“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience” -Galatians 5:22

One of the keys to being successful in life – in family, business, leadership, etc., is patience. It’s not often a characteristic that is highlighted about people but it is an essential part of being effective in life. Next week (Tuesday, Sept 1) we as a church are hosting our first ever golf tournament to raise $200,000 for enslaved Dalit children in India – to give them a hope and future. We are excited about it. We have had to open up a second golf course for this event because of the amount of businesses and people wanting to be a part of it! Here is the amazing thing. The first time the idea came across my desk was fall 2013. Two guys from our church came into a room with a full presentation about what it all could look like and how we could do it. Seed planted. But it wasn’t the right time.

We needed to let it sit and germinate. We needed more team members who knew what they were doing, the church was focused on other things at the time, etc., So we put it on the shelf and let it mature.

Patience. It makes things better than they would have been.

+ God spoke to me very clearly about planting a church in April, 2007. We didn’t start Village Church until January 2010, and we weren’t an autonomous church until 2014!

+ We were without a second full time Pastor until we were a church of 1200 people, and even now we have far less Pastors compared to almost every other church our size. We are constantly looking and adding, and evolving as a leadership team, but the reason for the slow addition is because we want to hire the right people. Every time. That sounds idealistic, but that’s okay. Because if you have patience, you can make it a reality.

It may mean we can’t add a plethora of ministries as quickly as we would like. It may mean we have to stretch our hours a bit here and there, or not do it quite as well as we could, but that’s okay, we just won’t do it, or we will do it at the best level we can until that time comes.

+ All the business owners I know have patience to ride out the hard times. The times they made that bad call. The hard years where money was sparse and their marriage was getting tougher. The time they couldn’t find a good manager. The time they bought something at a low price to sell it at a higher one but had to hold on to it for 5 years until that time came.

Patience. In a culture of now it grows us.

When a business, or church, or leader lacks patience, they try to force things to happen, and that is never good. I don’t play many sports, so I don’t use many sports analogies in my writing or preaching, but humor me. There are two games I do know: golf and poker (don’t ask me why I know a lot about the second one). In both games, if a player doesn’t have patience and allow things to come to him or her a bit, they start to force stuff. They get behind in a hand, or a few strokes behind the leader and try to force a shot or bluff at the wrong time – and it usually goes bad. Every great player talks about letting a tournament or a round, etc., come to them, and not forcing it. It usually happens when we are behind. We try to manufacture stuff, and it doesn’t work.

The Apostle Paul knew what he was talking about when he said one of the things the fruit of the Spirit brings about in our life is patience. In a culture of now! we have to be people who often times slowly and methodically keep moving forward. Today may be an awful day, but don’t give up. Have a long term view of life. Meaning isn’t found in the next 15 minutes, but in the next 60 years.

I met with a young Pastor a short time ago, who wanted to start a church. I assumed he was coming to us so he could intern for a few years as he was quite young and had almost no experience in church ministry. I asked him how many times he had preached. “Five” he said. “Five times?!” I said. “Yes.” “Would it surprise you if I told you I didn’t plant a church until i had preached every Sunday in front of a university crowd for five years? You aren’t ready.”

He may be ready in three years. Maybe ten. I don’t know. The question is: does he have the patience to find out or will he force it?