We help churches become places where people stop hiding and start healing.
A safe partner for the hidden places in your church, and in you. When someone is struggling, the call is free, and we help find the help that fits.
Who can't you tell?
I lead the church.
Everyone around you either works for you or can fire you.
Open this door →I'm on staff.
You can't take this to your pastor, because your pastor is also your boss.
Open this door →I'm part of the church.
You can't tell the people who lead you without becoming their project, or their problem.
Open this door →Every church says it somewhere. On the sign out front, in the bulletin, from the pulpit. All are welcome. Come as you are. Take the most ashamed person in the room this Sunday, and ask one question.
What would happen if that person took you at your word?
The distance between what your church says and what it can actually hold is the truest measure of its health. Most churches, in their honest moments, already know the distance.
Invite Drew.
One conversation first, then a Sunday, a workshop or a weekend, whatever fits the room you actually have.
Tell the truth.
The leaders go first, and the room learns that the true sentence is survivable here.
Know who to call.
When someone needs more than a church can give, you already know the number, and it costs your church nothing.
Everyone's medicating something.
The addict in the room is not the person we are looking for. The person we are looking for is the one nobody would ever call an addict. The achiever. The wine mom. The volunteer. The pastor. The one with the phone charging next to the bed and a small vow about next week. The one whose respectable dosage nobody would ever name as one, least of all them.
Underneath every medication is the same pain. Shame, humming under everything. Loneliness that hides in plain sight, even on a stage. The belief that being known means being rejected. And underneath that is the reason nobody stops: the medication works. It buys distance from a feeling. If it did not work, nobody on earth would be addicted to anything.
Healing that lasts does not start when someone is told the truth. It starts when it becomes safe to tell it. So that is what we build: a room where the truth can be told first, before it has to be told anywhere else.
That is the work.
- Workaholism
- Pornography
- Validation
- Performance
- Phone & media
- Food
- Spending
- Image
- Control
- Ministry obsession
- Emotional dependency
- Secrecy
Awake Collective works with churches four ways. Every engagement begins with a conversation. There is no fee to the church.
Sunday teaching
A message during a service, or a series across several. On what people are actually carrying.
Staff formation
The leaders go first, or nothing else works. A retreat, a workshop, or a longer engagement with the staff and elders.
Resources for your church
Curriculum, small group material, a companion for a churchwide read of the book, and the Cabinet.
A confidential conversation for your members
A private room where the first sentence can be spoken, without a form that goes to the church office.
Read the first chapter.
Everyone's Medicating Something is a book for the people the church has never quite known how to talk to about this, which is most of us. The first chapter is about a pastor who threw up most Sunday mornings before he preached. It's free, and you can have it now.
We'll send the chapter today and the release date the moment there is one. Nothing else, and nobody at your church will know you asked.
Awake Collective is a resource for churches, and it is also a room for the person inside a church who has not yet found a way to say what is true. If that is you, or someone you love, there is a door here that does not go through a form on your church's website. It goes to a real person, and what you say to that person stays there.
Find the door →I will hold your story and your confession with safety and sacredness. I will not rat you out. I will not call your church. I will not cost you your job. The goal was never for me to hold your secret forever. The goal is for you to stop needing one.
From the book's epilogue
The Awake Collective is the roster of treatment and recovery programs that fund this work, one in each lane. They pay a flat monthly fee to be part of it. Churches pay nothing beyond travel. Nobody pays us per referral, and we are paid the same whether anyone from your church ever contacts a member or not.
When someone needs more help than a church can give, we recommend by fit, and we tell you who supports us. That is the whole arrangement. It is also the reason a pastor can trust it.
The roster
One seat per lane, so no two members ever compete for the same person.
Members are named here, in our quarterly report, and in any room where a recommendation is made. They are never pitched from a stage.
Learn about partnership →
Twenty years in ministry. Then the truth, the hard way.
Drew Powell spent more than twenty years in ministry before his own collapse forced him beneath the surface of his life. What he found there changed everything he believed about addiction, shame, identity, and grace. He is a former pastor, a Pastoral Sex Addiction Professional, and the founder of Awake Collective. He wrote a book about what he found.
He also hosts Loving Leverage, a podcast for people in recovery, betrayed partners, and the families walking the road with them. Hear it →
Start with a conversation.
No pitch. No form that lands in a queue. Every relationship with Awake Collective, whether you are a pastor, a leader, a person carrying something, or a treatment program, begins the same way. A short conversation with Drew.
Healing doesn't start when you hear the truth. It starts when it's finally safe to tell it.
The idea beneath everything we do