Practicing Christian Patience

Encouraging Community, Establishing Peace

• A fresh approach to church life and ecclesial health • Addresses the concerns of leadership in challenging times • Includes questions for reflection and study by individuals and groups Patience may be the least understood and least practiced of the Christian virtues—and yet patience may be the most important virtue to today’s church, the virtue that can underpin our most faithful longing. Building on a theological, biblical, and historical foundation, the author lays out a case for patience as a distinctly Christian practice. Patience subverts the cycle of crisis and fear that shapes so much of our culture. Patience understands that urgency and haste are hallmarks of the secular world, not the church. Patience and attending to the Other, whether divine or human, is a modern day cornerstone of justice, holding us together in a timeless bond. The author, a scholar and minister, has long wrestled with the notion that the church has to get out there and sell itself. In this book, he offers patience as an alternative way to address current issues and church growth.