leadership
In these pages Mekdes Haddis addresses “a broken mission system … (where) we hurt culture” (x). It is her conviction that “by laying down power we will gain the ability to embrace mutuality. It is not easy, yet it’s the necessary work we must do as Western Christians” (109). It is a confronting book. I…
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“It is sad that the book had to be written”. This is how a friend responded when I mentioned that I was reading Marcus Honeysett’s Powerful Leaders? When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent It. Why did he respond in that manner? While Honeysett avoids naming names, the book is prompted by the…
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Like many of you, I am always ready to engage with new insights on leadership. This book draws on “the great wayfinding tradition of the Polynesian navigators” (xiii). Most of you live far from Polynesia, so please stick with me through unfamiliar surroundings! It will be worth it… Drawing near to it There is a…
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With the focus of my work remaining overseas, I have needed to find ways to re-engage with life here in New Zealand. Thirty years ago, I developed a course at Laidlaw College, The Gospel in a Post-Christian Society—and so, when Greg Liston asked me to assist with a new course at Laidlaw covering similar terrain (Ngākau…
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There is so much to like about God. Right near the top of my list is the way he works in anyone and everyone, helping shape them into all they are designed to be. Then he invites, or calls, them to join him in making the world all it is designed to be. He is…
READ MOREWhen Langham Preaching’s Global Leadership Team meets, Lord-willing, in the UK in June it will be 1163 days since we’ve been in-person together. During this covidian season we’ve gathered on Zoom for two hours a week, three weeks out of four. We’ve grown closer together, while apart, for various reasons — most notably God’s gracious…
READ MOREThe early mornings between Christmas and New Year were spent absorbed in a book: Jehu Hanciles’ Migration and the Making of Global Christianity (Eerdmans, 2021). With a Foreward written by Philip Jenkins and an opening quotation from Lamin Sanneh, Hanciles had me wandering among my pantheon before he himself had written a word — and now he…
READ MOREIn our church’s worship service last Sunday, our pastor observed that this had been the most divisive period of church life that he can remember. The issues around public worship and re-gathering together, when there are both vaccinated and unvaccinated people present, have been difficult. This division, even polarization in some settings, follows on…
READ MOREOne of the gracious privileges of my life was to be able to head off, as a 21 year old, to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS, near Chicago) to complete an MDiv degree. It shaped me, sandwiched as it was between the other profound ‘shapers’ — growing up in a culture-not-my-own (in India) and pastoring…
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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.