church
[Various people have expressed interest in my DMin project, The Role of Intrigue in the Communication with Sceptics, which jumped its final hurdle earlier this week. So I have decided to post three little pieces: (a) the opening page, or abstract; (b) the final page, a postscript; (c) the story of the project, as it has…
READ MORE[This is the final page of my thesis, The Role of Intrigue in the Communication with Sceptics – a postscript where I try to wrap it all up with a little bow…] “Cicero considered that intriguing oratory could be the means by which the barbarian was transformed. The claims of this thesis are not as bold,…
READ MOREMany years ago I was arrested by a sentence about leadership at the start of a book from Kouzes & Posner: We treat leadership as a learnable set of practices … we hope to demystify it and show how each of us has the capacity to lead. (The Leadership Challenge, xxiv). Then along came Simon…
READ MOREIt is one of the books of the decade for me (NB: pages 273-275 provide an excellent summary of the argument): James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World (Oxford University Press, 2010). In trying to distill its influence, three affirmations come to mind. 1. Our understanding of culture and change can be so wrong Using words like ‘flawed’…
READ MORENow that I no longer teach a course on movies, my movie-watching has diminished greatly – and often just on planes through sleepy eyes (although I do limit myself to one per flight in order to ensure that I get some reading done!). But not in the last ten days. There have been three movies…
READ MORE[NB: My custom with this blog is to avoid using it as a place to re-preach my sermons and re-speak my talks. I figure once is enough for everyone, including me! But every now and then I make an exception, particularly as this blog has evolved into a personal filing system and I don’t want…
READ MORERegular readers of this blog will know that salt and light is of great interest to me – and you could throw in grace and truth as well. These form the start of the periodic table of missional elements. They are the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen of mission. The vast majority of the missional…
READ MOREBarby and I are in the USA for a week celebrating her father’s 90th birthday with family members. It is just the third time in thirty years that we have gathered like this. The family’s Christian roots lie with the Mennonites… A highlight for me has been the visit to the Menno-Hof (kinda like a…
READ MOREOver the past decade, books on missional church have hardly been known for their deep engagement with the biblical story. They’ve tended to be testimonial, inspirational, and practical – but this stuff loses its lustre after awhile. Here is a book which corrects that flow by being biblical, first and foremost, and then aspirational on…
READ MOREAs a creative communicator Rob Bell is without peer. What he does with nooma – seeing the spiritually significant in the utterly ordinary – is reminscent of CS Lewis in Mere Christianity. Superb! But I have yet to finish any of his books. Sadly, I get a bit bored as they wander too much for…
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.