leadership
Fifteen years ago, on one summery afternoon in the staff room at Carey Baptist College, Mike Crudge suggested to me that I should start writing a blog. And so it started … with a post entitled, Opening Our Own Document (15 February 2006). And 700 posts later, I guess that is exactly what I’ve continued…
READ MORESomeone, somewhere recommended this book to me. Whoever you are, wherever you are — thank-you! Not only did Alan Kreider’s The Patient Ferment of the Early Church push a few buttons for me, it polished them — four of them, in particular. 1. Patience One of the first impressions for me in returning to New Zealand…
READ MOREIt all started as I was reading Alan Kreider’s The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. On page 92, he quotes Gerhard Lohfink making what seemed to me, on a first reading, to be a most extraordinary claim: “(Is 2:2-4; Micah 4.1-4) is the prophetic passage the early Christian writers cited more often than any…
READ MORE2021 is a big year. It is 100 years since Barby’s father was born and 10 years since my father died—but also 100 years since John Stott was born and 10 years since John Stott died. These three have been the most influential men in my life. Here I’d like to focus on John Stott…
READ MORE
“What do you bring back with you from the global church?” This was a question asked of me six months ago. I’ve been thinking about the answers ever since. What follows is a personal and a general response. I am not trying to defend a thesis, nor am I trying to gather all the exceptions. This is simply how…
READ MOREI love a good political cartoon. The New Testament scholar (at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, where John Stott studied), C. F. D. Moule, once observed that within its original audience, the parable of Jesus had numerous features in common with today’s political cartoon. That was the little spark that helped ignite my interest in the parables,…
READ MORE
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 MORE20/20 has always been associated with a clarity of vision, one that enables a certainty of purpose and a strength of step. But when 2020 finally arrived among us, it has brought confusion, uncertainty – and sickness. The irony is that those of us who have trumpeted our ‘wisdom, wealth and power’ down the decades,…
READ MOREWhen it comes to TV dramas, nobody does it better than the Brits. Nobody. This is a law of the Medes and Persians that cannot be altered. And so it came to pass, with a nudge from our daughter and a shared Netflix account to help welcome us home, that Barby and I discovered Shetland. It…
READ MORE
Television can provide such a window onto the soul of a nation. Whenever I’m travelling in unfamiliar countries, I like having a TV to watch. The content. The style. The advertisements. The agenda. The people. The popular. It goes on and on… It is a window that fascinates me. Over the past seven years, when…
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.