Our Story

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Awake Church was born in 2008 when a group of Jesus followers in North Seattle was prompted to wonder about the love of God being tied up with love of neighbors. We gathered weekly in the back room of a local coffee shop to pray and share communion, explore the scriptures, and scheme about our participation with the Holy Spirit's movement in the neighborhood. We visited motels, created a communal garden, hosted backyard BBQs, and grew in affection for one another and for the world of Aurora Avenue. This led in 2011 to the creation of a community living room called Aurora Commons, which exists as a space for every variety of neighbor to experience hospitality, community, and be shaped by one another.

We gathered in different spaces tracking up and down the Aurora corridor: living rooms, parks and backyards, an old Lutheran church building, a senior center, and a Chinese restaurant. Since 2018 we’ve been able to gather at Aurora Commons, our home, thanks to an addition for our kids we fondly refer to as the Corner Store. Our lack of a building and migration over the first decade, however, solidified a knowing that we the people are the church.

In this new decade, Aurora Commons and the community that’s formed around it are now our teachers. We gather to expose ourselves to the wisdom of the poor and seek moments of deep communion in order to remember we are a people seeking to be formed by the Way of Jesus.

Our People

We believe all people are created in the image of God, unconditionally loved by God, and gifted with particular ways of revealing God in the world. We embrace people of all ages, races, genders, sexual orientations, differing abilities, ethnic origins, and economic circumstances as needed and essential to God’s work in the world. More so, Scripture shows us those who have been unjustly marginalized by their communities are often closer to the center of God’s heart and work in the world. We look for resurrection to come toward us from the edges.

We have a low-barrier way of gathering together, which means we can be comfortable with people coming and going, causing mild disturbances, dressing out of fashion, and asking difficult questions. We don't have a dress code, smell code, or moral code because we want to stumble into communion as our most honest selves, which is how we believe Jesus is most delighted to meet us.

Our community is made up of families, couples, single people, and we value the children in our midst who point us to honest faith. Pretty much all of us are struggling in one way or another, but we've discovered something powerful about doing that in community in order to share life in a way that forms us unto Jesus. We are ready to grieve deeply, celebrate joyfully, and forgive readily. We lament complacency, wonder what justice looks like lived out in our daily lives, and desire to live out of our convictions as well as our questions.

Our Place

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Aurora Avenue (99) is a storied highway running north out of downtown Seattle. Before the advent of I-5, it was the primary route in and out of the city and you can still see traces of those glory days - service stations, drive-in restaurants, an elephant sculpture, and the iconic motels. These motels, many of which were built in the 1960’s to accommodate booms of business travelers, are now being utilized as short-term "housing" for people who experience barriers to the more stable options (poor credit, lack of rental history, inability to acquire security deposits, refugee situations, etc.). And now Aurora has acquired a reputation as one of the primary "strips" in the Seattle area for the harsh realities of drug dependence, street-based sex work, and more visible forms of homelessness - people sleeping outside, under awnings, or in vehicles.

Aurora is also where to go if you want to buy used cars or appliances.

Our church most closely identifies with a segment of this highway that forms an intersection of socio-economic worlds. To the west is the residential community of Greenwood with its eclectic coffee shops, restaurants, bars, and boutiques. To the east is the upscale Greenlake neighborhood with its large houses and lovely parks. And so it's easy to disregard the highway between these worlds as nothing more than a transportation corridor with a reputation, but for the imagination being shaped in us Aurora has become a kind of world unto herself: a place with her own story, her own people and her own emergences of God's in-dom. We have grown to love her and seek to be formed by her.

Our Faith

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We exist to embody the love of God with the ever-expanding story of Jesus as our example, empowered by the same spirit. We acknowledge with deep grief and humility that throughout history the story of Jesus in Christian scripture has been co-opted by nations, institutions, and cultures in service of their own power at the expense of the rest, and we refuse to follow this pattern. The Jesus whom we emulate showed a different way, emptying himself of divine power to humbly take on human nature. As a brown-skinned Jewish laborer living in occupied territory, he revealed the nature of God to us. Jesus exemplified self-giving love, welcomed outsiders, healed the sick, announced God’s favor to the lowly, and unsettled the powerful.  Executed with the collaboration of the mob, religious leaders, and the occupying empire, he overcame death and opened up the path unto flourishing life for all.

This ancient yet living story of Jesus animates and forms us as we hold tension between tradition and the ever-expanding, creative nature of the Spirit. Expressions of Awake change based on who is showing up to form and inform us, and the season we find ourselves in (seasons of immense loss, people moving or arriving, or changes in our neighborhood, or shifting political landscapes and current events). As our ways of gathering may shift with our particular season, these guiding principles remain steady and true for us:

  • We believe relationship is more important than being right. We bring a variety of perspectives, beliefs and backgrounds to our journey together.

  • We believe in the wisdom of the poor. We humbly recognize our exposure to people on the margins as an act of spiritual formation. We look to those on the outskirts of society to show us the Way.

  • We believe creation is ongoing. We recognize our role as sub-creators mediating faith through imagination, artistic engagement, and connection to the earth and creation.

  • We believe that God is present within the disturbances around us. We recognize grace in the grotesque.

  • We believe God’s Spirit inhabits our bodies. We recognize our capacity to mediate God's prophetic word and presence with one another.

Staff

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Ryan Daniel Dobson

Youth Director

Ryan and his family joined Awake in 2021 after moving to Seattle from California where Ryan worked as a filmmaker for many years. He believes the first and foremost task of any youth group should be to channel care, support, and love to teens who can feel overlooked and overwhelmed in the modern world. Ryan has a degree in Theology from Southern Nazarene University.

Jennifer Thomas

Co-pastor, Children and Families

Jennifer grew up in the greater Seattle area and learned to follow Jesus in the Lutheran church where her family was very involved as leaders and musicians. She met her husband at the UW, then spent several years in Illinois for graduate school. She loves being a mom to her three kids, good books, old music, lively debates, time on her yoga mat to refuel, and sunny camping trips. She has her M.Div. from Regent College.

Hayden Wartes

Co-pastor, Life Together

Hayden is a native of Indiana and forever Hoosier at heart. She’s lived for twenty years in North Seattle, involved in various community and capacity building expressions. She is married to Zadok and mother to Jai, Loyalty, and Reza. Hayden taught yoga for a decade and loves to scheme ways to uncover more of the Spirit through knowing the body. She has her master’s degree from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.

Nicole Baker

Co-creator, Gatherings

Nicole and her family joined the Awake community early on in its formation when Awake was still migrating around Aurora Avenue in senior centers, homes and old church buildings. She is a grounding presence for us, holding the tension of who we’ve been along with listening for new invitations from the Spirit for our continual becoming.

Thomas K. Brown

Hospitality

Thomas moved to Seattle to study at The Seattle School for Theology and Psychology, and is now a therapist. Thomas is a lover of people who keeps our welcome warm on Sundays.

Board

Awake is prayerfully guided by a small group of the community that changes every 2-3 years. Our current group includes Laura Handley, Erika Trott, Yvette Stone and Ellie White. Reach out to them at board@awakechurch.org.

Teaching Team

We delight in amplifying a variety of voices and perspectives rather than listening to a singular voice from “up front.” A group gathers before each church season (lent, easter, advent, etc) to study, discuss, and discern what we’ll dig into as a community. There’s always room for more! If you’re interested reach out to Hayden.