I Can See Clearly Now the Pain is Gone

Wow. I can finally see clearly now that the pain is gone. Do you have a kid or know someone that has a kid that made a mistake? At some time they were told, "No", for something, but it was just one of those things that they had to learn by themselves. I remember the other day when we told Kylie (4) not to jump off of the helicopter at the playground. The helicopter is the tallest toy at Northgate Mall playground. You see, Kylie had jumped off the rest of them and had to jump off this one. We told her no several times. With her cute, "Please Daddy" look she conned me into holding her while she jumped. Within 5 times of jumping she talked me into letting her do it by herself (sly little thing). She is the negotiator in our family. She is four years old and the CEO of the Deweese clan. Well, she jumped, and you guessed it; she hurt her ankle. Through all of the whining and "daddy pleases" she got her way and got hurt.

I recently got hurt trying to do church by myself. My prayers were to God and my heart was for God, but I was doing it my way. I have been through a lot of pain the last couple of months. There have been several times that I have been close to saying "I Quit". (That is where the logo from LifeChurch.tv comes into play. nice plug huh?). I had put the pressure of growing people on my shoulders. Thats right, for some reason I thought it was my responsibility to grow people in Christ. I guess when you are so caught up in wanting to jump off of the helicopter, what once seemed clear is now a blur.

I talked with some men in my church and a buddy/pastor Mark "show me some" Love and they were all a huge encouragement to me. They helped me through the pain and see a little clearer. I went through some pain and the main thing that I learned is that I need to quit. Not my job, but quit taking Gods job. This had messed me up so bad that we made sure we put it in our vision statement to make sure we do not go back to it again. At Awaken we have divided the vision into two parts. Awaken: The Organization and Awaken: The People. Awaken Organizations responsibility is to simply lead, aid and equip the Awaken People. Notice I did not say grow. The role and goal of the Awaken People is to grow in Christ, Connect people to Him and live in Community together. I feel free now, but it took having to go through the pain to live in and experience the freedom now.

Well, Kylie's ankle is better now and so is my focus. Hopefully we will both gain some wisdom and avoid our falls next time around.

One of My Biggest Mistakes as a Church Planter

Well, before I start, the only people that may relate to me on this post could be church planters. Not sure if your experience is like mine, but if it is, then you feel like you are always failing.

This is such a hard job and I now see why that when I started many people said if you can do anything else in your life but plant a church, then do it! You have to be called to this stuff. This is tuff.

Well, the bottom line is that I messed up the vision. Yeah, the vision. Yeah, the number one thing that everyone in the church planting world tells you to keep at the front of all things and do not let go of. Some even saying, "Be mean about the vision". Well, let me tell you how I messed up and maybe it will give you a wake up call, or maybe not. Maybe you will fail too and it will take you failing for God to bring you where He wants to bring you.

I had the vision. I spoke the vision. Over and over again. My people knew it. Great!, Right? No.... People started to get tired of the vision and some even left. Disheartening, but God is in control when we are weak and even foolish. So, what was my problem? For the last serveral years, with my core group and even after we launched the church, I was preaching the vision and kept pointing our people toward the vision. It looked like this: our people ----> VISION. Right? That is what I learned. But the problem was that I was pointing people to a mirage that did not exist. I was pointing people to great words of unfulfillment. Tragedy. God has taught me that the vision is not: our people ---> VISION, but OUR PEOPLE <----- vision. The vision of Jesus Christ was to come and save a depraved, broken, helpless world. To give us hope and life. Paul says in Ephesians that we are to equip the Saints for good works, not point the saints to a non reality.

You see, I was saying "Hey guys, lets do this and this". "Hey guys, what if God did that?" But none of this and that ever happened. The saints were not equipped.

Now, once the Saints are equipped, then you can point them to what God has called your church to do. Also, make sure the visionary has people around him to help organize and layout the vision in a calendar where you can see the vision in ink and what it looks like detailed out through a year. That has been another problem in our church. I preached the vision, but people did not see it played out. The vision was words, no one experienced it in reality. Now we are heading into a season where we have the vision, the Saints are equipped and they can see the vision. God is in the organization and clarity.

For some reason, although I have failed badly, God has kept people in our faith family and they have come around me to support me. I have a renewed passion. Now the goal is preaching the vision to our people and having them catch it and role with it this time around. This is tuff, but worth it. This is still my calling and I pray that God would use my weakness to make His name great. The challenges of church planting! Wow, what a ride of faith and failure.

Second Year, New Building?

Awaken is approaching its second year. God has done so much in the life of our church. It is amazing to read in Acts and see how they started the church out of nothing. We are starting our second year as a church reaching a dechurched/searching generation in Hixson, TN.

We have an opportunity that has come our way to rent a building at a stupid, cheap price. It is interesting to see what God has done in my life, my wife's life and through Awakens life even in the last few months to build character and responsibility in pruning us to get us ready for a building. It will take more leadership, giving, responsibility, faith to enter the building and hopefully will produce more dechurched people coming back to Jesus and finding hope, the lost having a Savior and our faith family being excited that we have a building where the urinal does not pee on you (our current building has some issues).

A lot of times in considering a new place, it becomes about the "New Place". I am trying to lead our church in our thinking that this New place is not the end of our vision, but just the next step in fulfilling our vision. I have heard horror stories of body of believers getting the building and then things start to go down hill.

"God, be our vision and lead us to build believers in Christ and reach a community far from You, for your glory". Amen

The Move

We finally moved to Hixson. It feels good to follow where God leads. I honestly thought if God called me to do something great, then it would be to raise a bunch of money to go to Africa or some far away country, but He didn't. He called me to go back to where I grew up to start Awaken Community Church.

We sold our house in 10 days and found an apartment in the area. We had family and many people from our church come and help us move. We have already met some neighbors in the neighborhood and around the complex and have had premarital counseling with two couples in our new living room. God is already at work in the new place.

We have laid our lives open before God to do what He wants us to do. We look forward to see what and whose lives He has in mind for us to be apart of.

God called me to plant a church. What has He called you to be apart of? May be you need to move on. Maybe its away from something or to something. Follow God, it may be tough, but follow the vision that He has placed on your life; it will be worth it and more fulfilling than anything that you will ever do in your life.

What You Want is Not What You Always Get

Do you ever think that you have everything figured out about a goal or a dream and then not all the things that you put together turned out the way you thought? Maybe you had goal to workout and you bought all of your workout clothes, got your food list and set off on your journey, but you got busy and life crowded out your goal. Maybe you had a dream for a job or going to school and what seemed like a good idea seemed to fade away because time and life crowded it out.

I worked my tail off studying church planting and networking to launch Awaken Community Church. Not much has worked out the way that I had planned. It is for better and for worse. Worse - because I had all of my goals put into place, but other things changed the direction in where we went. Maybe it just hurt my pride and plans. For better because our team, our church, is loving one another and we are developing who we are; our DNA and identity. Because we are coming together, we have different thoughts and opinions that are making who we are. "I" launched the church, but when people came, "WE" became the church and now "GOD" is growing His church. It was all about God in the first place and we just had to play our roles to get where we are.

Now that we are 5-6 weeks in as a church, I can't believe where God has brought us. We have 60-70 people interested and coming off and on to Awaken, over 120 people attend since we launched and out of that group we have about 30 strong that are committed to grow in their faith and reach their community. I think 30 people excited about the things of God and people can change a city. 

Sometimes when things don't work out the way you want, you find in the end that although it worked out differently, it worked out better.

Why the church in America will continue to die...

There is bad news. Although many sit in church and may close their eyes and praise God and maybe even shed tears, the reality is that all churches and all denominations are declining or heading for a decline. And the real bad news is because it's not even that Satan is a work (although he is), but is is because the church is turning people off and away. The population continues to grow rapidly, but the church is decreasing rapidly. 

A study done among 16-29 year olds states that the reason that most of this age group does not go to church is because it is judgmental, anti-homosexual, hypocritical, boring, irrelevant and using words like insensitive to describe the church.

Now one question to ask is, would you go to any business or spend any money or even attend anything that was lead with these characteristics? Why does Wal Mart strive and succeed? They have everything you need (relevant). Why are bars flooded every night of the week? People at bars are (non judgmental) and people accept you. Why do millions of people scream and yell and get excited at Football games every week? Because they're awesome and anything but (boring). You getting the point? Why are Wal Mart, bars and football better than Jesus? They are not, but the church makes it look that way.

Listen, if you do not go to church, I can totally understand why, but I also want to challenge you to find a place where you can go and worship the God of the universe, because He is the One that longs to be with you. If you are involved in a church or have a leadership role, I challenge you to make some drastic changes if you want a younger generation to follow Jesus, because currently they are all going away. Be like Christ, not Pharisee's. Stop judging people in bars when your 95lbs over weight. Don't look down on the pot head while you are looking at porn when your wife is not looking. Stop judging someone that listens to "bad" music while your judging them for listening to it. What we've done church, is that we have judged the non Christian while in the mean time we have not judge ourselves and held one another accountable. The church must change or the church in America will continue to die. Lets get started. 

Bipolar Church Planting

Sometimes I feel bipolar when planting Awaken Community Church. I go back and forth with my emotions. One day I am exhausted from all of the long hard hours not to mention the spiritual, physical and emotional stress it puts on me and my family. The next day I envision families and generations changed because there was a church that reached out to them one day and loved them. It is day to day on how I am feeling and which way my emotions are swaying. I just have to trust in God and be under His leadership and protection to get through each day.

It takes faith and a lot of prayer to plant a church. I am also convinced that you have to be either crazy or called to plant a church. I praise God for what He has put on my heart and how He wants to use an average neighborhood kid like me to be a part of changing a city.

Please pray for me, my family and our core group as we continue this radical, faith building journey that God has put us on. Pray for patience, endurance, clear direction and an open heart to God and people. Pray for yourself to see if you should join us in anyway to be apart of this movement. To God truly be the glory for who He is, what He has done and what He continues to have in store for His church.

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.

Take a Dump on You

OK, I know the title is a little "Middle School" like, but hey it got you here didn't it?

Imagine someone came into your life and just "dumped" a tone of resources onto your lap. Just say someone walked up and gave you a check for $50 and said I just wanted to bless you. Would that $50 change your life? Probably not. It may however, make your day or maybe even your week, but I will guarantee you this, YOU WILL NEVER FORGET THE PERSON THAT GAVE IT TO YOU.

At Awaken, we want Jesus to look attractive to people. We want our community to see the love of Jesus. I was talking to a few people tonight at work about targeting a Trailer Park in the area where we are looking to plant our church. I said what if we hung out there for a few weeks and started to get to know some of the people. After a few weeks, we put on a little carnival for the children in their community. Get inflatables, icee's, funnel cakes, hand out t-shirts and love on them. Finally we give every family a gift card to Wal Mart.

We also will build relationships with the people in the community and start a small group Bible Study. We start to target and pray for each home in that community that is far from God and pray that God would change their lives.

After talking about this I asked some of the people that I was casting this vision to, "Why wouldn't it work?" This really started getting me excited about my purpose in life and the purpose for Awaken. Would all of these people come to our church? I am sure some would, but that is not point at all. The point is just to love them. Most of them probably believe that Jesus exists, but have just not seen His love through His followers. So we are going to do it.

What are some creative ideas that you have wanted to do, but just have not had a chance to do it before?

A city wasting its life.

I think many people in many cities just exist and do not really live. I honestly believe that Awaken Community Church will change the Hixson/Soddy Daisy Community because we will focus on really living.

We will talk about things that matter in life. We will address tough issues such as homosexuality, sex, porn, anger, finances, family and more. We want to encourage people to know why they are here and Who to place their identity in.

All of this will happen through real relationships. Real Relationships are the key to our church and how God will change our city. I am a dreamer and trying to be a realist, but the goal of Awaken is that the Hixson/ Soddy Daisy communities would be different because we exists. We do this by being real, following scripture and giving God the glory.

So, I pray as we give this church to God, He will lead us.

When We Go

I have been falling more in love with Jesus the last few months. I have learned more of what it means to walk by faith. I feel like I am closer to God. I have been praying a lot more. As this has been happening, I have been thinking a lot about life. What is my purpose? In that, I have been thinking of what happens when I go... when I die... when my purpose is over... what happens when Jesus comes back? What happens when all of humanity comes to an end? What happens to all of the people that are left that have not tasted the joy of Jesus Christ? Is there really a hell? Seriously? Are you telling me that there is such thing as a separation from God for eternity?

If so, then how shall we live? Do we stay in our safe homes and have our safe families tucked away in our comfort zone. Do we avoid eye contact, much less initiate conversation with a stranger at the store? If the first paragraph is true, then Christianity in America has to change. Christianity in my city has to change. Christianity in my church has to change... Christianity in my life has to change.

So what happens now?

Not Alone

It is comforting to know that I am not alone and that Christ has called my family. My family and I have taken on what seems like an impossible challenge; starting a church. First of all why do we want to start a church? Is it because we need "another" church in our city of Chattanooga? Nope. Not at all. We have plenty. Then why?

First, I feel called to be a pastor and preach, build relationships and cast vision to a church. Second, most churches would not accept me if I gave them my resume. Third, many churches are already in a system that I do not personally think are very effective. Are theses churches good and have nice people? Sure! I just think lack of authentic community exist in many churches in our city. There has to be a place, a church, where people can be real, confess struggles, not act like they are perfect, truly love one another. Jesus said that the world would come to know him because of our love for one another. If we do not know each other, then how can we truly love one another, and if we do not truly love one another, then how will the world come to Christ through us loving each other? They don't. Many won't.

That is why in the book "UnChristian" stats are filled with why people do not go to church. Particularly the 16-29 year old age. Here is a glimpse of what they say, "Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental,” young Americans share an impression of Christians that’s nothing short of . . . unChristian".

At Awaken, we honestly want to build authentic relationships with everyone that walks through our doors. Our purpose is to build believers in Christ and reach a community that is far from God. One way, a big way to do this is by love for one another.

This is the reason that we are doing what we are doing and we are not alone, Christ has called us.

If you want to be a part of a church like this we would love to invite you to our next meeting on 1.25.09. E-mail me at justin@awakencc.org if you are interested.

Justice... ThinK

Gearing Up

I currently live in the Hamilton place area of Chattanooga. Every time I drive to the Hixson/ Soddy Daisy area I start to dream. I think of the people working in the local Subway. I think of the waiters and waitresses at Logan's. Starbucks, Pep Boys, Wal Mart, Little Caesars, The Rush, Toys R Us... I do not get motivated because of the stores in themselves of course, but I think of the people that work inside each store. A real life. A person. Can you honestly believe that you could walk in that store and change someone's life? Do you?

Think about it, all over the book of Acts life change happened. Why can't it happen today? It can. Someone working behind the counter at Verizon would love to be shown love today. They have a real life, possibly a family, real bills, real stresses, real hobbies, real goals in life... but do they have the real God of the universe. Through love, let's change our city with the love of Christ one life at a time.

Through Awaken we seek to build believers in Christ and reach a community that is far from God. That is our purpose. Our vision is that the Hixson/Soddy Daisy area would be different because we exist. It can happen. Walk by faith and love people.

Justin and Kylie Video

Whatever it takes.

I am finding that as I open my life to God, He gives me desires. Right now I have the desire to do whatever it takes to get where God has called me to be.

I love movies like Cinderella Man. The main character comes back to boxing after breaking his hand and fights for his family. Literally he fights for his family. Because of the great depression, he has to fight to make it. He does whatever it takes to provide and support them. In the end he wins the ultimate match that no one thought he could win. Great movie.

Fight for whatever it takes to get where you want in life.

living your life like it matters...

I am teaching a series entitled "30 Days to Live" We are thinking about things. Thinking about life. Thinking about things that matter. When you wrap up your day today and then look back on it, ask yourself, "How much of this day really mattered?"

Think about living in the moment, Eternal perspectives and leaving a legacy. Lets try to think about things that matter.

Waiting on the world to change.

I love change and the vision that it takes to see change. John Mayers song "Waiting on the World to Change" inspires me to see lives change. Although I cant wait until the world changes, but I must personally do something about it.

What if the church looked like trash?

I think it is interesting how we look into churches across our country. You see well groomed middle/high class people who have everything together. I wonder if Jesus started a church what it would look like. I think it would have a bunch of widows or divorcees that did not dress right and a children's ministry full of chaos with a bunch of orphans who did not know how to act "godly".

I constantly look at the "bad guys" of the New Testament; the Pharisees. And I pray that my life would not look anything like theirs. And that our churches would not look anything like theirs. But, I think sometimes we start to look too good for our own good. We need to realize our dependence on God and surround ourselves with people who do not look like us.

What if your church stunk a little bit on Sunday's because of the smell of the homeless man that took "your seat". What if a poor kid with dirty feet was walking in our pews? What would we do? I think we know. But what would Jesus do? I think He would love and play with the kid that we gave a snooty evil look to.

Let's be more like Jesus. "God, allow our churches to smell."

Speaking at a youth camp

I remember sitting at youth camps as I grew up always looking at the guy on stage and thought, "Wow, that would be awesome to do that one day". I stuck with the vision and now have spoken at many camps and am getting ready for another one next week.

When I was in high school I always noticed the jokes and stories and how they connected them back to God. I believe that is the most important thing; that the undeniable truth of Jesus is lifted up by the end of the message.

A few things that I will focus on for the week are: 1. Connecting with the students as I bring God's Truth. and 2. Relating and hanging with the students during their free time. I always remember looking up to "the speaker guy" and noticed everything they did and now that I'm "the speaker guy", I need to make sure that I love these students this week.