culture
David Brooks’ The Road to Character (Allen Lane, 2015) is a book of two halves – that is, if we are able to be flexible and allow one of the halves to be only one-sixth of the book. The Introduction (ix-xv) and The Shift (3-15) will make their way into the required reading list for…
READ MOREHow is this for a greeting at the front of our local grocery story – Nilgiri’s in Kothanur (Bangalore)? Look at the variety of mangoes. Alphonso seems to be king, but I ain’t fussy. A mela is an event where people gather in a festival-like manner. Bring it on. We tend to take the mela…
READ MOREIt was like driving into spring. In Toronto the trees were leafless, but as I made my way by train to Windsor (Ontario) – and then by car to Ohio and on to Kentucky – the trees and countryside came alive with a fresh and velvety green. It was beautiful. That was last month. Last…
READ MOREOn my recent flight from San Francisco to Singapore I decided to create a conversation in my mind, by watching a movie and reading a book. The movie was Exodus: Gods and Kings. With Batman (Christian Bale) as Moses, it tells the story of the Hebrew slaves gaining freedom from the Pharoah of Egypt. Even on…
READ MORE‘The Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other’. Attributed to Karl Barth, this is the classic cliche about the need for preachers to remain connected to both the Word and the World, the Text and the Context, as they prepare and deliver sermons. Earlier this month in Amman, I heard Dr Yohanna…
READ MOREI am a little worried. I believe in contextualisation. Oh yes, I do. Isn’t the incarnation, the divine becoming human, the ultimate in contextualised activity? The Big-C is as necessary as it is unavoidable. But still I am worried. As I travel I am a little surprised at the appetite that there is for contextualisation.…
READ MOREThere is this hunger within to learn about the peoples of the world, particularly those ones about whom I know so little. Almost ten years ago I got lost in Meredith’s The State of Africa. It changed me. With my first visit to the Middle East looming in March, recent months have been devoted to Eugene…
READ MOREAbout this time yesterday there was a tear in the eye. Barby and I were returning home after a 40 hour visit to Vizakhapatnam – or Vizag, for short. In expressing my gratitude to the couple who had welcomed us into their home, I became a bit misty. Here we were – so very different…
READ MOREIt has been hard living so far from New Zealand during the two hundredth year celebrations of the arrival of the gospel – on Christmas Day, 1814. I’ve been following all the facebook chatter closely. I’ve loved that space at Oihi Bay for a number of years, even taking a horde of friends on a…
READ MOREAll I want for Christmas is my two front teeth … to sit in a pew stuffed with my kids, giving O Holy Night a real rip together. But it ain’t gonna happen this year. The divas line up to sing this song, don’t they? Go to youtube. They are all there. Mariah. Whitney. Celine.…
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.