Help your church become the room its people are looking for.
Awake Collective works alongside churches to build the places where the truth can be told first, before it has to be told anywhere else. Sunday teaching, staff formation, resources for your church, and a private conversation for those carrying what they cannot yet name.
Every church says it somewhere.
On the sign out front, in the bulletin, from the pulpit. All are welcome. Come as you are. Every church has some version of the same beautiful thing.
Here is the test. Take the most ashamed person in the room this Sunday. There is one. Statistically there are hundreds. Now ask one question.
What would happen if that person took you at your word?
If they took you at your word, walked up to somebody after the service, and said the true sentence out loud, whatever would actually happen next is your church. Not the sign. 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.
We help you close the gap.
'All are welcome' is an aspirational value. What happens when someone actually tells the truth is your actual one. When the two don't match, people learn to hide. The answer is not to stop aspiring. It is to tell the truth about the gap.
A church that leaves the gap open does not lose people in an argument. They just quietly stop believing the welcome, and then they stop coming, and the sign out front goes on saying all are welcome to a room that emptied one person at a time.
“The honest church is a magnificent front door: the place where the truth gets told first and safely, and then walked, accompanied, to wherever it needs to go next.
Everyone's Medicating Something, Chapter Fourteen
Become the front door, not the whole hospital.
Some of what people in your church are carrying needs a therapist. A treatment program. A twelve step room. A psychiatrist. A healthy church knows the difference between what a small group can hold and what it cannot.
Awake Collective is not asking your church to become clinicians. We are asking you to become a room that can hold the true sentence long enough to get it to the right care. The unhealthy church tries to be the whole hospital, prays over what needs treating, and calls the ambulance last. The honest church is a front door.
That is the work. And it is a culture, not a program bolted onto an unchanged one.
The culture is built in the staff meeting.
A church where the truth can be told does not happen by accident. It is built, and it is built by the people who lead it, first. The six moves that work is built on, and everything Awake Collective does with staff, elders, and boards, lives on its own page.
Every engagement begins with a conversation, and no two engagements are the same. But these are the four doors most churches use.
Sunday teaching
A message from Drew during a service, or a series across several. On what people are actually carrying. Written for the lobby, not the conference. Available as one Sunday, a two week series, or a message paired with a workshop the following weekday.
Staff formation
The leaders go first, or nothing else works. A retreat, a workshop, or a longer engagement with the staff and elders. Not accountability. Formation. We build the room where leaders can practice the sentence before they ask their congregation to say it.
The leaders page →Resources for your church
Curriculum, small group material, a companion for a churchwide read of Everyone's Medicating Something, and the Cabinet: the practices that go where the medications used to sit. Written for a congregation. Usable in a Wednesday night group, an adult class, or on a phone during a walk.
A private conversation for your members
For the person in your church who is carrying something they cannot yet say to you. Awake Collective offers a confidential room where that first sentence can be spoken, without a form that goes to the church office, without a call to your church. We walk them toward help, and toward the safe people in your own building who can eventually hold it.
Three steps, and none of them are paperwork.
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.
How we serve your church.
Help for your church, always free. When someone in your church needs care, one call helps find the right place. The curriculum, resources, and staff training materials come with it. The treatment programs of the Awake Collective fund this work, and we'll tell you exactly who they are.
Drew in the room. Sunday teaching, staff workshops, weekends and retreats, cohorts and clinics. Booked like any guest teacher, plus travel.
Read the first chapter before you decide anything.
It is about a pastor who threw up most Sunday mornings before he preached. It is free, Drew will send it to you personally, and nobody at your church will know you asked.
Start with a conversation.
Every engagement begins the same way. A short conversation with Drew about your church and what the people who lead it are actually carrying. No pitch. No proposal. If there is a fit, we come back to you with what a next step could look like. If there is not, we tell you honestly and, when we can, point you toward someone who might be a better fit for the moment you are in.
What would happen if that person took you at your word?
The Welcome Test · Section 01