book review
Eclectic. Always liked that word. Pop across to the on-line dictionary and it means ‘deriving ideas, style, or tastes from a broad and diverse range of sources’. I like being eclectic when it comes to reading books on preaching. Here are four which I’ve enjoyed so far in 2018. Two of the first volumes in The…
READ MOREEdited books can often miss the mark. Maybe it is the absence of a strong plot that holds the individual pieces together. Maybe it is the uneven quality in the submissions. Maybe it is the cost. Whatever the reason, I find edited books can attract dust more readily than other books. But Text Messages: Preaching…
READ MOREI have this fascination with the history of cricket in South Asia. “WOW – way to go, Paul. Great opening line. You’ve just lost 99% of your readers.” “But doesn’t speaking from out of our passion tend to gain us an audience?” “Well, yes … but cricket? … and cricket in South Asia? That is asking…
READ MOREI don’t like it when I see and hear the inner narcissist in me. A glimpse here. A sound-bite there. It disturbs me. After all these years, it shouldn’t still be hanging around. So when I sighted Wendy Behary’s Disarming the Narcissist, I thought I’d give it a go. Always happy to engage with wisdom…
READ MOREWith all the fire and fury, shock and shame, filling the headlines coming out of the USA these days, it is easy to forget that over there, in the footnotes, there are so many tender, inspirational stories. I’ve loved living in two of them in recent months – both related to the game of basketball…
READ MOREAmateur sociologists and historians (like me) tend to be aware of two contrasting realities, spread two millennia apart. In the Western world of the twenty-first century, study after study demonstrates that it is difficult to distinguish the behaviour of a Christian from the behaviour of one who is not a Christian. It is not easy…
READ MOREIt is always good to have a growing edge. When I first ventured into the world of preaching, the passion was to be bible-based. It still is the passion. To work in such a way that the content and purpose of the text becomes the content and purpose of the sermon. That’s it. But as…
READ MOREA ‘new history of the world’ is what the subtitle asserts. The title? The Silk Roads. Peter Frankopan’s point is intentionally plural. There were roads, not a single road. Along these roads, eastwards and westwards, flowed ideas and products. Those that controlled these roads, controlled history. It has always been this way. The Table of Contents is…
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There is a post that I’ve wanted to write for years. C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity is remarkable for many reasons, but the one I’ve wanted to explore is its illustrations. Dozens and dozens of them. Simple. Obvious. Clear. Mostly finding the spiritually significant in the utterly everyday which is the hallmark of effective illustrating. Laying the familiar…
READ MOREIt all started with wanting to describe the kind of preacher we wanted to produce, under God’s gracious hand, through Langham Preaching’s ministry. We settled on five descriptions: (a) confident in conviction; (b) faithful to the text; (c) clear in presentation; (d) relevant to the audience; (e) Christlike in character. Then we moved across to…
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.