Monday 18 October 2010

Empowering

Catherine
I started having singing lessons a few weeks ago. Part of regaining my voice, learning how to sing (always avoided it before now, cos was told I couldn't sing) Great fun, been Yumming and Nging, and arring, eeeing, and oooing :) Wrote this song too this week`:


My voice
Silent and resting, till morning is there
my voice has been waiting for others to hear
its a lie that I have had nothing to say
and its crumbling and tumbling far far away

For I have a voice that has something to say
I have a voice that silent can't stay
My voice was just hidden till out it could fly
like an eagle with wings free in the sky

Truth it shall speak, with love in its tone,
honest enough to admit wrong and own
thankfullness flowing as it is set free
My voice is to be for my fathers glory

For I have a voice that has something to say
I have a voice that silent can't stay
My voice was just hidden till out it could fly
like an eagle with wings free in the sky

Injustice shall quake as the sound is released,
and chains shall be broken and prisoners released
The love of my father shall pour out in song
and he will heal in his power the broken so wronged

For I have a voice that has something to say
I have a voice that silent can't stay
My voice was just hidden till out it could fly
like an eagle with wings free in the sky

Isn't it easy for us to take peoples voices away, take their responsibility and choice away too, disempower them as people from being able to make choices. From the seemingly trivial ‘you can’t sing’ to the more obviously profound words from a mother ‘You are unwanted, you should never have been born’.

David
I think we Brits have built a culture of disempowerment. From ridiculous health & safety rules that cocoon and prevent risk taking, to the joy we take in running others down with our slightly pessimistic, underdog worldview. Time and again I hear people focus on the thing that didn't go so well rather than on the wonderful things that happened. The child gets a 'B' and is told “that's what happens when you don't work hard enough” instead of being praised for their achievement.


But it isn't just individuals who get disempowered so easily, As a leader, we go into a meeting looking at our watch. Later we say 'I really want to give time for you to give me feedback'. Then we wonder why no-one says anything, why later the group seems not to trust us...

Catherine
Yeah, it can work in church too. Disempowerment seeps out when it seems only the best do stuff. Others feel they are not able to do it like that and withdraw. Then the body loses out: A few end up working their butts off (often resenting it) while the rest feel unable to do anything! God sees us as a body, each with a part to play, not competing, but spurring each other on, learning from each other, working together, sharpening each other up.


David
It seems to me that we have a built in bias towards being disempowered. A thousand positive statements are undermined by the one negative comment... Mature people in every other way, suddenly back off, give up become demotivated through a misspoken word... So easy for anyone who has been given the right to speak into our lives – parents, spouse, close friends, those in authority – to say a word that kills rather than lifts up.

Jesus by contrast spent his time empowering people. Zaccheus, the world may call you small and mean. I call you to generosity and hospitality. Mary, the world calls you a demonised prostitute. I call you holy, beloved. Peter, the world derides you as an uneducated fisherman. I say you have rock-like faith on which I will build church.

Yet Jesus did this in the midst of words and actions that could so easily have disempowered him. Far from being an empowerer, he could so easily have become a condemner. Call yourself a prophet, you’re just a bastard from nowhere. Think you’re the messiah, you can’t even save yourself. You’re going to build a kingdom – even your closest friends are running away. But even when he was reviled, betrayed, he kept on empowering others. On the cross he commissions John.

So how does Jesus do it? Because he himself has first been empowered. After years of faithful service, believing God for who he was, as he presents himself in faith for baptism, he hears the Father’s words ‘This is my son in whom I am well pleased’. Empowered by those words of affirmation, he goes to the desert, faces the onslaught from the enemy then comes back it says ‘empowered by the Holy Spirit’

What about us? Do we disempower others, accidentally, deliberately, as a result of our own insecurity, our own disempowerment? Or do we consciously look for ways to empower and build up others, because we to have heard the Father’s voice in our life, confirming who we are in Him, attesting to his love for us? Words that allow us to brush off the disempowerment of those who should know and do better. 

Catherine & David
So here’s a challenge for us all this week. How about every time we are about to say something that might disempower, we invert it and say something that brings life? The waitress may have spilt the coffee. Don’t tell her she’s clumsy, say how much you appreciate the fact that she has taken on the role! The child may have taken too long to do something. Sit down and explain it, teach it, reassure the child that it’s ok, that it is loved, then encourage it to take the risk of trying again.

And add comments to the blog with your stories of how the world changed, how the kingdom broke in.

1 comment:

  1. An amazing post that's very relevant to our church. I may just borrow some of it if that's ok?!

    ReplyDelete