TIFTON — Josh Bennett, lead pastor, and Shane Suggs, executive pastor, are working to get Awaken Church off the ground.

“We’re a new church plant coming to Tifton,” Bennett said. “We haven’t launched yet. We’ve had a Mother’s Day service, we’ll have a Father’s Day service, a service on July 15 and then we’ll launch on August.”

Bennett said that he grew up in Homerville but came to visit family in Tifton every summer.

“I loved Tifton, loved being here,” he said. “I’d even made the comment to one of our denominational leaders at the time that I felt that in 10 years or so God would call us back here in some capacity.”

For more information, contact Bennett at 229-520-1111 or go online to awakenyourfaith.church

Bennett and his family moved around serving in and starting churches, before returning to Tifton to begin a church here.

“It was difficult to leave a church we started,” he said. “It’s like leaving your kid.”

The family moved to Tifton in July 2017 and have been doing community outreach activities, then held their first service at the movie theater.

“The question a lot of people would ask is ‘why a new church in Tifton,” he said. “The statistics scream that we need more churches.”

He said that according to the 2010 census 52 percent of Tift County doesn’t attend an evangelical church. More recent surveys have the number at 20 percent attending church on a weekly basis, he said.

Bennett said that he was alarmed by a statistic saying that the 2000 census said that 23 percent of Tift County said they don’t have religious beliefs. That number jumped to 38 percent in the 2010 census, according to Bennett.

“We’re not coming to town to compete with other churches,” Bennett said. “We just want to try to reach people who aren’t attending church and try to find a way to connect with people who are looking for somewhere to get connected. We want to share the gospel with people who for whatever reason aren’t attending other churches.”

He said that church plants are different from long-established churches, which might appeal to some of those who don’t attend church now.

“Traditional churches are geared towards what they like and how they’ve done things,” he said. “A church plant is solely focused on what we can do to reach people. We want to be a church that ties the tradition of church to some contemporary ideas. We think there is an avenue to reach new people and to do things differently than they’ve always been done but at the same time remaining Biblically accurate and true.”

One of the ways they are trying to reach new people is by having church services in a movie theatre.

“That ended up being a really good location for us,” Bennett said. “We had a good turnout.”

Suggs said that the difference between a traditional church and a church plant is that the first thing church plants think of is who isn’t there, why, and how to get them there.

“You think about how to reach out to the people who aren’t going to church,” Suggs said. “As a pastor, you want everybody to go to church but there are people that are just not going. They all may have a different reason, but you think of them first.”

They both said that they want to take the intimidation out of going to a new church.

“It’s intimidating going to a new church,” Suggs said. “You feel like an outsider, like everyone already knows everyone else and you’re an outsider.”

“The main thing we want to portray is that our heart is to reach people with the gospel because we believe it’s life changing,” Bennett said. “That’s what we’re wanting to bring to Tifton.”

Follow Eve Copeland on Twitter @EveCopelandTTG.

More information: https://www.awakenyourfaith.church/

This story has been updated with the church’s website.