Two scenarios.

1.  Becky and I attended a Bible conference a few weeks ago.  1,500 people packed the room to hear the well-known speakers.  We arrived early enough to find some good seats down front. With 15 minutes or more before the program was scheduled to begin, the auditorium buzzed with the sound of casual conversation among the conference goers. The people behind us – four or five together, it seemed – were especially talkative, and that was fine.  But, yes, I learned more than I cared to know about their families and friends, their opinions on the state of the world, and their disappointment with their new pastor.  Finally, the host of the conference came to the podium to welcome the crowd and tell us about the many books our speakers had written. The room immediately grew silent. Except for the people behind us. They kept on talking.  Not a last word or to finish a sentence, but paragraphs to finish a chapter about their families and friends, their opinions on the state of the world, and their disappointment with their new pastor. It’s not so much that I really wanted to hear the conference announcements or needed to know the titles of the many books our speakers had written, I just did not want to hear any more of the conversation behind us.  If 1,495 people were able to silence themselves, why not these 5?
2. I am out in the early morning light.  I hear the sound of their coming before I see them.  Squawking and the beating of a thousand or more wings flapping. I think they are starlings (though I know very little about birds).  They fly over and then, en masse, maybe 1,500 of them, they light at the top of the trees in a grove just on the other side of our neighborhood.  Within a second or two they are silent.  The squawking ceases and early morning silence descends on the neighborhood.  I don’t know why the birds quiet themselves so quickly.  Is it some sort of Darwinian instinct to ensure their survival?  Are starlings innately polite and want to be sure all the members of the flock hear whatever announcements are to be made that morning? Is their lead bird some authoritarian figure whose demand of silence on the treetops they dare not disobey? Or do they respect their good starling leader and their starling tradition of treetop silence?

I wonder why we  twenty-first century humans are less able to act (and keep silence) for the common good than the early morning sparlings in our neighborhood are. Maybe we have no Darwinian instinct for courtesy or, as some have suggested, it may be that we live in a time when all leadership, including good leadership, is mistrusted.  It certainly has something to do with our worship of self.

There is a difference between authoritative leadership and authoritarian leadership, the former a stewardship of a God-given necessity, the latter an abuse of that same gift.  The church has belatedly begun – and tragically incompletely – to call out the abuses of the authoritarians in her midst.  It is not as if abusive leaders are something new.  The prophet Ezekiel roundly condemns the false shepherds of Israel for their greed and injustice. Jesus calls the authoritarian and abusive leaders of his time thieves and robbers.

Yes, we live in a time when all leaders are mistrusted, and whether in politics or in the church, too many leaders have forfeited any right to our trust.  But not all leaders are abusive.  Some leaders are good stewards of a necessary gift God has given all of humankind.  They deserve our respect and our obedience.  And all of us need to remember to quit squawking when our good leaders are talking.