Author Archives: rthenderson

BLOG: 8/17/14. HAS THE CHURCH MISSED THE POINT OF BEING A PRIEST? OK, allow me to be my contrarian self—but I struggle with the whole idea of a ‘priesthood/clergy’ category of Christian discipleship. So help me, I scour the New … Continue reading →

BLOG 8/13/14. BI-POLAR DISORDER: ROBIN WILLIAMS AND WILLIAM COWPER The distressing report of the death by suicide of actor-comedian Robin Williams is a sobering reminder of how non-selective is this mental illness. Having been friend and pastor to a few … Continue reading →

8/10/14. BLOG: WE WHO ARE COLONIES OF GOD’S NEW HUMANITY ARE ALWAYS IMMIGRANTS This may come as a surprise to some who inhabit North American churches … but those of us who belong to Jesus Christ are never primarily American … Continue reading →

BLOG 8/6/14. A NEW PARADIGM? (CONTINUED FROM LAST BLOG) To say that the responses to my most recent Blog, raising the question as to whether we needed a new paradigm of the church for an emerging generation, only underscore in … Continue reading →

8/3/14. BLOG. THE CHURCH: DO WE NEED A NEW PARADIGM? Let me pose a question, or maybe a proposition, that will be widely misunderstood by many. I’m thinking about a generation that is either just emerging, or maybe not even … Continue reading →

BLOG 7/30/14. LATIN AMERICAN BISHOPS, PRIESTS, PARISHES … THEN VIOLENCE, TRAGEDY, AND EXILES TO NORTH AMERICA. Several years ago there was a remarkable conference of the Roman Catholic bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean, and attended briefly also by … Continue reading →

BLOG 7/27/14. AT THE RISK OF SEEMING PEDANTIC—THE WORD: CHURCH All right, so I am being a bid pedantic, but the very word ‘church’ is a source of confusion to many, and in my own quest to help liberate the … Continue reading →

7/23/14 BLOG: YES, CHURCHES CAN DIE, YOU KNOW. SOME ARE ALREADY DEAD AND DON’T KNOW IT. … BUT, THERE IS HOPE! It’s not as though the reality of churches becoming dead is some dismal or pessimistic evaluation that I alone … Continue reading →

BLOG 7/20/14. A HUMOROUS THOUGHT: WHAT WOULD JOHN OLIVER DO WITH ‘THE CHURCH’? For those who are unfamiliar with him, John Oliver has recently emerged as a very colorful comedian-commentator on HBO, and is already sort of a cult-figure with … Continue reading →

7. BLOG 7/16/14. ‘CHATTANOOGA CHOO-CHOO’ CHURCHES For all of you youngsters … sixty years ago one of the most popular songs one heard was: Chattanooga Choo-Choo. It had a nice beat to it, and it was on all the media. … Continue reading →