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Scripture for this chapter
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
James 1:2-4 KJV
At a glance
The fledgling ministry faces its first real institutional growing pains.
Skepticism from well-meaning observers is treated as a normal cost of growth, not a sign to stop.
UECF.NET summary
Having committed to full-time work among New York's teenagers, Wilkerson confronts the practical difficulties of turning a personal mission into something sustainable: funding, staffing, and simple logistics that a single pastor with a car and a Bible had not needed to think about. The chapter shows the unglamorous machinery behind visible ministry — meetings, boards, budgets — as itself a test of faith and patience.
Opposition and skepticism, some of it well-meaning, continue from people who doubt that a formal organization is either necessary or wise. Wilkerson presses forward on the conviction that the work has outgrown what one person can carry alone.
Key points
- Institution-building is presented as a spiritually significant, not merely administrative, challenge.
- The chapter is candid about the limits of what one person, however dedicated, can sustain alone.
- Skepticism from well-meaning observers is treated as a normal cost of growth, not a sign to stop.
Related Scripture
For reflection and discussion
- What unglamorous, administrative work has God used to grow your own faith or a ministry you care about?
- When has a work you were part of outgrown what one person could sustain?
- How do you discern the difference between necessary growing pains and a sign you're on the wrong track?
This page is an original UECF.NET study companion. It does not reproduce any text from The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson (with John Sherrill and Elizabeth Sherrill), which remains under copyright. Read the full chapter in a legally available edition of the book — see Further Reading & Legal Editions — or borrow the original 1963 edition via Internet Archive’s Open Library controlled digital lending.