Our Leader is Instinct
When I think about church leadership, I like the concept of parents. It remains very relational and organic…and it reminds me of the language in the New Testament (God = Father) (Paul describes himself as a “mother” to his churches).
However, I’ve been wondering about power and leadership and how it becomes consolidated over time. We all know parents who abuse their power, (hopefully not as many as there are parents who love and nurture their kids).
Lately, I’ve been thinking about rotating leadership. Much like a V-Formation (sometimes called “skein”) in migratory birds – the front bird gets assaulted with major turbulence, and must rotate out with another bird every so often to fly faster and longer than they could alone!
What I love about this image is that EVERY bird knows which direction they need to go.
There is leadership…but no permanent leader…except the “instinct” in all of them to fly north. When one gets tired, the others know exactly what to do and where to go, and help him out of the most dangerous position to find a place of rest in the back of the flock.
My own push-backs on the metaphor…
Is this irresponsible to the “youngest” in the family? How can a family “rotate” parenthood? …and wouldn’t we as a church have to be GOING somewhere? (as in, some churches are sitting on their duffs!)
From Wikipedia’s “V-Formation” entry:
The V formation greatly boosts the efficiency and range of flying birds, particularly over long migratory routes. All the birds except the first fly in the upwash from the wingtip vortices of the bird ahead. The upwash assists each bird in supporting its own weight in flight, in the same way a glider can climb or maintain height indefinitely in rising air. In a V formation of 25 members, each bird can achieve a reduction of induced drag by up to 65% and as a result increase their range by 71%. The birds flying at the tips and at the front are rotated in a timely cyclical fashion to spread flight fatigue equally among the flock members. The formation also makes communication easier and allows the birds to maintain visual contact with each other.
Chad, 
Jesse Cox 1:57 pm on April 10, 2010 Permalink
I think this metaphor misses it in many ways. We are not a flock of birds, alone in our journey, with only our instinct to guide us. Instinct, I think, has little to do with church leadership. We have almost 2k years of the Church, thousands (tens, hundreds of thousands?) of saints, the writings of the church, and of course the Scriptures to guide us. Instinct, if we indeed have anything like it, usually takes us away from God. When we do see “instinct” in someone that leads them towards God, it is a finely honed, disciplined, practiced walk with God, rather than something we all as Christians possess.
Another way this misses the mark is that not all of us want to be leaders, at least not in the perhaps worldly way that we tend to think of leadership. I have some experience with that: in our church in Seattle we attempted a very democratic way of organizing our Sunday liturgy -EVERYBODY was expected to take a turn at planning it. Unfortunately, not everyone was good at it and some that were were not interested in doing it. It just didn’t work out.
Where this metaphor is valid though is when we put leadership in its proper context: the “leader” as we tend to think of him/her should be perhaps the least important person in the church. In this way everyone “gets their turn”: the children lead, the humble lead, the weak lead, the skilled lead, the “leader” leads, but everyone serves. Everyone must submit to each other. The church is not just a spiritual body – it is also a physical body and even worldly, in a way of thinking. However, we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that this worldly face is worth anything, that “leadership” is worth anything, or that it is actually the whole of the church. If we ignore the leadership of the humble the church will be an empty shell, no matter if it looks like it is going somewhere or not.
Mark 9:26 am on April 14, 2010 Permalink
Jesse,
It took a few days for me to get back to this comment, just because I think it raises an important point.
Yes, birds fly with instinct, but the metaphor translates to the church when “instinct” becomes the Holy Spirit – filtered through the whole counsel of God. I agree that history, hagiography, theology, philosophy… “communities of informed judgment” as I’ve called them elsewhere in this blog – are brought to bear their very best wisdom and gifts to the community.
Much like 1 Cor 14:26 – “When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell a special revelation… etc” this is what I’m thinking of when I say “shared” leadership.
And not just leadership in our gathering for worship – I think our church VISION should come from a collaboration of folks in the community.
This is not the same as a “democracy” we are in a theocracy – a King who is God is our leader – the rest of us are just a few steps behind…and no one is ever the sole-proprietor of God’s voice or instructions for where to go next.
Keep pushing on this with me if ya like – I love this kind of learning…
Nathan 7:15 pm on April 17, 2010 Permalink
Mark, I like this a lot. The idea that there is a rotation works really well if leadership is understood to be among peers. Leadership in the home is different because its symbiotic. I and my wife were part of the birthing process for God to bring our child into the world and are responsible thus to provide an environment that treats parenting as a stewardship of our relationship to our child, not a leadership position. Parenting requires leadership like a house requires walls. So parenting isn’t leadership, it just requires leadership to be done and there is no use comparing or separating them. What parenting doesn’t require but actually should be – is stewardship. Parents don’t have to think like or be stewards to be parent their children but they do have to be leaders, its inherent to the process. So stewardship is the challenge.
The connection for me is that new birth requires leadership. The kind of leadership that you are talking about is leadership shared among peers who, generally speaking, are at very similar levels of competence, maturity and communicated investment. I love the idea of a 12 year old leading a Bible study, as long as they understand that they are doing so with encouragement and “leadership” from a group of people who represent the flock of birds responsible for rotating the front lead. Over exposure to leadership responsibilities for those not ready or seasoned can lead to immense damage or debilitating pride.
So it seems that it is better to have a group of leaders sharing the front who represent different ilks of influence, gifting and personality. They all can provide an environment where those that are birthed and/or are maturing can grow in praxis and conviction. At the end of the day it does take a group of people to determine who is growing, how they can help them grow and at what stage of growth or need for birth they are at. Whoever ends up doing this will be by default – the leaders. They should represent a variety of influences and giftings and experiences as much as possible. Regardless, whomever ends up evaluating those that are growing and providing the environment for growth and maturity to take place – they are the leaders and the others aren’t.
The point though for leaders is to not be leaders from a desire for power but from a desire to ultimately empower others through their self designed disempowerment as they transfer power and decision making to increasingly competent and maturing individual and communities. (This is all very ideal – but that is the nature of theory)
I think what you’re getting at, is that at whatever point a community is at in that process different members of the leading community need to be the “point person” and take the helm. After they’ve taken the helm for whatever project or period of time that they were needed, they then give up the “point person” positioning as a reflection of how they need to be growing in health and encouraging the community to grow in health. this is done by leaders making space for other leaders to lead and by “making sheep into shepherds” as they mature. The leaders are ultimately supposed to work themselves out of a job continuously in order to reflect health, accountability,.proper pedagogy and continual community transformation. Leadership is then a paradox – Leaders are people who work themselves out of leadership continuously in order to empower others, thereby solidly establishing their identity as leaders and hence their leadership.
I like your idea as well, because the birds are from Canada.
Mark 10:23 am on April 18, 2010 Permalink
You know Nathan, this reminds me of a parent helping a child learn how to tie his shoe. The truth is, if the parent wanted complete control of the child, the parent would never teach the kid how to tie the shoe, thus keeping the child dependent on the parent forever. And truth be told, its easier just to tie the dang shoe, than to take the time to stop, take about two weeks of intense training, laying one lace over the other making a bow, etc…
But any parent will tell you that a chunk of time invested in teaching a child to tie his own shoe will save the parent many countless hours later on in life. The control must be passed from the parent to the child. If leadership remains in the hands of one leader, then the shoe metaphor says that the family will never walk farther than the leader will let them go. Control and power must be passed around – because one day, when the parent is weak and paralyzed with old age, the child will be tying the shoes of the parent.
Nathan Smith 1:21 am on April 19, 2010 Permalink
Cool continuation Mark! Teaching a man how to fish starts when he’s a child. What would you say to the idea empowering leaders who are in the same age bracket and life experience as you but because of circumstances or historical hardships have been held back in their ability to mature in certain areas of life, practice or propriety?
I’m thinking of post-colonialism – the leadership (albeit that it sucked and was imperialistic) of the colonial era was static until it was removed. The removal was so swift and many times so pervasive that the leadership vacuum in many of these countries was more like a leadership black hole that swallowed them up. Only now are some of these countries pulling themselves out of the ruin, civil unrest and tragedy of post colonial vacancies and tragedies. Many were expected to operate within systems created by the Western imperialists immediately upon the exiting of the Western colonialists which left them in a state of shock. The same thing was true after slavery was outlawed here in the US. Those transitions were so upending that they essentially forced a global “revolution” upon each of the countries that they left behind. We bemoan other “revolutions” that took place but colonialism created violent “revolutions” all over the world in less than 20 years by just leaving countries behind to figure things out on their own without little to no transition time.
Just wondered what your thoughts were on that stuff. In your opinion, how should leaders be empowered who are in this frame of mind? The reason I ask, is that when an older individual finds Christ, though they are a new birth spiritually, their age allows them to perceive their faith from a somewhat “spiritual post-colonialism” especially if they are the same age as us or older. The organic process is much more straight forward when the spiritual growth can somewhat match the natural humanistic growth of the individual. I’ve often wondered how to work with those who are older when they come to faith and it seems that their process mirrors more of the post-colonial mind-scape. Thoughts?
Chad 12:28 am on May 6, 2010 Permalink
The flying v may be better metaphor (instinct, etc), but your reflection also made me think of drafting in cycling, sharing the burden, increasing overall speed, etc. The peleton has many interesting dynamics…I’ll leave thAt for another time when not on a cell phone. Fly on. Blessings
Mark 7:31 am on May 6, 2010 Permalink
Fly on yourself Chad! Hope things are going well for you brother! What’s the latest? Send me an email when you’re not on your cell phone.