Welcome to

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Your first words & thoughts...Empowering

God’s first words & thoughts...Empowering

Enabling young people to become the people whom God created them

to be.

Definition...

• Empowerment is a social-action process that promotes participation of people, organizations, and communities towards the goals of increased individual and community control, political efficacy, improved quality of community life, and social justice.

• (Wallerstein, 1992: 1, in Innovation in Youth Work by YMCA George Williams College, available on the Portal)

Empowerment

• Kerry Young: ‘For empowerment lies not only in the establishment of power-sharing structures or processes but importantly in the reclaiming of oneself as fully intelligent, fully powerful and fully human.’ (p4)

‘Fully intelligent, powerful & human’

• Made in the image of God – Gen 1:27

• Given authority and power to reign over creation – Gen 1:28-31; John 19:11

• Having appropriate boundaries & structures Gen 2:15-17

1) Create opportunities for young people to speak of their theological ideas concerning worship and other areas of Christian life and to give their voices power.

2) Providing them with the language and experience from which they are enabled to speak.

But how?

Steven Emery-Wright Empowering Young People in Church www.grovebooks.co.uk

St John’sEmpowerment

Rachael Evans

• From St Alban’s Church, Wickersley

• Committed Christian family• Attended Unite aged 14 in July

2009• Became Unite young leader in

March 2011• Active member of PCC

Empowerment

• Took over CU at Wickersley Secondary School• CU organised shoebox appeal in school• Wickersley collected (and filled!) more

shoeboxes than any other school in Rotherham

Empowerment

Group Activity

1) Design a mind-map with ways you’ve been empowered – when, how, impact on you.

2) Identify a young person you would like to empower. As a group, brainstorm ways of how you could empower them over the next 6-12 months.

Empowerment