culture
The world is a mess. This virus of religious extremism is spreading, with Turkey and Bangladesh being among the newer arrivals to our headlines (& let’s not forget those who never receive that focus!). Poverty. It is difficult to see how the global refugee crisis can be resolved. Inequality. The blind spot in the USA…
READ MORECNN does it. Amanpour and Anderson. Blitzer and Burnett. Cooper and Church. And that is just the ABCs – it keeps going all the way to Zakaria. The BBC does it as well, starting with Alagiah and Amroliwala. And please, please don’t get me started on Fox News… When these channels take a break in…
READ MOREIt is not every day that an entire book is read on a drive to the airport. Three realities conspired together to make it possible. The book was 73 pages. The airport was on the other side of Bangkok. I am an introvert and after eight days of lots of people, it was good to…
READ MOREI settled into my seat. Some sleep on the overnight plane meant that some sleep on the midday bus was not going to happen. So I leaned back and zoned-out before the upcoming conference captured me. But gradually three conversations, from further back in the bus, began to come into focus. I listened. In each…
READ MORE“It wouldn’t take much to draw me back into being a pastor again”.As a student, I heard Dr DA Carson make this comment. I’ve heard him say it a few more times in the subsequent decades. It impacts me. Still does. Why would an academic of this quality make such a statement? I daren’t speak…
READ MOREIt is the story of the greatest military failure for any colonial power in the nineteenth century. … a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed it, or…
READ MOREIn my first post, over ten years ago, I laid claim to a 30:30:30:10 identity (India:USA:NZ:Southland (NZ)). Each of these worlds has shaped me. Because of this I tend to claim some right, even responsibility, to wade into these worlds and reflect on them critically. Right now I am as concerned for the church in…
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Corruption. Prosperity teaching. ‘Big Man’ leadership. The evil trio. The devil’s trinity. Everywhere I go in this job, it does not take long for these three to surface in the conversation. I am just home from a visit to Ghana, and the combo was present there, too. It started at the airport, on arrival in…
READ MORENot so long ago, Barby and I had a pretty typical weekend in Bangalore. On the Saturday, Barby and I wandered through the local shopping area. She is dressed in salwar kameez (and I am occasionally wearing a kurta). As we wander, it is hard not to notice the many Indians, young adults and young families,…
READ MOREAtul Gawande’s Being Mortal takes me back to grace and truth. The author is concerned that we lack ‘a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, (as) we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers’ (9). Drawing a little on…
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.