Awaken Church

Our values are a reflection of what is truely important to us. Below you'll find the six things that we most value. You could say these things define what we are all about.

Leadership
"All leadership is essentially spiritual"
Everyone is spiritual. When people are being lead, they are being lead not only within a physical context, but also within a spiritual context. No matter what context we are leading in, like the tide we can either lead people closer to Jesus or draw them away from Jesus. The role of a church should be more than just to impact the church body with its leadership, but should also impact the city that it is within. In reality there should not be any split between the sacred and the secular world because God brings about true reality and everything can be brought under God. The church should, therefore, be in the business of training and raising up leaders not only within the walls of the church, but also outside the walls of the church.

Struggle "True growth brings life" Life, growth, and our pursuit of God is a constant struggle that must be pursued for continued health. We are each created in the image of God; however, the sin in our lives is distorting what that image looks like. We also have an enemy that wants nothing less than to see us live within the lies we have believed in the past and, hence, live a defeated life. Jesus is the one that transforms lives, still yet, it is a constant struggle for us to find our true self; to live as much like the original people God created us to be. Though it is a constant struggle to live this life, we must battle this undercurrent trying to pull us away from God; we must fight this struggle head on.

Creativity "God thinks in color, shouldn't we?" God is the Master Creator and Master Artist. People are made in the image of God and, therefore, are creators and artists themselves. Most people believe that art is just drawing or painting where in reality art is much, much more. Part of our design as being made in the image of the Master Creator is our ability to imagine and think. Our imagination is the outflow of our hearts. When our hearts are aligned with God's, our imagining is God's imagining. When our hearts are not aligned with God and are corrupted by sin our imagining does not add up to the potential that God designed. We are, therefore, to be designers, portraying God's heart. Relevance to culture is essential; where the church is shaping culture. This happens when our imaginations and creativeness are an outflow of our passion for God.

Gifted Serving "We were each created to live an original life." Are you living the life that God gave you? We are each made in the image of our creator and therefore should reflect our uniqueness as in each grain of sand. In scripture the church is often referred to as the Body of Christ. A body has many different parts and each part has a particular role that it is designed to play. Not one role is more important than another; we each have a certain role to play. When we are living a life based on our strengths and our giftedness we are living closer to the original life that we are called to live.

Community "Loving people is key to reaching people." Love should be the one defining word of our churches. Scripture says the world will know us by our love. The church should be the most welcoming and authentic community that people can seek out. Like water seeks to flow into every available crevice, our love as a church should stream into every facet of peoples. lives. People thrive, learn, and grow in relationships.

Momentum "Mission is why the church exists; a city within a city changing a city." Through scripture the church is called to be relevant to where it is at. We as a church don't want to spin our wheels trying to catch up to culture. Instead of trying to catch up to culture and stay relevant, we as a church want to set the pace for culture. What could happen if the church became the change agent for culture? This is true momentum.