Jean Vanier on Authority...

"The role of authority can only be understood if it is seen as one of the many gifts or ministries which we need to build a community. It is, of course, a very important gift, because the community's well being and growth depend to a great extent on the way it is exercised. But too often authority is seen as the only gift; the role of everyone else in the community is seen simply as obedience to it. This, however, is an industrial or military model of authority. In a community, authority needs to be exercised in a completely different way. The leaders do not have a monopoly on insights and gifts; their role on the contrary, is to help all the community's members to exercise their own gifts for the good of the whole. A community can only become a harmonious whole, with 'one heart, one soul, one spirit', if all its members are exercising their own gifts fully. If the model of their relationship to authority is worker to boss, or soldier to officer, then there is no understanding of what community means."