“A sandbox is the perfect symbol,” she muses. “It’s a place of delight, a place that is safe, and a place where everyone is welcome. In a sandbox, people need to co-operate, and you are free to do what you want as long as you don’t tromp on someone else’s creation. It’s all about getting along together and loving each other. It’s not rocket science.”

The sandboxes found at three of her five country churches also invite people of all ages to rediscover their playful side.

“Coming to church is intended to be a joyful event. I don’t know how church ever became reduced to a duty for many people,” she says.

Henderson has been serving the Anglican communities of Aspdin, Grassmere, Newholm, Ravenscliffe and Ilfracombe   since 2002.

“I wanted a challenge, something that would call for a radical faith commitment,” she says. Five diverse rural churches with no modern conveniences fit the bill.

Although she first trained and worked as a nurse, Henderson was often told by others that she was a natural for the ministry. For years she was active in many aspects of lay ministry but had no interest in being ordained.

It took the urging of her  mentor, Rev. BethMarie Murphy, for her to take that step.  

“I went to my husband Jeff and said with trepidation, ‘I think I have to test this call; I need to go to seminary,’” Henderson recalls. “He said, ‘Well, it’s good you’ve figured this out, because I’ve been waiting 20 years for this conversation.’”

The decision meant finishing her B.A. and then doing her Master of Divinity at Wycliffe College, an Anglican seminary at the University of Toronto.

“It was a very intensive time,” she says. “Jeff was so supportive. The two older kids were away at university, but it was hard on our 16-year-old son. It wasn’t so much that his mom was away a lot, but that she was going to be a priest. How do you tell that to the basketball team?”

After accepting the invitation to serve the Pioneer Parish and being ordained in 2002, Henderson and her husband built a house on South Waseosa Lake Road.

“I can’t do it at arm’s length,” she explains. “I have to be immersed in the community.”

Henderson says the dearly loved church buildings present challenges in terms of insurance, building and fire regulations.

“But a church is more than a building; it’s the people,” she says. “And we need all of our tiny little churches to connect with people as deeply as they can wherever they are.”

The diversity in her small congregations is a strength, Henderson says.   

“In a small church you’re face-to-face with people who are very different from one another,” she points out, “and coming together for worship or meetings calls for tolerance and the need to listen and respect one another’s perspective. It’s the same basic formula in building a healthy society, and it starts in that tiny little unit: the pew.”

Henderson thinks it is important for churches to reach out to the communities of which they are a part. The many outside-of-Sunday services and events she arranges provide the chance for people to visit on their own terms, to “respond to what is stirring inside of them,” she says. “People need safe places to ask questions and explore their spirituality and to grow.”

In fact, Henderson feels so strongly about the value of little country churches that she has applied to do advanced studies in rural ministry through a Doctor of Ministry program at the University of Toronto.

“Rural ministry is disappearing everywhere. We’ve got to hang on to it,” she says. “There are solid theological reasons to do so. If we don’t do something about it in an intentional manner, we will wake up one day and an incredible gift will have disappeared.”