politics
I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to write this post for some months. Take a look at the front page of yesterday’s newspaper. You may need to expand it a bit. These are epochal days in the history of India. News of Modi’s stunning landslide election victory deserves inches of headlines and multiple columns.…
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 MOREIf’ you are looking for a story of political intrigue to consume you through 2014, look no further than India, the world’s largest democracy. I can’t wait to open my newspaper each morning. Are you in for the ride? Can this dummy give you the dummies guide? I know you don’t think it is relevant…
READ MOREIt seems to be the season for a binge on NZ history, particularly Maori history. After the exhilaration of Fairness & Freedom and then Keith Newman’s eye-opening Bible & Treaty – I thought I’d read Newman’s earlier book, Ratana: the prophet. This is the story of a Maori leader who experienced an extraordinary encounter with God which led, initially,…
READ MOREI have a soft spot for Sri Lanka. While I am unsure of the exact source of this softness, there are many tributaries which have contributed to its flow. God’s call usually works like the dawning of the day, rather than the lightning strike. It takes time. However for me, the Sri Lankan tsunami was…
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New Zealand and the USA both have their cultural oddities. With organised sport for school children in NZ there is anaward each weekend that is called the ‘player of the day’. Seldom is it the best performance of the day which determines the recipient of the award; rather it is more about whose turn it…
READ MOREIt is no great surprise that TIME magazine’s Person of the Year is Barack Obama. The cynic in me recognises that about once every four years the President of the USA is predestined to win the award. I don’t read TIME anymore, but picked up a copy on the plane and found the article by…
READ MOREOver Christmas I spent time getting to know Aung San Suu Kyi. I started with Justin Wintle’s book, Perfect Hostage, picked up at the bookshop in the departure area of Phnom Penh airport. Given the recent developments in the story, it is a bit dated (2007). However I found it valuable to begin my pilgrimage with…
READ MOREIt is not every day that the eye falls upon a book on leadership where the case studies, so charming in their sycophancy, include the likes of Mao Tse-Tung, Tito, Ceausescu, Chou En-Lai, Hodja (Albania), and Khrushchev. But such was the case when I wandered through one of my favourite bookshops – in the departure…
READ MOREParents tend to search for significance in the naming of their children. Barby and I are no different. A few things have happened this Christmas to bring this to mind, particularly with our three boys a long, long way away. Starting with the youngest, Joseph Daniel. Joseph and Daniel are the two prominent male characters…
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.