BLOG 7/11/17. A WORD OF EXPLANATION TO MY SUBSCRIBERS

BLOG 7/11/17. A WORD OF EXPLANATION TO MY SUBSCRIBERS

To the readers and the subscribers of these Blogs, you need to know that I will be taking something of a leave of absence for these next several months. For these past several years I have attempted to post a couple of blogs a week because that is what I was advised to do when we launched this Blog. For the next two or three months, however, I will post them only spasmodically.

Here’s the reason. A dear friend and colleague of mine, and I, are in the process of writing a book together, and I find that it takes my full and undivided concentration to do such creative writing (particularly at my age). He and I are aware that the research agencies (Pew and others) are indicating that the emerging generation, Generation Z, is really not into institutions, and that includes church institutions. They are more into friendships and relationships. They are also the iPhone generation.  This is all so different from the Christendom culture with its venerable institutions, hierarchies, clergy, and other ecclesiastical accoutrements that have prevailed for these past generations.

What we’re attempting to do is to take a step back, look with fresh eyes at what it is that God intends for the church to be, and what form it takes, and to do some creative re-conceiving of the church with a focus on that emerging adult generation. We’re collaborating on this because even though I have written a number of books on the church and its mission, I am also now at least sixty-plus years away from that emerging generation and its culture. My colleague, however, is a very gifted young educator, who is engaged with this emerging culture as a high school teacher in a very creative high school, and who also has two very precocious daughters to keep him honest. We make a good team and we inter-animate each other.

This re-conceiving the church for this emerging culture, while also appreciating the treasures of our heritage, is probably an audacious project, but we’re really into it, and it is all-consuming to be looking at scripture with this focusin mind. At the same time, when a writer gets ‘on a roll’ to be interrupted and have to stop and engage in another creative writing project (this Blog) hinders that ‘roll’. Because of that I am putting the Blog on the back-burner for a while, until we get this book in some draft form to submit to our publisher, hopefully by early fall.

We would also be grateful for your prayers so that this work of our will be hugely helpful to those who choose to read it. Thank you.

Bob Henderson

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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