What Does It Mean to Use Power Well

Ask most people where power sits and they will point somewhere else: a boss, a pastor, an elected official. This guide starts closer to home and has two tasks. First, you will find the power you already hold but have not been calling power. Then you will spend some of it, on purpose, on someone other than yourself before the week is out. The material comes from a Jude 3 Project panel on power with Latasha Morrison, founder of Be the Bridge; the author Rahel Tesfamariam; Bishop Charlie Haynes Jr.; Mike Kelsey, lead pastor at McLean Bible Church; and David Bailey, who moderated.

You can work through it alone in about an hour and come back to it seven days later. A group can split it across two meetings. The first meeting builds a power map and reads two passages of Scripture. The second hears how the practice went. By the end you should be able to name at least three places where your decisions shape someone else’s life, and you should have tried one deliberate act of putting that power to work for another person.

Before any definitions

Get a sheet of paper. Write down three decisions you made in the last seven days that changed something for another person. Keep them small and ordinary. Maybe you chose which coworker got the easier shift, or decided when your teenager could have the car. Maybe you answered one friend’s message and left another unanswered. Do not label any of them good or bad yet.

Now look at the three and ask a plain question. Did you think of any of them as power while you were doing it?

Most people did not. The panel helps explain why. Mike Kelsey said he did not want to start a conversation about power with oppression. He described power at its root as the capacity to “turn your will into reality.” He grounded that capacity in being made in the image of God, which means every person holds some of it, within a certain scope. Bishop Charlie Haynes Jr. offered a plainer definition: the ability to control or influence events, persons, situations or circumstances.

Hold either definition up against your three decisions. Each one turned your will into reality for someone else. If that is power, you have been using it all week without the word.

Draw the map you have not been drawing

Turn the paper over and make a column for each of these. Under each heading, write the names of real people affected by what you do.

• Decisions others must live with: schedules, rules, assignments, household choices.
• Time: whose requests you make room for and whose you put off.
• Money: what you pay for, give, lend or withhold.
• Knowledge: what you know how to do that someone near you does not.
• Access: rooms you can enter, people you can introduce, doors you could hold.
• Voice and attention: whose ideas you repeat, whose name you mention, who you notice.

Expect some columns to fill slowly. Before you write a column off as empty, ask whether it is empty or whether you assumed it was. Kelsey admitted the second mistake in his own life: “Sometimes we can feel stuck in a victim of certain circumstances.” He said his father-in-law kept reminding him that he had more agency to pursue a God-given dream than he had assumed. If a column looks bare, give it one more honest look.

Latasha Morrison’s experience in church settings calls for one change to the last column. She put it this way: “many of us, we have a seat at the table, but we don’t have a voice at the table.” So split the Voice column in two. On one side, list the places where you are present. On the other, list the places where what you say actually changes the outcome. The gap between the two sides is worth knowing. Morrison did not treat the seat as worthless. She resolved to use “the little power that I did have” as a director to push for change. A seat without much voice still belongs on the map, along with an honest note about how far it reaches.

Before you move on, add one more mark. Kelsey warned that people who were never taught how to hold power will copy whatever power was used on them: “whoever you do have some degree of power over, then you’ll just reflect what you’ve experienced.” Next to each column, write the name of the person whose use of that kind of power you learned from. Maybe that was a parent, a boss, a pastor or a coach. You are not judging them. You are noticing where your habits came from.

Read two passages slowly

Bishop Haynes pointed the panel to Psalm 24:1. Read it aloud.

The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

Psalm 24 is a worship song, and its claim is about ownership. The verse names two things the Lord owns: the earth with everything in it, and the people who live there. Look at your map again. Every name on it falls under the second half of that verse. You did not create the people your decisions affect, and you do not own them. You hold influence over them as a steward holds what belongs to someone else. Haynes drew the leadership conclusion directly: “one of the things that you have to do as a leader is to see yourself as an agent for the community and not for yourself.”

Now read John 13:3-4, the passage Kelsey called the most beautiful picture of power he knows.

Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.

Read it a second time and pay attention to the order of the clauses. First comes what Jesus knows: all things in his hands, his origin, his destination. Only then does the action begin. Kelsey put the point plainly: “So he knew the authority and power that he had.” You might expect that knowledge to lead to being served. Instead it leads to a towel and a basin of water.

Take a few minutes with three observation questions before you interpret anything. What does Jesus know about himself? What does he do with his hands? Who receives the benefit?

Then read on to John 13:14-15, where Jesus tells the disciples to do as he has done. Christians read that instruction in more than one faithful way. Some traditions practice foot washing literally, as an act the church repeats. Many others read it as a pattern of humble service that takes different forms in different settings. Try stating each reading in one sentence, in words its holders would accept. Then ask what this week’s practice would look like under each one. Does the literal reading add anything the pattern reading misses, such as physical nearness or a lowly task that cannot be delegated? Does the pattern reading reach places the literal one would not?

Whichever reading you favor, the passage holds the same order. Full awareness of authority comes first, and service follows from it. This is why you drew the map before anything else. You cannot deliberately spend what you refuse to count.

Test the map before you use it

Two honest objections deserve attention before the practice.

The first one: My map is short, and that is not because I am blind to my power. I really do not have much. The panel did not wave this away. Kelsey said people do not all have the same capacity to turn their will into reality, because systems and circumstances limit their agency. He called that a problem first of all for God himself. Rahel Tesfamariam named some of those conditions: drained mental capacity, missing financial resources, the lack of a nurturing environment. A short map may simply be accurate, and what is on it still deserves faithful use. Morrison also described a limit on how long she would stay. She gave a workplace about three years to change its culture, and she said that sometimes using your power means leaving.

The second objection runs the other way: If I start spending my power on other people, won’t I just end up running their lives? This is a real risk. Bishop Charlie Haynes Jr. drew a line for it: “there’s only two things that you can control, is your intention and your posture.” Morrison said the same about her own work: “I can’t control whether someone listens or not.” Spending power on someone means offering what you hold. It does not mean managing their response or deciding what their good must look like.

Put one more test to every column of your map. Rahel Tesfamariam gave it in a single sentence: “power is not about what your position does for you. It’s about what your position does for others.” Next to each column, write who mostly benefits from how you use it right now. Some columns will already point outward. Others will point back at you.

Morrison noticed that 2 Timothy 1:7 puts power and love side by side: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” She remembered that none of her grandmothers finished high school, yet she said “my grandmother had power because she had love.” The verse itself does not address motive. You can still turn Morrison’s observation into a question to ask of any act you plan: is love for this person driving it, or the wish to be seen helping?

The practice: spend one thing on purpose

Over the next seven days, carry out these steps once.

1. Choose one column from your map. Prefer one you had not counted as power before today, or one where you marked a borrowed pattern you do not want to repeat.
2. Choose one person from that column. Then find out what would actually help them. Where it fits, ask them directly instead of guessing.
3. Choose one concrete act that costs you something real. It might cost time, money, credit, convenience, or a seat you could have kept. Bishop Haynes described the pastor who shaped him. When a man got out of jail, that pastor would buy him a suit, give him work at the church, and set him up for school or a trade, and he did this for more than one person. Your act will probably be smaller, and that is fine.
4. Do it once before the week ends. Do not announce it, and do not wait for thanks.
5. At the end of the week, write down what it cost you, what surprised you, and whether the person got what they needed or only what you wanted to give.

If you are unsure which act to choose, lean toward one that hands power on instead of keeping it close. Rahel Tesfamariam said “passing on power to others is often the most powerful thing that we can do.” An introduction, a skill you teach, or a decision you let someone else make for the first time can all qualify.

If you are leading a group

Let everyone build their maps privately. In the first meeting, invite people to share one entry if they want to, and make it clear that passing is fine. Some maps include painful things, such as a workplace where someone feels powerless or a family where another person holds all the decisions. Nobody should have to put that on display. If you are leading, share first and share something modest. In the second meeting, ask how the practice went without ranking anyone’s act. Praising the most impressive story teaches people to perform their generosity, which defeats the purpose.

Questions for conversation

1. Which entry on your map surprised you most? What kept you from counting it as power before?
2. Kelsey warned that we tend to reflect the power we have experienced. Which inherited pattern do you want to keep, and which do you want to stop?
3. Look at your notes from this week’s act. Did knowing exactly what you held make the act easier or harder to do? What does that suggest about the order in John 13:3-4?
4. Where is the line between spending your power on someone and taking over choices that belong to them? How would you know you had crossed it?
5. Rahel Tesfamariam asked anyone seeking power, “Have you served anybody?” Think of someone who once spent their power on you. What did it cost them, and did you know about the cost at the time?
6. Suppose someone in your circle has a short map because of real constraints. What would it look like for people with longer maps to respond in a way that is not pity?

Back to the first page

When the week is done, find the sheet where you listed three decisions before you read any definitions. Read them again beside your map and your notes from the practice. Ask which of those decisions you would now call power, and whose good each one served. Then keep the map. Next month, choose a different column and a different person, and spend something again.