my friend fred

I have a friend called Fred.

Over these next four weeks, Fred is hosting his own Art Exhibition, in Nelson (New Zealand), around the theme, Memories, A Nelson Childhood. I feel this exuberant delight for him. He’s going home to Nelson, with his family, to exhibit his art for the public. It is wonderful. Under God’s hand, he has followed his bliss, the very bliss which God installed in him in the first place: teaching art to young people and creating art himself. 

Although we have been living on different continents for some years, my most recent connections with Fred have been around art. In wanting to demonstrate how image can enhance word in biblical exposition (and not detract from it), Fred created four paintings for me, each one representing a different image from that gritty passage with overwhelming relevance for today, Ecclesiastes 3.16 – 4.12 (a passage loved, I might add, by another Kiwi painter, Colin McCahon).
Believe it or not, I did once provide the inspiration for one of Fred’s paintings. Gee whiz, I need to remember to put that in my CV! He saw my post on the two young Maori martyrs, Te Manihera and Kereopa, and was drawn enough to my photo of the church in Tokaanu, where the two are buried, to do his own impressionism with it – or is it expressionism? Gulp?!
Earlier this week Fred was on the verge of explaining the difference between impressionism and expressionism, but, of course, Nelson was calling…
But it hasn’t always been about art with my friend, Fred. That is a relatively recent phenomenon. We’ve been walking a long walk together, up and down and around, through church and preaching and books and family. His own Christian pilgrimage leaves me dizzy, requiring two pills and a nap. He started with the pentecostals (converted, if I am not mistaken, under the ministry of the father of Hillsong’s Brian Houston); then he found himself among the Baptists (where he pastored churches in Auckland, Dunedin, Levin – and Auckland, again); and now he is engulfed in an Anglo-Catholic community – and loving it (as he reminds me, frequently!). 
I am not sure when our friendship started. I remember going along to the New Lynn church he pastored and doing a little seminar for him on ‘the small church’. I have the notes on file, but when I went to check the date I couldn’t immediately open it because it was so old – and when I did find a way, there was a lot of gobbledygook merging with my words. All rather symbolic, I’m sure. Then there was the time he got permission from his college, Carey Baptist College, to come across to where I was teaching (now, Laidlaw College) to take my preaching class. A lot of our friendship was forged at that time. The irony being that a few months later, he sat me down at the McCafe on Lincoln Rd to suggest that I should be thinking about making myself available to move the other way, from Laidlaw across to Carey, as principal. Yikes. I had seen the advertisement in the Baptist magazine but the thought had not ocurred to me. Afterall, my grandfather had forbidden me from going to Carey when the first stirrings of a call to be a pastor were happening. But Fred planted a seed that went seismic, as that is how God did lead us as a family, changing the trajectory of our lives significantly.
Along the way my friend Fred eschewed email and would write these long letters and cards, with fountain pen and ink and in his own personal, flowing calligraphic font. Incredible.
Yep, I have a friend called Fred. 
And Fred has been so kind to me. Once upon a time, I wrote a little column for a rather obscure NZ Christian weekly newspaper. Like every writer can be with their ‘baby’ writings, the conception, the delivery and then the joy at the birth was consuming. I really thought I was on to something. I called the series Animating Images, an image-based apologetic for theological education. Yes, a little grandiose, in retrospect, isn’t it? But when Professor (yes, thought I’d throw in that word to increase the effect) Murray Harris wrote me a little note, out of the blue, to say I should publish them, I became emboldened enough to put my hand up to take a seminar at a global gathering of theological educators in Chiang Mai (ICETE, where I had breakfast with Lamin Sanneh and observed, what would prove to be, my future Langham colleagues do their thing, from a distance). The seminar didn’t go so well. But my friend Fred would have none of it and one day, this book arrived in the mail at our house:

Ahh, my friend Fred…

The cover, front and back, was all done.
There was even a Table of Contents.
… but, alas, the pages were all blank.
I came across Fred’s unwritten book the other day as we were unpacking a few boxes. I had forgotten about it. And so, inspired by my friend Fred’s art exhibition, I am going to dig out these ol’ pieces on theological education and serialise them on this blog, in a similar way to what I’ve been doing with Lyrics for Living, my effort to resuscitate the fine hymns of the past.
Thanks again, Fred. 
I hope the exhibition exceeds your expectations.
nice chatting
Paul

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About Me

paul06.16

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.

4 Comments

  1. Ken Keyte on June 22, 2020 at 10:25 am

    Why not write the book on Animating Images as well? I'm sure it would be a good one!

  2. Geoff New on June 23, 2020 at 9:23 am

    I remember hearing you preach from one of those final lists at the end of an epistle – naming friends and partners in ministry. Forgive me – I can't recall which epistle. Was it the end of 2 Tim? Or Romans? There were something like 14 names in the list. In any case – it was one of those lists which is easy to rush past – "they are just names and I'm not sure there's much to see here . . ." But you carefully rehearsed each name and built an inspirational case and theology of friendship. I was so deeply struck by that message. And here in this blog – you are at it again. Reading this my heart ached and arced as you drew us into this beautiful biography and anatomy of a friendship – causing self-reflection. So thank you Fred and Paul. You model something very special and needful for us all.

  3. Paul on June 23, 2020 at 3:25 pm

    Ahh Ken, I guess that will be an option as well. Thank for your vote of confidence! Maybe I need to dribble and drizzle them in here first :). Take care under his care for you – Paul

  4. Paul on June 23, 2020 at 3:37 pm

    Yes, Geoff

    That would be 2 Timothy 4 and I think it is 17-18 names, if you include "God" which is always a good idea when preaching. 🙂 I love preaching that message and was thinking about it just the other day, with someone I know 'doing it tough' in pastoral leadership at the moment. Not sure when you heard it, but I preached a version of it at one of those Vision NZ Congresses and at a Pressie pastors' day. Those sound like your kind of worlds…

    Interesting what you write about friendship. It caused me to reflect a bit more on my own journey. It wasn't until I was 36 that I lived longer than 5 continuous years in the same place – not so unusual, except that each and every shift had been continental (except for the one from Auckland to Invercargill … and I hear some uncharitable voices speaking, right about now). It was in the company of your mate DavidC that something dawned on me. All that movement, mostly due to the consequences of being part of a missionary family, had given me the ability to make close friends easily – but also to drop them easily simply because I had to do so, as letters were the only way to remain in touch. It was a problem for me. In recent years I find I am much more tenacious with friendships, valuing them and holding them more tightly … like with Fred – and you!

    Paul

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