Well – this year I have been asked specifically to do a session on Preaching from Apocalyptic Literature in one of the countries where I work. “Ahh – here is my opportunity.” While in India through March I worked hard on a fresh set of notes and sent them off to be translated (with Laurie Guy’s Making Sense of Revelation and Paul Spilsbury’s The Throne, The Lamb, and the Dragon being helpful). As I worked I was overwhelmed by the relevance of Revelation. It may have been written for churches in first century Asia, but the churches in twenty-first century Asia need it just as much.
So I have set some goals to stick at it.
I’ve put a little strategy in place that keeps me chasing the apocalypse throughout 2012.
I am going to read through the biblical text with Murray Robertson’s The Future of Humanity (all the very best in trying to locate it, as it is ‘out of print’ – but it is a short and simple gem) and Eugene Peterson’s Reversed Thunder at my side, chapter by chapter. In the background I will be reading Richard Bauckham’s The Theology of the Book of Revelation.
Then it is off to the two largest M-majority countries in the world, just one week adrift from each other, to do my best to equip preachers in preaching from the book of Revelation. WOW – what a privilege that will be.
Returning home, I am going to chase the apocalypse a little more. This time it will be back to the biblical text with Craig Keener’s Revelation and Darrell Johnson’s Discipleship on the Edge at my side. And in the background being absorbed this time will be Michael Gorman’s Reading Revelation Responsibly.
Then it will be off to Dunedin for a training weekend for preachers in the lower part of the South Island and I am going to make a case for doing a session on preaching through Revelation in the context of New Zealand.
After all this chasing and exertion, I will have a ‘warm-down’ (I think that is what the gym-junkies call it?) by reading N.T. Wright’s Revelation for Everyone.
Then in 2013 I am going to have a serious crack at preaching a bit from Revelation…
nice chatting
Paul
About 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.
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