“Love is patient.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4 

Every once in a while, or maybe more than once in a while, small group leaders can expect students to challenge their patience. It is easy enough for students to seem exasperating and frustrating, unable or unwilling to behave reasonably, or answer a direct question, or stop interrupting other people when they are speaking. It is easy to become impatient with students. It is harder to be patient with them. It is hard to love well. 

How can leaders cultivate patience? Certainly, one of the first steps is to recognize the lack of patience. If leaders are going to improve their impatience, they must understand why they are impatient. 

The Source of Impatience

Why do leaders become impatient? It cannot be because of the students alone, because not every leader reacts the same. Some leaders are more patient than others, and some leaders find certain kinds of students more frustrating than others. That tells us that the cause of impatience is not only the students, but also the leaders. The most that can be said about the students is that they provide the occasion for impatience; they do not cause the impatience itself. The distinction is important because leaders, like the rest of us, tend to blame our negative reactions on circumstances. But God's Word is clear that we are not machines. Circumstances are not merely inputs and our reactions merely outputs. We make choices. We choose what to think. We cultivate desires and expectations. Even while impatience comes, we either indulge our anger or we strive against it.

If we consider impatience from the angle of the leader’s heart, the task of understanding impatience, and from there taking steps to avoid it, becomes simpler. The very notion of impatience implies a testing, or straining, or a stress. If something that is happening requires patience, it means that you must wait for something. It could be something bad that is happening now that you hope will end, or it could refer to something good that isn’t happening now but you want it to. In any case, there is a sense of expectation attached to what is going on.

The sense of expectation is important. When we experience impatience in our hearts, we are in the process of discovering an expectation that is unmet. There is something happening or not happening that represents slow movement toward a goal or some kind of movement away from it. When leaders get impatient at students, it inevitably means that an expectation is not being met, whatever it is. In general, then, leaders do well to manage their expectations. It can be a choice that leaders make: if they have high expectations, then they will have low tolerance. On the other hand, if leaders have low expectations, they will have high tolerance. It is not necessarily that either is wrong or right. It is a question of wisdom. If leaders want to have high expectations, they need to make sure that they also have reasonable expectations of the students. It is no good to expect unbelievers to be interested in understanding and applying a sermon to their lives. By the same token, it does no good to expect young believers to talk and behave like believers who have been walking with the Lord for fifty years. Having high expectations is not the same thing as having unrealistic expectations. What is high may be too high, but what is low may also be too low. 

Cultivating Patience

Leaders can cultivate patience by cultivating understanding of the students and estimating what kinds of expectations push them to improve and mature without requiring leaps and bounds that are unlikely to occur. How do leaders do this? I think that one mistake that we leaders make is to be content to be more familiar with what we think is right than with how well we understand our students. The mistake is in thinking that knowing what is right is sufficient. It is not. I think, but do not know, that the reason we tend to do that is that we intuitively orient ourselves to what is right, so we jump to the conclusion that knowing what is right is enough. With the students, however, the mistake becomes clearer. Whereas leaders know what is right and also have an idea of where they are in relation to it, with respect to the students, leaders only know what is right without knowing where the students are in relation to it. It is a rather dreadful mistake to assume that you know a student’s heart, or to think that knowing the student’s heart is irrelevant.

Seeking to understand the students, then, becomes a means of cultivating patience with them. Think of it this way: say you arrive at the church building and need some help to carry things inside. You see a student nearby and ask for help. The student gives no answer, but you expect him to help. He starts to come toward you, but slowly. You grow impatient as you try to gather your things. You dart a glance at the student, who is coming, but still slowly, maybe even too slowly to help. Your frustration grows. Finally, the student arrives, but you have already done most of the work to gather your things. You are about to say something sharp to the student when you see that the student is wearing an orthopedic boot on one leg and has one arm in a sling. The student’s slow movement was due to the boot, but now you see that even if he could have gotten to you faster, he would only have one good arm to help you carry things. Your frustration disappears and is replaced by compassion for the student. You would not have become so frustrated if you knew the student was hurt. You likely wouldn’t have asked for help at all. On top of that, you also notice the student is wearing earbuds that you can only see up close! The student never even heard you ask for help. He saw you and came ambling toward you, blissfully unaware of your frustration.

The point of the above parable is that the better you understand how weak and immature students are, the less frustrated you will be at their inability to carry on a productive conversation. There are certainly things that students do that are wrong. They are a bundle of sinfulness, weakness, and ignorance. When you think they know better than they do, and are stronger than they are, and have reached levels of godliness that they haven’t reached, you are setting yourself up to be disappointed. It is far better to have a disposition of curiosity. Each student is unique, so take the time to get to know each one, and let them reveal themselves to you as best they can and are willing over time. Curiosity about who they are makes what might have been frustrating interesting instead. Instead of repelling you, it encourages you to find out more. There’s little more useful than that for being a small group leader. On top of that, being curious about who they are is one of the best ways to show them that you love them, not the idea you have of them.

Conclusion

Most leaders can expect to experience frustration at some point in leading a small group of students. Just like students are sinful, weak, and ignorant, so is each leader in his or her own way. Understanding what expectations are failing to be met is helpful for the leader to understand where the impatience comes from and how reasonable or unreasonable it is to be frustrated. On the other hand, cultivating patience with students is best done through making a point of understanding them as well as possible. The better leaders understand students, the better they will know how to lead them, and in that way love them.