mission
It is eight years since Barby and I shifted our focus from New Zealand to the peoples of the majority world. Back then, in NZ, voices reminded us of the need to be resourcing mission with inspiring stories of relevance. Now, returning to NZ for two months (August-September), I find that our experiences have drawn…
READ MOREBeing relevant is over-rated. Settle down. I’m not saying it is unimportant, just that it is over-rated. To pursue it with such fervour and make it so important for so long, as has been the case in my home country of New Zealand, has been a mistake. For all sorts of reasons. As I have written…
READ MOREThe world is a mess. This virus of religious extremism is spreading, with Turkey and Bangladesh being among the newer arrivals to our headlines (& let’s not forget those who never receive that focus!). Poverty. It is difficult to see how the global refugee crisis can be resolved. Inequality. The blind spot in the USA…
READ MOREI settled into my seat. Some sleep on the overnight plane meant that some sleep on the midday bus was not going to happen. So I leaned back and zoned-out before the upcoming conference captured me. But gradually three conversations, from further back in the bus, began to come into focus. I listened. In each…
READ MOREI don’t know my icons – but I am willing to learn from my friends. So when Riad finished his devotion (on living with Habakkuk amidst the Syrian crisis) with an old Coptic/Egyptian icon, I leaned forward in my chair. A painting on wood. From Egypt in the 5th century. Jesus is standing alongside Abbot Menas, the…
READ MOREIn trying hard to include everything, a point can be reached where it becomes hard to exclude anything. Put a handful of topics on the table for discussion – mission, evangelism, dialogue, salvation, conversion – and it won’t be long before many of the older liberals (in the 1980s) and the younger postmoderns (in the…
READ MORE“It wouldn’t take much to draw me back into being a pastor again”.As a student, I heard Dr DA Carson make this comment. I’ve heard him say it a few more times in the subsequent decades. It impacts me. Still does. Why would an academic of this quality make such a statement? I daren’t speak…
READ MOREI love the local church but I do not often love the local church’s mission statement. Lots of reasons. Here are two. The mission statement seems to owe more to the corporate world, than the biblical world. It is part of the response to this chronic fear that the local church might be slipping out-of-date…
READ MORESometimes a page is difficult to turn. Like this one. It lists most of the names of those who died in a massacre of 159 missionaries over a few weeks in the summer of 1900 in ‘Shansi’. The right hand side contains the names of those who died from the China Inland Mission, known today…
READ MOREIn my first post, over ten years ago, I laid claim to a 30:30:30:10 identity (India:USA:NZ:Southland (NZ)). Each of these worlds has shaped me. Because of this I tend to claim some right, even responsibility, to wade into these worlds and reflect on them critically. Right now I am as concerned for the church 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.