preaching
I guess if the church needs to be “reformed, always reforming” – then it might be OK for me to be converted, always converting. Won’t there always be blindspots to be exposed as I slide down the asymptote closer and closer to the full and complete truth of that horizontal line…yes, I think so. I…
READ MOREWhenever I teach narrative preaching I always start with children’s stories. Former students will remember my love for the simplicity of Quack, Quack and the power of Love You Forever – which has induced many a tear from older, and embarassed, Kiwi males. To read them and then to ask “why does this work?” seems…
READ MOREYou know a book has got under your skin when you go on thinking about it weeks after you finished reading it. Usually novels do this. That Poisonwood Bible … or, that Life of Pi … or, the other week – The Children of Men. Ugh! But this time it isn’t a novel. It is…
READ MOREIf these billboards from Britain are coming to a bus near you, head for Ecclesiastes and preach your little heart out. I’d start with expounding the text on the side of the bus … then I’d go to the sympathetic approval of such a text in the early chapters of Ecclesiastes … before going to…
READ MOREThis new website with its various bloggish features is now up and running http://kiwimadepreaching.wordpress.com/ Become part of the community – and enjoy! nice chatting Paul
READ MOREWhat comes to mind when you hear the word ‘hosting’? I think of hospitality, welcome, warmth, service, humility, quietness, graciousness, inclusion, generosity, making-space-for-others-to-shine … Within weeks of finishing the middle book of the Simon Walker trilogy on leadership where he suggests this idea of the leader being a ‘host’, I find myself reading a book…
READ MOREHow ironic is this… With 200+ books on preaching on my shelves and with 20 years of teaching preaching in the classroom and with a multitude of moans about ‘why can’t just one of those books serve as a textbook in just one of those years in the classroom’ – well, in the year that…
READ MOREOne of the major irritants for me in the training of preachers is the dependence people can develop on books and websites for their illustrations. “Omnibus volumes (and websites) of sermon anecdotes are the last refuge of a bankrupt intelligence.” They sound so second-hand, so predigested, so stale… We tend to walk past our best…
READ MOREThe ‘theology of the word’ is not where it needs to be today. Intimidated as we are by image and event, music and symbol, entertainment and short attention spans, and goodness only knows what else – we tend to lose our convictions about the Word of God and our appetite for it drains away as…
READ MORESaying that there are Anglicans in Langham Partnership is like saying there are All Black fans in New Zealand (oops, maybe that analogy is breaking down – I hear things aren’t going so well on the rugby front back home … although Southland keeps winning – surely that is all that really matters, isn’t it?).…
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.