langham
It is good to be home again in New Zealand. I enjoy being able to pop across to my mother’s home on Sunday evenings and watch the BBC’s Songs of Praise with her. But not today, as we are in covidian lockdown – again! With Songs of Praise I am not so keen on the choirs, the organs and…
READ MOREWith the training of preachers as my vocation, and in seeking a more personal way in which to engage with Black Lives Matter, I decided to turn to the African-American preaching tradition in order to listen and learn – again. Martin Luther King Jr, Henry Mitchell and Robert C. Smith Jr have all featured in my…
READ MOREThe recent decade has seen a steady stream of books on preaching aimed at the beginner. Not only did this alter a worrying trend, it also provided me with plenty of inspiration for my primary calling – namely, the training of preachers in indigenous, grassroots settings in the majority world. But in this season of…
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Earlier this month, in the space of 24 hours, two video clips arrived in my in-box. One is nine minutes in length. The other is six minutes. Both were recorded a long time ago and are rather limited, technically. Both feature men who were born in the same decade and then who died in the…
READ MOREThe ‘search’ function on this blog is amazing. Within seconds, I can find lost thoughts. Within minutes, I can gather material for a talk. It is like my own ‘illustration file’ which I make available to others who pass by. I love it like that. Another feature of this blog is taking opportunities to bear…
READ MOREThe name ‘E. Stanley Jones’ will not mean much to most of the people reading this post. But hang in with me here, OK?! You’ll enjoy this one, I promise. E. Stanley Jones was a key figure in the church in India in the early twentieth century. My father’s own heart was drawn to giving his…
READ MOREIt happens every now and then. Some jolly person bounces up to me and exclaims, ‘I was in your class thirty years ago.’ It is nice, even humbling. Deeper down, however, in a silent space, there is a shudder going on: ‘Ugh, I wonder what that course was like way back then?’. This is because I…
READ MORESome years ago Barby and I started a tradition of giving books to our children. We’d been doing it for awhile, but fresh momentum came at a couple of different times. One was when John Stott died in 2011. He had been such a massive influence in my life and I wanted a deposit of…
READ MORE“One in six people in the world is Chinese, while one in six languages in the world is Melanesian.” This statement has always intrigued me. While it may not be strictly accurate, it certainly infers something surprising about Melanesia. It is a place that gathers an astonishing number of mother-tongue, or vernacular, languages. With this…
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It wasn’t a great start. The queue zigged and zagged its way back out of the immigration room, up the ramp, and back into the air bridge attached to the plane. After negotiating the queue I made my way across to the Domestic Terminal, waiting patiently for my flight to Mt Hagen – only to…
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.