Awaken: The Final Chapter

Family and friends, things are coming to a close at Awaken Community Church. This blog serves as a purpose to celebrate the lives that God has changed and what God will do in the future. We feel like God has done what He wants to do through this local church and we are now transitioning into other churches in our community for further growth and community.

On December 8, 2008 Awaken had its first core group meeting with 17 in attendance. We met at my friend Brian Curriers house. We had set out on a journey to bring people to God and back to God and bring people into meaningful relationships with one another. Many lives have been changed since the conception of Awaken. Listen to these stories.

Brian Currier... Brian was my right hand guy at the start of Awaken. We gave ourselves cute little titles and his was program director. Brian ended up meeting the love of his life, Laura, within the first couple of weeks of starting Awaken. He also met an acquaintance, Janie, that lead him to his current job. Brian and his wife now serve the Lord and attend Calvary Chapel downtown.

Bryce Patrick.... Bryce used to play X-box up to 8 hours a day. Tony invited him to Awaken and Bryce found more fulfillment than Halo could offer. He started serving like crazy. The first time I met Bryce was the first Sunday he came to Awaken. The dude was scrubbing our bathroom toilets. Those were the famous toilets that peed back on you. Talk about a servant! Bryce was with us over a year and has been called into youth ministry and is in the process of getting married and is open to God using him in the mission field.

Barry Underwood.... Barry was lonely and did not think anyone cared about Him. He craved Christian community. Barry came to Awaken and started to come alive with the gospel. He shared the gospel at the Rush and invited friends every week to Awaken. If we made an award for most invites, it would for sure go to him. He met a homeless guy named Gene and moved him into his house, bought him clothes and helped him get a job. Gene ended up being baptized at Awaken.

Adam and Dana Wyatt.... Adam hated church people. He is a drummer that loves his music and likes to be real and honest with people. He found for the first time, real Christian community at Awaken. Dana was still kind of new to town when they came to Awaken. She had not been able to meet a lot of people so she hung out with all of Adams friends. She ended up meeting and keeping meaningful relationships at and through Awaken.

I could go on and on with stories from Sam and Lindsay who were burnt pretty bad in ministry and wanted to quit forever. They were with us for a season and now back on their feet serving as worship leaders in Chicago. My family, who were not in church, are now active in church. There are countless lives that were changed and encouraged along the way. The majority of our core group was dechurched at one time and now God is leading many of them to their next step in life in serving Him.

Although Awaken as a church is coming to an end, the people who made up the church have come alive. Our goal was to reach the dechurched, nonchurched and bored at church to show them that the God of creation wants you to come alive and awaken to what He has for you.

I praise God for the opportunity and privilege of starting a church to reach the one. I am not sure what the next chapter is for my wife and I, but we are open to what God wants to do. I want to thank my family and friends for your prayers and support for the past two and a half years and let you know that it was all worth it.

I would like to invite you to celebrate what God has done over the last several years by attending an evening service on Sunday night June 5th. We will meet at 6:00pm and have an open mic for folks to share. It is a time to get together, celebrate Jesus and what He has done through Awaken.

The Art of Organization

I am A.D.D. Not officially, but my brain seems to goes in every direction possible. Not sure if you can relate, but if you can, then you know that it can be frustrating not to have organization in your life.

I recently found a few things that I have added to my life that have helped me. 1. People 2. A Calendar 3. Communication.

I notice that if I can take out a little time to add these things to my life it can save me a lot of stress. It is kind of like disciplining a child. A parent can either stay on top of them when they are young and make sure the child does not rule, reign and run the house. If a parent actually parents the kid when they are young then it saves them a lifetime of being ruled by the kid. If a parent does not discipline, then the child rules the rest of their lives in many different areas and many different ways and the parents are frustrated. The point is this; take out a little bit of time to parent well and it will make life a lot easier. I am finding it is the same with organization. Take out a little time to organize and everything will be easier.

In leading a church, I have put two other men by my side (people). We meet weekly to talk about the direction of the church (communication) and plan out where we want to go and what we want to do to get to where we want to go (calendar).

The same with my home life. Faith, my wife, and I are still working at this, but I will meet with her (people) and talk through things (communication) and write them down (calendar). Here is a perfect example. Right now we are working on moving into our new house! So that is exciting, but it takes a lot of work. We are working now with getting people to help (people), getting dates set to move (calendar) and getting a list set up for what people can do when they get here (communication).

I am not an expert, but this is where I am and what I am learning. I hope this can help you.

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.

My 11 Goals of 2011

The differenece from a vision and a new years resolution is that a vision is a life long goal that can be broken down each year to fulfill the overall vision. A new years resolution is mostly intended to try something different or try to change something. Some of my goals relate to the vision that God has called me to and some are goals that I have. Most people make goals and keep them for about 5 days. I hope to keep many of these goals at least past January, ha. So here they are:

1. Keep house clean
2. Buy a home
3. Give my life to the gospel
4. Get a blue belt in Gracie Jujitsu
5. Develop closer relationships with my family and friends
6. Read more books
7. Watch less TV
8. Eat healthier
9. Learn to live on less
10. Work hard at work
11. Date my wife more

What are your goals this year?

Relationships Matter

I just spend an hour and a half deleting over 1200 Facebook friends. This probably doesn't sound like the perfect sentence to start off a blog titled "Relationships Matter". The point is, is that I have a lot of relationships, but I do not have a lot of meaningful relationships.

The last few months have been good with my wife. I have been spending meaningful time that with her that counts.

At church, I have realized that we have a lot of stuff to do and not enough people to do it. And all pastors said... "Amen".

I am thinking and praying through my life and focusing my time on relationships that I can build into. Anyone that knows me knows that I love people, but may also know that it is hard for me to go deep. I can go into deep conversations, but that is different than going into deep life together. I now have 301 friends. Maybe some more of those need to be deleted. My goal is to try invest well into people God has close to my life. I am not hating those I deleted, just trying to focus on people that are currently in my life to some degree.

God tells us to love Him and to love others well. I have been so spread thin, that neither have been done well. Hopefully through obedience and faith that will continue to change.

The Old School and New School Gospel.

I spoke at Student Venture, Chattanooga last night. I always enjoy being with that group of believers. The staff walk by faith and challenge the kids to share their faith and disciple them.

I compared our cultural gospels (which is really no gospel at all) to the true gospel of Christ. We talked about the Old School Gospel and the New School Gospel. Here is how I broke them down:

The Old School Gospel says" What You Do" gets you to heaven. Read your bible, pray, don't cuss, quit dipping, pull up your pants and go to church. This is a more legalistic or Pharisaical type "gospel". How good can you look and be, determines if you can go to heaven, and then they add Jesus. This is not the gospel, but a man made attempt to get to heaven and add Jesus name to it.

The New School Gospel says "How You Feel" gets you to heaven. You see this in our culture and many churches when you hear an alter call and someone says to you, "You don't really want hell do you?" Then the person says, "No, of course not" Then the preacher or whoever is getting ready to lead them into a man centered "gospel prayer" says ok repeat after me and then proceeds to lead the person in a felt need prayer that has a lot to do with the persons emotions and little to do with the King Jesus. They just Him on.

The Biblical gospel says that salvation has nothing to do with you. The Bible speaks that we are dead in our sins (Romans 3:21-23), but God has given a gift of life. He actually became our sin. It has nothing to do about what we do or how we feel, but who He is.

If you have lived or are living in the Old School or New School Gospel, I pray that you would leave it and turn to the true gospel. If you are a pastor, church planter or a spiritual leader, lets keep the gospel about Jesus and not what we can do.