New Zealanders who return from living overseas often comment on how insular we are. The first place where this is noticed is with the media, which tends to set the agenda for conversation and empathy. During these covidian times we’ve tended to be wrapped up so much in ourselves.
This seems an appropriate time to search for meaningful ways to bring the peoples and cultures of Latin America into my life and into the life of my home and family. Having Esteban help me add songs to my Christian Music playlist on Spotify was a beginning. Then I remembered the artwork of his sister, Daniela, in which she gives an Andean and Bolivian flavour to the liturgical year.
This is a single, summary piece. Each of Daniela’s eight individual pieces — on Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost and Ordinary Time — can be glimpsed within this one piece. The art design is known as ‘Pallay’, an indigenous way of weaving with textiles.
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.
Recent Posts
It was my very first training seminar with Langham Preaching. April 2009. We were based at the OMF Guest House in Chiangmai, Thailand. As I wandered the property, I came across this striking quotation on one of the walls: So striking, in fact, that I stopped to take its photo! But is it really true?…
Ten years ago, Ode to Georgetown was my response to being surprised by grief when the only church I had ever pastored closed its doors. Last week brought the news that the theological college which I attended, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), was to close most of its Chicagoland campus. I have been feeling a…
I am neither painter nor poet, musician nor actor. With Art and Music and Drama classes at school, I was present in body—but absent in spirit and skill. However, as a teacher, there has been the occasional flare of creativity in the crafting of assignments. One of my favourites is one of my first ones.…
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…
