Featured Posts
Recent Posts
I’ve been feeling a hymn-shaped gap opening up in my spirituality. No one sings the ones I truly love anymore. I miss their sustaining strength in my life. So, I’ve decided to do something about it. I’ve dug out the old hymnbook from which I selected songs as a pastor. And I am working my…
READ MORE
John Stott was the first one to help me see the tension in Jesus’ teaching on salt and light. They are pictures for how his disciples are to live in society. Salt pulls them in, keeping them involved. Light holds them back, keeping them distinctive. Being light responds to ‘the danger of worldliness’, while being…
READ MORE
“What is a Christian?” A ‘follower of Jesus’ is the standard response. And it is true, but it is not true enough. Let’s think about this for a minute. So I have this encounter with Jesus. Maybe at a camp of some kind. In the singing and the speaking he becomes so real. It is…
READ MORE
We had been on holiday in Queenstown. Barby had to come back early to go to work. I stayed on for a couple more days with our daughter, Alyssa, and her family. When I did fly back, Barby had the car and so the easiest thing for me was to get an Uber home—and so…
READ MORE
I know I’ve mentioned this one before, but I am not really a flag-in-church kinda guy. All those years ago, as a student in the USA, it was a shock to see the flag up there in the same neighbourhood as the pulpit, the Lord’s Table and the baptistry. “What is going on?” “Have I…
READ MORE
Just when I thought that it could not be possible to have another first-hand account of the impact of John Stott’s life (d. 2011), along comes this book by his close friend, John Wyatt. I am always ready to learn more about John Stott, but also about friendship. It fascinates me. It keeps coming up…
READ MORE
Reading stories to grandchildren over Christmas reminded me again of how powerful they can be. They are so compact and simple in presentation, and yet so clever in construction. There are just so many features at work in an effective story. It is some years since I taught narrative preaching, but when I did I’d…
READ MORE
Today is Day 56—and on Day 57 we board a flight for home. There has been so much to absorb as Barby and I have encountered the people of God in different places. el-christo, in bolivia A few days before we left NZ, I discovered that I had five sessions to give in Pakistan. Yikes.…
READ MORE
The little chapel at Cadeca Casa del Catequista, a retreat centre on the fringes of Cochabamba (Bolivia), caught my eye on an earlier visit in 2017. Lots of photos… I was thrilled to learn that there would be a return visit, this time with Barby—and with lots of video. Enjoy. A 360 view Some Old…
READ MORE
Apart from the eight years in which we were based overseas, Barby has been working at the Refugee Resettlement Center in Auckland since 2002. This year she is a ‘release teacher’, spending one day each week in three different classrooms, with three different age groups. Impressive—and demanding. One day is spent with 11-13 year olds—from…
READ MOREAbout Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.