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Empowerment

May 13, 2009 Print This Post

Yesterday, I posted a bit on the idea of Focus. Today, I want to reflect on Empowerment.

For focus to really work in an organization, it must be accompanied by empowerment. This is the example of the church in Jerusalem we looked at yesterday:

Acts 6:2 So the Twelve called a meeting of all the believers. They said, “We apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program. 3 And so, brothers, select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will give them this responsibility. 4 Then we apostles can spend our time in prayer and teaching the word.”

One man’s focus is another man’s empowerment. In this situation, the widows still needed to be fed. The Apostles didn’t just throw them to the wind–he empowered other leaders to take up the task.

This is one of the cool things about how Jesus set up his church. Christianity isn’t a “religion of the elite.” It’s not about one person or even a handful of people doing all the work, it’s the whole body taking care of itself. Each of us has a different role to play. And when we don’t play our role, the whole body suffers. We should each feel empowered to play our own specific part in the body.

Practically speaking, that can mean many things:

• Seeing a need and taking care of it
• Seeing an opportunity to serve and doing it
• Dreaming about a new way to reach the world and making it happen

And the cool thing is God has given us a vehicle to do this: the local church. Unfortunately, sometimes we feel like “the professional Christians” should be doing the work at the church, so we either do nothing or we head off and find another place to serve outside the church. Now at Riv we love to see people serving the world outside our doors–it’s a huge part of our mission. But at the same time, we are the most understaffed church our size in America. That means the need for volunteers to serve us greater here than anywhere else.

For those of you who are part of the Riv family, I want to challenge you to step up and find a place to serve. Click on this thumbnail to find just a few ways you can get involved: