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When I launched this podcast in December of 2023, I said that I wanted to do so because I’d heard great stuff in the 40 plus interviews I conducted in preparing to write Redeeming Power: Exercising the Gift as God Intended. And I wanted to share some of that great stuff with you. So often power is associated with oppression, domination, even violence. People who hold power are presumed to be oblivious, dangerous, corrupt, abusive. And with good cause. There certainly are many people in this world with power who have done some pretty terrible things… and continue to do so. They are boastful, out of contact with reality, believe that laws that govern right relationship with others have nothing to do with them. I’m sure you don’t need to search far to find the kinds of leaders I’m talking about here.
But what I wanted to make sure you got a chance to hear is that not all leaders can be described as such. Over and over again in these interviews, I met people who were quite aware of the power that they had and were extremely reflective about the ways that they were using it. I have come to believe that there is such a thing as the holy exercise of power. It is not easy. No one has perfected the art. But there are lots of good people out there trying.
It has not been possible here in these two seasons to share all of the interviews I did—only just over half. Sometimes the reason an interview is missing is because their life has changed so much in the last two years that it felt like the stories they offered then wouldn’t be the same stories they might offer now. Sometimes it has been because the interview was very personal and information was shared that wouldn’t be appropriate to share publicly. Quite frankly, however, lots of the time it was because of me and my lack of skill as using the technology well. Either I only remembered to hit “record” half way through the interview, or there was something muffling a microphone, etc. I did warn you in the opening of this podcast series that this was an exercise in incompetence for me!
The fact that I’ve had anything to share at all is thanks to one very special person in my life: my son Micah Garrido who is a professional sound engineer in Los Angeles and did an amazing job stitching together shreds of audio into something that sounded coherent. Micah is the only person who listened to the audio from the interviews more than I did. He also is 29, and I thought that as a way of wrapping up this project, it would be fun to interview him about what he heard as the youngest person in the whole mix.