Church For Screwed Up People

Last week I told our people that my 4 year old son Malachi is at that place in potty training where he only needs a little help cleaning up on number two.  We usually know he needs help anytime he is in the bathroom longer than a couple of minutes.  So the other day he was in there about 10 minutes and instead of hearing the typical "mommy" we hear his older sister yell "Malachi is out of the bathroom and went poop".  Got to love older sisters!  Connie and I start checking and making sure he really did clean himself up, I'm ready to call in Hazmat, and to our surprise and excitement he did it all by himself. 


I know, what does this have to do with anything formative other than an excited set of parents.

Well I told our people the problem with so many people is we try to do exactly what my son did.  We try to clean ourselves up before we come to God.  We try to make our lives better, we try to fix our problems, we sometimes stay away from God and the Church until we get it all together (or at least think we do).  One of our values at Awaken is that "We Are A Church For Screwed Up People".  Though this may sound crude it really gets the attention of the highly military concentrated area we do ministry in.  Don't we all have messes in our lives anyways.  So we try not to hide this fact.

But we also try not to hide the fact that if we give our lives completely over to Jesus He won't leave us this way.  Jesus wants to take us from our brokenness and create in us a new work where we are sons and daughters of the most high King Jesus.

A practical way we recently tried to communicate this was through a "Divorce and ReMarriage Seminar" where we partnered with Sought Out Ministries (local Christian Counseling Ministry).  Praise God for the families and individuals that came from Awaken and from the Community to seek health in their lives and relationships.  So let's just not be a church that is for "Screwed Up People" but also be the church that seeks health.