The Golden Thread: Church Unity Through the Eyes of a Birder
Kevin Burrell
4 min read ⭑
If you’ve observed a tight-knit flock of birds racing overhead and asked yourself, “How come they don’t hit each other?” or “Which one’s in charge anyway?” you’re not alone in your questions.
How do birds coordinate themselves into a united, tightly choreographed unit?
Theologians should ask the same question. Could the forces that hold a flock together also be a living metaphor for the unseen forces that hold God’s church together? Consider how Paul describes the two beautiful realities of union with Christ and unity among believers. Simply put, we are meaningfully connected to the Savior, and because of that, we’re also meaningfully connected to the saved — something we confess in the Apostles’ Creed when we speak of “the communion of saints.” That invisible connection is tough for us to get our heads wrapped around, but when I try to picture the phenomenon, it’s flocks of birds that come to mind.
Aedan Peterson
For instance, consider the Chimney Swift. This bird isn’t much to look at: dull-brown and blunt, reminiscent of a cigar strapped to a boomerang. But given sufficient numbers, this bird will take your breath away. Along their fall migration, they roost in chimneys by the thousands, waiting until dusk to begin flapping in a chaotic cloud that slowly forms into a unified clockwise arc. As more and more birds join the invisible circular track, they create what my kids have perfectly described as a “birdnado.” It’s stunning.
Or take the European Starling. At a glance, it’s just an unassuming short-tailed black bird. But in large groups, they perform a show so beautifully unique it deserves its own word: murmuration — named for the sound of thousands of wingbeats thrumming in unison, something that Annie Dillard described as “a sound of beaten air, like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff.” The flock hovers in tight formation with graceful, almost instantaneous changes of direction, even giving the appearance of a collective mind.
The Golden Thread
Both swifts and starlings, run-of-the-mill creatures in isolation, find their beauty by coming together. Perhaps the swifts’ funnel cloud and the starlings’ pulsing sky jazz are lessons in the nature of the church’s unity described in Philippians 1:27:
Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel.
Paul’s picture of a healthy church community was one of unity: “Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind” (Philippians 2:2). Grace reshapes the way we connect. And so what does it look like to live like the gospel is worthy? Live unified. In fact, live who you already are. Let me explain.
Picture your Sunday morning gathering for a moment. Perhaps you attend a glitzy church full of impressively glamorous people. But it’s far more likely the saints assembled in your church possess a swift-and-starling commonness: a congregated cross section of average Joes and plain Janes — what C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape referred to as “neighbours [who] sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes.” As you look around the room, you’re beholding what theologians have historically called the visible church — the church as observed by the naked human eye, a gathering of those who profess belief. (Whether or not they possess what they profess, only God knows.)
“Listen carefully and you may hear the murmuring wingbeats of the saints.”
So here’s the challenge for us. The visible church is the church as we experience it, but it’s not the full picture of what the church truly is. We might be tempted to look around on a Sunday morning and feel (to be frank) under-impressed. Even the hippest churches with the trendiest music and tastiest fair-trade coffee still bear little resemblance to a heavenly army arrayed in all its splendor. Amid all those squeaky boots and double chins, where’s this so-called power that the gates of hell can’t stand against?
But let me ask you to stretch your imagination to picture that same Sunday gathering from the perspective of heaven. With the veil lifted, you would realize that you sit among immortals, cohesively unified (even when they don’t act like it) because Christ is the head that holds every cell of the body together. A bond unites you to them, and them to each other. For the sake of your imagination, picture that bond as a thin golden thread. It’s not a thread of your own making but a picture of what Jesus is making us, and it means that if you’re united to Christ, you are by definition (whether you like it or not) tangibly united to these other true believers around you, as you sing songs and break bread and drink that fair-trade coffee in the foyer. The threads interlace the room — the “blessed tie” we sing about that “binds our hearts in Christian love.”
But don’t stop there. Now picture that golden thread continuing out the sanctuary door, down streets and sidewalks, to knit with other believers in your community — many of them gathering in their own church sanctuaries, others worshipping in isolation at home, still others serving their community in works of necessity and mercy.
Keep going. The thread spans borders and oceans to cast a net over hope-filled believers everywhere, connecting you to ordinary saints of different languages, cultures and settings, unified by the same Christ.
And as if that’s not beautiful enough, don’t forget the fourth dimension; the thread also weaves backward in time, connecting the saints of today with those who have gone before us. It weaves forward as well, through new generations yet unborn.
Every believer in that golden-threaded web (if I may now change the metaphor) is circling the chimney of that great white throne, until the moment our Savior beckons us into his rest.
Your Sunday morning gathering of everyday people may seem ordinary in isolation, but the invisible realities that hold it together are astounding. This is the invisible church. Listen carefully and you may hear the murmuring wingbeats of the saints.
Kevin Burrell is the co-lead Pastor of StoneBridge Church Community in Charlotte, North Carolina. An avid birder, Kevin’s pastoral heart and avian interests united with the formation of his blog, Ornitheology, where he utilizes birds as illustrations of the Christian life.
Taken from Considering Sparrows by Kevin Burrell. Copyright © 2026. Used by permission of Multnomah, an imprint of Penguin Random House Christian Publishing .
