Good Things Take Time, so do Not Quit Too Soon (by David Faust)
As a lifelong baseball fan, I was curious to know what is the longest game ever played in Major League Baseball? There are two ways to calculate the answer. You can do it by the number of innings, in which case the longest game took place on May 1, 1920. The Brooklyn Robins and the Boston Braves played 26 innings until the game was called because of darkness with the score tied 1-1. By today’s standards, it’s amazing that both teams’ starting pitchers went the distance and pitched all 26 innings, allowing one run apiece. The other way is to calculate by the clock. This means the longest game in Major League history happened on May 8, 1984, when the Chicago White Sox defeated the Milwaukee Braves 7-6 in 25 innings. The game took eight hours and six minutes, and it was completed over two days. It was suspended after 17 innings at 1:00 a.m. with the score tied 3-3, and the teams played another eight innings the next day. Harold Baines finally ended the festivities with a walk-off home run to win it for Chicago in the bottom of the 25th inning. The longest continuous Major League game (by innings) where a winner was decided was a seven-hour, four-minute contest that ended at 3:13 a.m. on September 12, 1974. After St. Louis defeated the New York Mets 4-3, Cardinals’ player Joe Torre quipped, “That was the fastest 25-inning game I ever played.”
Some victories are slow to develop. You have to keep playing to the very end, even though you’re tired. It only takes a few minutes to drive through a fast-food restaurant, but it takes hours to prepare a Thanksgiving feast. It takes six months to cure a fine Virginia ham and several weeks to age a fine cheese. If you’re physically fit, you can easily run a mile; but if you want to run a marathon, you’ll need several weeks to prepare. Perseverance isn’t flashy, but it’s effective, and it’s an overlooked secret of church growth. H. Jackson Brown points out, “In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength but by perseverance.” A persistent leader who serves the church and the community faithfully for many years—through the good, the bad, and the ugly—builds layers of trust and relational equity. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins uses the example of the flywheel, which is hard to move at first, but if you keep pushing the flywheel in the same direction, eventually it begins to turn.
In churches and other organizations, a period of buildup can take years, but eventually there’s a breakthrough; and once things start to move, the momentum is hard to stop.
A preacher friend of mine retired after nearly 30 years of ministry with the same church—a rural congregation that’s over 150 years old. Over the years, that church made significant changes, baptized many new Christ-followers, remodeled and expanded their building, experienced consistent attendance increases, and gave more than 20 percent of their budget to missions. These accomplishments didn’t happen overnight; they took decades to achieve. A Danish proverb says, “He who would leap high must make a long run.” If you’re struggling to persevere as a church leader, here are three reminders:
- Ask God for patience. Make it a regular part of your prayers. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) so you can ask for it with confidence.
- Make incremental changes. Dramatic changes are seismic—sudden and earth shattering. More often, changes are glacial—slow and steady. If your church can’t take a giant step forward right now, what small steps will move you toward your long-term goals? Someone quipped, “Overnight success usually takes about 10 years.”
- Don’t assume your problems will go away if you serve in a different place. The grass may look greener, but when you actually get to the other side of the fence, you often find a lot of weeds. Elisabeth Elliot observed, “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”
There’s refreshment ahead. According to Exodus chapter 15, the Israelites celebrated when God led them out of Egypt, but immediately afterward they traveled through the desert for three days without finding water. Their spiritual high turned to a spiritual “dry.” When they finally found something to drink at a place called Marah, the water was so bitter it was undrinkable. (Marah means “bitter.”) While the thirsty crowd complained, Moses
“cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink” (Exodus 15:25). The weary travelers kept going, and soon
“they came to Elim where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water” (v. 27). If the Hebrews had quit too soon, they would have missed camping in a place that sounds like a Florida beach. It literally could be nicknamed Palm Springs! At Elim there were seventy palm trees and twelve springs—a freshwater source for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Scholars say that Marah, where the water was bitter, was only one day’s journey from Elim’s springs and palm trees. God led them from a bitter place to a better place.
When you feel dry and things look hopeless, don’t give up. God’s remedy may be just one day away. When the game goes into extra innings and you’re exhausted, keep playing till the end. Good things take time. Don’t quit too soon.
David Faust has served in ministry for 44 years. He has written or co-authored 17 books, and since 1996 he has written a weekly column for The Lookout magazine (now part of Christian Standard). Currently he serves as the Associate Minister at East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis and as a leadership advisor for Connection Pointe Christian Church in Brownsburg, Indiana.