“Empowerment” has become something of a catch phrase not only in businesses and other secular organizations, but in the church as well. We talk about being “empowering leaders” who call forth the best in others. We want people to “feel empowered” to exercise their gifts. We hope those with whom we work will “become empowered” as the result of our leadership. Recently, I came across this quote from Robert E. Quinn in Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within that changed my paradigm completely. "We do not, however, empower people. Empowerment cannot be delegated. We can only develop an appropriate empowering environment where people will have to take the initiative to empower themselves." This caught my attention. Empowerment is not something I do to someone else. Just as I cannot motivate another person to do something, I cannot empower that person to release his or her gifts. I cannot force them to be all that they ca...
Comments from a Christ-follower on things that matter to him