preaching
It is not every day that an entire book is read on a drive to the airport. Three realities conspired together to make it possible. The book was 73 pages. The airport was on the other side of Bangkok. I am an introvert and after eight days of lots of people, it was good to…
READ MOREThe Langham Logic, as it was articulated by John Stott, was too compelling for me to ignore. I first heard it expressed in 2008, as the rationale for the ministry of Langham Partnership: God wants His church to grow up; God’s church grows up through God’s word; God’s word comes, primarily, through preaching. And so…
READ MOREA gracious little conspiracy has drawn me back to the Psalms… It started with a comment in an email from a friend battling cancer. She testified to the way a line from Peterson’s The Message was strengthening her: ‘I’ve pitched my tent in the land of hope’. Isn’t that beautiful? I tracked it down. It is not in the…
READ MORE
The first essay I ever wrote at theological college was on Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna (now Izmir). Do you know the story? Born in 69 AD, Polycarp is understood to have been a disciple of the Apostle John himself. It was this same John who ordained him as Bishop of Smyrna. Polycarp is famous for…
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 travel a lot in my work. On those occasions when there is time to be a tourist for a day here and there, usually when Barby is with me, an odd pattern has developed. I find that books like Lonely Planet are more meaningful after I have visited a place, rather than before the visit. I don’t…
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 MOREA couple of weeks ago I shared my admiration for the person and ministry of Charles Simeon, reawakened by a book that I had read. This renewed a conversation with Mark Meynell, the leader of our ministry in Europe & the Caribbean – and in the recent past, a member of the pastoral team at All…
READ MORECharles Simeon was a big part of my life through my twenties. Like many before me, I was introduced to him in the writings of John Stott, a man who lived his life with a similar symmetry more than a century later. As a young pastor I read the biographies, capturing numerous illustrations on my…
READ MORE
Corruption. Prosperity teaching. ‘Big Man’ leadership. The evil trio. The devil’s trinity. Everywhere I go in this job, it does not take long for these three to surface in the conversation. I am just home from a visit to Ghana, and the combo was present there, too. It started at the airport, on arrival 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.