leadership
When 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…
READ MORELast week I had the privilege of opening the Word of God at a pastors’ conference (link here). A room with an (early morning) view — MICamp, Waitetoko, Lake Taupō With the sad and shameful stories that have grabbed headlines and hurt people, I tried to address the topic of character-driven leadership. Learning to lead…
READ MOREIt is 500 days (exactly) since we left Bangalore, with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. What a week that was, back in March 2020. After five months without any international travel for Langham (my longest period out of the skies), I had five complex trips planned in the following three months — and I…
READ MOREMy first brush with Ernest Shackleton did not end happily. I was on one of those long, lonely trips — and feeling so inadequate as a leader. With me to read, I had Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer. But I felt battered by it. It made things worse. I don’t do heroic…
READ MORE‘On June 5, 2001, Eugene scratched the final sentence…’ (242). On this very day, twenty years ago, Peterson’s ten year project, The Message, was completed. So I thought I’d engage with the recent authorized biography of Peterson — Winn Collier’s A Burning in My Bones — on this day. I love The Message. Although I may never…
READ MOREAt any point in time I have this little stack of books I want to read. Usually there is a certain (sequential) order in mind, but when I am in peak form with my reading, books tend to be assigned to different chairs in the house … and I read them all at the same…
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.