Facing Change Series: A Call for Patient Trust

In our Facing Change Series, we are turning to look at a challenges leaders and churches face as they engage the hard realities of change. One of the realities of the press of change is a temptation to move too quickly. The anxiety and urgency can lead us to move with haste.

Unfortunately, when our pace is dictated to us by our anxiety or the anxiety within our congregational system, we often slip into making poor decisions that lead to dysfunction and future challenges. In these anxious moments, we can be encouraged to “trust in the slow work of God.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ calls us to this slowing down in the poem, Patient Trust:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

As we receive registrations for the Community of Churches, we are looking forward to seeing God’s gradual formation in us as we engage in this two year journey together. We trust that in our patient trust the Lord will shape us as leaders and churches into healthier more mission focused communities.

If you’d like to join us on this journey, we invite you to complete the interest form found via the button below.

In Hope,

The Better Together Team