*NOTE: This audio file was not professionally recorded. It was captured and graciously shared by an attendee. It is a powerful prophetic message that Jessie was encouraged to share with a broader audience.

It was not until the summer of 2020 that I began asking God what he thought about power. 

As a pentecostal and person in the church planting world, conversations about power were not new to me. Power is something we often talk about in our missional conversations, but we talk about it like a commodity. We talk about gaining power, moving in power, working with power brokers. Yet rarely do we look at ourselves and ask if we are thinking about power the same way God does.

It is time for us to interrogate our power paradigms. The younger generations certainly are; it is part of what they are deconstructing. But it is hard for us because we are enmeshed in the power dynamics we know. They are the waters we swim in. It takes outsiders to help us see them. They are conversations about being more multicultural. There are desires to have small groups and calls for greater accountability. But these alone will not help us look more like Jesus. We need a heart change and a paradigm shift about power.

We can be more diverse, we can have better systems, but if we don’t decolonize our power ideologies, we will use different people and different systems for the same ends – to draw power to ourselves. As the classic song goes, “new boss, same as the old boss.” We can make disciple-makers, or we can consolidate power. But we can’t do both.

In truth, we have searched for and gathered power as if it were the treasure hidden in the field. And this search has led us farther away from the Kingdom of God and the bride Jesus intends us to be. We must learn how God thinks about power. We must learn to be a conduit of heaven’s power, not a source or an end. This means we need to become more comfortable with powerlessness and learn how to rest there – right next to God.