A Lesson from the Birds

Author: Mark Fenstermacher
February 04, 2022

One of the most amazing things in nature is the swarming of birds. It’s called “murmuration,” Susan Beaumont points out in her book How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going. I’m no expert in these sorts of things but it appears that fish do something similar when they are schooling: hundreds–if not thousands–move forward, up, down, and back as if following the directions of some unseen conductor.

Writing about how to lead in a world of sudden change and unpredictability, where many of the old answers and patterns no longer seem to work, Beaumont says there is a kind of collective wisdom that guides the birds. And, she suggests, that what is key for the church–and other organizations during those liminal seasons when the old has ended and the new has not yet come to pass–isn’t the wisdom of a single leader, pastor, or CEO but the collective wisdom of the group as we attend to the presence and leading of God.

When you think you have to invent the vision for the future, as a leader, it can lead to a sense of panic. However, when you know God is speaking and that we can–together–begin to hear what God is saying and where the Holy Spirit is leading, we experience joy, peace, hope, and courage.

Blackbirds swarm, dancing up and down against the backdrop of a setting sun, and somehow they know how to move together. The truth is that each bird seems to pick up signals from the others, and they–together–know where to head. Out of the chaos, a pattern emerges. This is true for us, as a congregation: if we will together listen and watch, a pattern will emerge. A path or vision will become obvious.

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Some of us–maybe you are one of these people–work very hard to do life on their own. They depend on their own wisdom and energy, and do everything they can to make it through life–the good and the bad, the easy and the hard–on their own.

The birds and the fish suggest, as does St. Paul in the quote from Romans near the conclusion of this article, that we can do better together. What would it take for you to do life in concert with others? What steps do you need to take to move from isolation to community?  When will you reconnect with others, with the family member you have avoided, or with the messy congregation of Jesus followers down the street?

Murmuration and schooling have at least one thing in common: flying together and swimming together is easier than fighting your own way through the air and water. There is, when fish swim side by side and birds fly near one another, an increase in lift. They help move one another along!

If you’re doing life on your own because you don’t want the hassle and mess that community brings, remember that life on your own takes more energy. It also means you may be missing out on the wisdom that God has for you that others are hearing or seeing. The birds and the fish somehow find their way together: alone they are more vulnerable and prone to lose their way.

One of our priorities this year, both as a church staff and as a lay leadership team, is to do our best to work together as a team. This year we will be making it a priority to break bread together as a leadership team, pray together, hear one another’s stories, together listen for the voice and way of God, and make decisions that we believe please God.

Paul writes (Romans 12:12): For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

If you tend to fly on your own, I invite you to do life with others. 

If you are a leader of a committee or a group in our church, let this be the year when we begin to move together in a prayerful, joyful, unified way. Let us not be not a collection of teams but a team of teams.

What patterns will we make against the sky that is this current moment in our life? What new truth will we see, what new ground will we cover, moving together as if guided by some unseen conductor?

Guided by the Spirit,
Mark Fenstermacher

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