book review
When Langham Preaching’s Global Leadership Team meets, Lord-willing, in the UK in June it will be 1163 days since we’ve been in-person together. During this covidian season we’ve gathered on Zoom for two hours a week, three weeks out of four. We’ve grown closer together, while apart, for various reasons — most notably God’s gracious…
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Last Monday was World Mother-Language Day. Al Jazeera celebrated the day on their Interactives page by collecting 25 proverbs from 25 different languages, recited by speakers of that language. If you scroll down this page, you’ll discover it. It is very cool. This comes a couple of days after I came across Hinemoa Elder’s AROHA:…
READ MOREIt took me a bit by surprise, but there has been just the whiff of exile about living back in Aotearoa New Zealand. ‘Exile’ is a rich biblical metaphor and I’ve been helped by leaning into it. It seems to capture many of my reflections, attitudes and emotions. How do you live well in…
READ MOREThe early mornings between Christmas and New Year were spent absorbed in a book: Jehu Hanciles’ Migration and the Making of Global Christianity (Eerdmans, 2021). With a Foreward written by Philip Jenkins and an opening quotation from Lamin Sanneh, Hanciles had me wandering among my pantheon before he himself had written a word — and now he…
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I love the way Ephesians opens: “in Ephesus … in Christ Jesus” (1.1). Chapters 1-3 focuses on the ‘in Christ Jesus’, while chapters 4-6 leans across to the ‘in Ephesus’. It is the double identity of the believer—and it makes for some fun sermon series, like “In Invercargill, in Christ” and “In Kyrgyzstan, In Christ”…
READ MOREIt seems to be becoming a trend. If you don’t like an author in one area, you ditch the author in every area. Yikes. That sounds kinda silly to me. None of us would like to be treated in this way. Tim Keller is one who receives this treatment. I’ve heard people say that because…
READ MOREI struggle to think of anything in the mission of God in the world today that enthuses me more than the work of Langham Literature. That day when my Africa Bible Commentary (ABC) arrived remains a vivid memory. I was in a seminar in the dining room at Carey Baptist College (Auckland) and Rachel, with…
READ MOREI hear the word often enough, but I haven’t known what it means. To this uncertainty is added confusion because the only time I’ve used the word in the past, it is has been as a theological description — rather than a cultural one. So when Rodney Clapp’s Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of the…
READ MOREI’ve never really been a podcast person — until I was introduced to The Rest is History by my friend, Mark. Barby and I no longer drive those long distances, but when we did, I would download a few episodes and we would partake — from the signature tune, to the sparkling rapport between the hosts…
READ MOREMy first brush with Ernest Shackleton did not end happily. I was on one of those long, lonely trips — and feeling so inadequate as a leader. With me to read, I had Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer. But I felt battered by it. It made things worse. I don’t do heroic…
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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.