $1,000? Would you pay bills, eliminate debt, blow it on whatever you want? What if someone gave you $1,000 and the only restriction was to spend on someone else. Would you help someone buy groceries, fix a water heater or just bless someone, leave someone a fat tip at a restaurant? 

At Awaken we have committed to giving half of our money away that comes in through the giving on Sundays. We have just reached $1,000. We have many ideas and some things already in place. We look forward to taking up money each week, because we can literally see how much is going back out to connect with our community and make a change in peoples lives. Some ideas people mentioned last night are: Hospital bills, the homeless, a neighbor in need and more. We look forward to seeing what God is going to do in our community. 

If you are reading this and you live in Chattanooga, we invite you to join us as we are forming Awaken Community Church. We launch September 13th, 2009.

Free Money!!!

We had a great meeting last night at Awaken where we announced some big news. We are giving half of our money to our community and to missions. If you visit and give $50 to Awaken Community Church, $25 will go to help someone and advance the gospel. If you give $200, $100 will go out for life change. Think about this, if we grow and become a church with a million dollar yearly budget, that means $500,000 a year will go to our community and missions. That means an average of $10,500 a week will go to change our city!

Many may say that this would not be smart as a business standpoint and although I agree, we are not a business, we are a church. I understand that it may take me longer to get on staff full time, but the church should be about change in our community. We hope to bless single moms with groceries, give kids that do not have much some backpacks or shoes. There is so much we can do! When you think of Jesus and the way He lived his life, He had nothing. This is a challenge not only with our money, but also with our lives.

My wife and I are trying to eliminate all of our debt besides our house in the next couple of years. We want to honor God with our money and give to people in need. I challenge you to think through what you spend your money on and think about others and changing a community.

If you live in Chattanooga and have not found a church, I would like to invite you to our next Awaken meeting. I would love for you to become apart of a life changing and a community changing church. This Sunday we meet from 6:00-7:15 at 819 Mississippi Ave Chattanooga, TN 37405. Hope to see you there.

God Knows

It is a mind blowing concept that God knows everything. I can't even remember my second grade teacher and to think God knows everyone and their thoughts and actions before they happen (Psalm 139). My mind can only hold so much and to think that God knows everything. That is incredible for me to stop and think about.

As I am on this journey of church planting, I continue to meet people and think about their lives. My heart is that people all over my city would give their complete lives over to becoming faithful followers of Christ. We have a lot of good/moral/religious people here, but that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about people who truly want to glorify God in every area of their lives and help change their community. Who are they? I do not know, but God knows.

I pray that God would continue to raise up faithful followers of His to come along side us as we launch Awaken Community Church in August 2009. If that is you and you are interested in joining us to change our city then send me an e-mail to justin@awakencc.org or contact me on Facebook.

People Matter

People matter to God, therefore people must matter to me. If I do not like people and never want to be near them, then I probably need to check myself. If the greatest commandment is to love God with everything we have (heart, soul, mind and strength) and the second is "like it" as the Bible says, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves, then this means we have a whole lot of loving to do.

The reality of this is sad. Sad for my life and the lives of people in our busy world. While there are some who truly take their time to love others daily, the reality is that the majority of people don't. In our fast pace society we are concerned about ourselves.

This afternoon my brother came over with my nephew and of course we fought each other, since he is a 4 year old boy. I had a blast playing with him, beating him up, letting him beat me up, beating his daddy up, letting him beat me up and so on. I sent them a text 2 hours after they left that said "Tell Malakhai that I had fun playing with him and tell him that I cant wait to play again next time". I want my nephew to love his uncle Justy (as he calls me) and I want to be an encouragement to him.

This is not just the case in Malakhai's life, but every one's life. I am starting to really think about people that I am close to and take a little extra time to go out of my way to help encourage them. Philippians says that we should not only look for our own interests, but also the interests of others.  Who could you pour your life into? Could you just send someone an encouraging text right now? Imagine all the people. Take out time and invest into people because they matter.