Origins of Personal and Social Power

Today we're speaking with someone who never thought she could be a leader until she discovered she was called to be a leadership expert, disrupting and healing patterns of Christian leadership.

My guest has a refreshing and hard-won take on leadership that focuses on the way we use our physical selves in space in order to assert or share power. Where does power come from? Why do some people just walk in a room and seem to have "the it factor"? What do you do if you have it? What if you don't? Is it OK to tell a garrulous person in a staff meeting to stop talking? Whether you have a lot of natural influence or not, our guest says, power is our God-given birthright to steward, and how we use it starts with the body.

The Rev. Dr. MaryKate Morse is Executive Dean of the Portland Seminary of George Fox University and lead mentor for the Leadership and Spiritual Formation D.Min. track. She has taught for nearly 30 years in New Testament Greek, spiritual formation, leadership, and organizational change and serves as a spiritual director for evangelists and church planters. She's the author of Lifelong Leadership: Woven Together through Mentoring Communities; Making Room for Leadership: Power, Space, and Influence; and A Guidebook to Prayer: Twenty-Four Ways to Walk with God, as well as various other writing projects.

Check out Living Church Books.

Check out MaryKate's book, Making Room for Leadership.