family
August has become a big month. Four generations are involved. My granddaughter’s birthday is followed my wife’s birthday which is followed by my son’s birthday … and in the middle of all this comes my father’s deathday – tomorrow, actually. It has been six years. I still miss him. Dad in his New Delhi (I…
READ MOREIt has been a conspiracy. This week Dr Seuss and my grandchildren, Micah and Amaliya, have gathered forces to remind me once again of my affection for the letter V. Many years ago I did a series of mission-themed talks over a weekend. On the Saturday morning, over a breakfast, I thought I’d be a…
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This book shifted me. Maybe I should say that in theory, it is shifting me – but whether anything happens in practice, time will tell. Lets start with a few appetizers: “We are oriented by our longings, directed by our desires” (11). “You are what you love because you live toward what you want” (13). “Our…
READ MOREThe other day I sat behind an older man clutching his ear with his hand during the singing. I picked what was going on. The music was too loud, but he desperately wanted to remain among the worshipping people of God. He wasn’t making a fuss, and clutching his ear seemed to be his best…
READ MOREThis morning it was off to offer a prayer of blessing for the house of some close friends that is taking shape. On the rural fringe of Bangalore. I loved it. As a boy, in both rural and urban settings in North India, I enjoyed being absorbed into scenes just like this one. The memories…
READ MOREIt is early Sunday morning, my preferred time to write a blog. For me this task is in every sense a sabbatical activity, recreative and restorative. This morning I am feeling overwhelmed by nostalgia. Later today I will be back preaching from Ecclesiastes… In many ways Ecclesiastes is where it all started. It is the…
READ MOREIt was exactly forty days and forty nights. Enough time for a flood, or for some testing times in the desert. However for Barby and I it was a more celebratory season, as it was about going home to New Zealand, via Australia, for the wedding of our daughter. While New Zealand is world famous…
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It is not quite ‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord’, but still, in the year that Rush Hour was released, I played with chairs. I was with some Baptist youth pastors on the Kapiti Coast in New Zealand. After the training day was over, we headed for the movies. 1998.…
READ MOREThe Health & Safety folks in New Zealand would have a stroke on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Fences are few and far between. Books have been written to make those Health & Safety faces nod up and down knowingly: Over the Edge: Gripping Accounts of All Known Fatal Mishaps in the Most Famous of…
READ MOREFor me, 53 days without flying in a plane is a break all of its own – but to be home again in New Zealand, with its beauty of scenery, friends and family has been a delight … even though somewhat exhausting. Best food Cafe Anatolia in Levin (Turkish). Greatest act of grace …
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.