mission
It’s one month ago now. Two conversations. One in which I participated. One which I heard about second-hand a couple of hours later. But there they are – both running around my mind ever since … and annoying me. So it is back to the purge-by-posting strategy. The first conversation was with a bunch of…
READ MOREThere are eight boarding passes in this book. That is how many flights it took me to finish it. But don’t let that put you off. It is well worth the effort: Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography (Random House, 2012). One easily missable sentence captures his thesis neatly. I believe that while geography does not necessarily…
READ MOREMy first twenty-four hours in Yorkshire – ever. Who could have imagined that it would be twenty-four hours after the departure of one of the great French institutions – the Tour de France?! Signs for Le Grand Depart were everywhere in Leeds. Buntings and gold-coloured bikes adorned homes. Even the Black Prince, on horseback in the…
READ MOREAs I travel and find myself in and out of peoples’ homes in different countries, I’ve noticed something… Generally speaking, Christian homes in ‘the West’ (for example, NZ, Australia, UK, and the USA) seem reluctant to adorn their walls with promises and texts from the Bible, or anything that is overtly Christian in its message.…
READ MOREI have lived in the book of Amos for years. Sparked by having a grandson of the same name, it is the ripe time to encounter Amos’ contemporary – Micah. I have been reading and rereading this little book. No commentaries. Just reading it for myself. What have I been discovering? The verse everybody seems…
READ MOREIt is more than twenty years ago now. My first effort at a series called ‘Brightening the Post-Christian Blues’ – through 1 Peter. The opportunities this letter creates for intersections of Word and World are striking. I love 1 Peter. It remains my favourite book from which to teach and preach… Then along comes Everyday Church by Tim Chester…
READ MOREI have a friend who has been to Myanmar more than sixty times. Another friend is pushing twenty. My sister and her husband are closing in on ten visits. As for me, it has been only three … But that is enough to be sobered by what I’ve seen. There is something particularly evil about…
READ MORESome conversations are for keeping. Dinner with Conrad… in England. It was a cold wet night in Sheffield. I was perched at the end of a long table in a restaurant on a night set aside to celebrate the contribution of Jonathan & Margaret Lamb to Langham Partnership. Next to me was a new member…
READ MORE‘We do not care about a strange war fought by black people somewhere in the middle of Africa’ (334). So writes Jason Stearns in Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (2012). It is hard to argue with him. Truth be told, I don’t expect many of you to go on and finish this post. Built…
READ MOREThis is our one hundredth day living back in India, the land of our childhood. The joys, the frustrations – and the conversations – have not changed much over the decades. Once again Barby and I find ourselves talking a lot about how to live alongside the poor. While it is not the daily ‘in…
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.