Persistence

Older folks struggle with the new progressive church and they continue to ask church leadership for compromise and to reinstate some traditional elements of worship — hymns, Sunday school, Sunday night worship, youth groups and children’s church. Even though their requests fall on deaf ears, it forces pastors to defend their personal direction for the church. The Parable of the Persistent Widow is applicable. Jesus said, “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming’” (Luke 18:2-5 NIV)!