langham
Hi, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where you are. But I do know that there are heaps of you out there and I find myself thinking about you a lot. So much so that I thought I’d write you a letter. First let me try to ensure that we are talking…
READ MOREThe irony was going to be sufficiently delicious for me. Earlier this morning I was on a flight from London to Dubai on an Arab airlines (Emirates). I decided to listen to Handel’s Messiah, that supreme piece of Christian music, on its entertainment system. But God had other ideas. He wanted me to have an…
READ MOREI had a bit of a chuckle as I reflected on this one. Theologically, I do Love the Ls – Lausanne and Langham. I guess it has something to do with their common denominator, one John Stott. While Langham preoccupies my life at this current time, I have kept missing out on Lausanne for some…
READ MOREIt all started in the seventies. The 90s helped teach me how to worship. Worship is more than singing, but it is not less. In the seventies I learned to love to sing. A call to worship here: O come let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For…
READ MOREI am always on the lookout for ways to describe an effective sermon. One that I have picked up from somewhere in my Langham work – and now expanded – is to imagine the biblical author in the front seat listening to the sermon I preach from the text. And then ask myself one question,…
READ MOREWhen we had a little book written on my father’s life, we called it Surprised by Obedience. That title seemed to catch the twists and turns of his life and the way God kept calling him away from areas of proven skill and gifting. [NB: I’ve posted some tributes to my Dad here and here and here].…
READ MOREGood preaching engages both the Word and the world. It is about being faithful to a content, but also to a context. In our Langham training I like to develop this in an interactive way. Participants reflect on the big issues in personal/family life, local church life – and then life in their wider society. When…
READ MOREThis week marks the end of my fourth year working with Langham Preaching. My focus has been on the countries of Asia and the Pacific. Our purpose is not just to train preachers, but to train trainers of preachers – so that a movement can spread, like a ‘benevolent virus’ (as Chris Wright describes it).…
READ MOREThey say preaching needs to be both caught and taught. Both are needed and both have been integral to my story in preaching. I have wondered if the British preaching tradition leans me towards being ‘caught’, while the American tradition has been built more around ‘taught’. catching The first preacher to engage me, in my…
READ MOREFor twenty years in a college setting, I used the metaphor of the body to describe the movement from text to (expository) sermon. It works OK. Head. Skeleton. Flesh. Ligaments. Wings… Ramesh Richard and Richard Bewes are two people who helped me work on the body. But over time I have become dissatisfied with the body. During…
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.