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            One of the nagging questions facing leaders is how long can the mess be endured before it becomes a major infection.  Love, after all, is long-suffering.  Indeed it is.  But love is not long-suffering and foolish.  Love is not overindulgent.  Love is not a failure of nerve.  Love suffers long so that something new can be erected out of the old.  Yet love does not suffer long because it is anxious about naming and confronting the violation.  Love doesn’t put up with harmful boundary intrusion, because it would agitate the community’s peace.  Long-suffering love is about doing away with suffering that issues from the harm of others, not being an accomplice to the harmful invasion.

Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times, Peter L. Steinke, page 94