spirituality
In recent months I have been discovering a treasure… Back in 1997, in the months leading up to taking on the principalship at Carey, God reassured me in His call through a (secular!) book called The Leadership Challenge (Kouzes and Posner). Its impact on me was enormous. Now in the months after finishing as Principal…
READ MOREAs a way of celebrating my fiftieth birthday I invited a bunch of friends to go with me on a pilgrimage to Marsden Cross in the Bay of Islands – the site of the first preaching of the gospel in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Along the way we stopped at various places where I told a little…
READ MORE[NB – I have added now the suggestions of readers to create my final ten selections] I guess you know the movie The Bucket List. A couple of old guys make a list of things they’d love to do before they kick-the-bucket and off they go and do them. I guess you’ve seen the big…
READ MOREWhile on the subject of major influences in my life… Dave and Angie Andrews (based now in Brisbane) came to live with us in New Delhi when I was barely a teenager. They view my parents as kinda like surrogate parents so I guess that makes them kinda like surrogate siblings – and they’ve been…
READ MORE“God wants your being more than he wants your doing.”I heard it again last week – and it was one too many times. Sorry, folks – but that statement is a load of rubbish. I just do not know what New Testament these people are reading. Not only is the NT full of the importance…
READ MOREI am sitting in the departure lounge at Hong Kong airport reflecting on the privilege that is mine over these days. I’ve just had two days of listening to East Asian Christian leaders advise Langham’s international staff team on our work with them. [The bishop who habitually and quietly wipes the tables after each meal…
READ MOREThis year of 2009 has had some sad and unique features for me. I do not remember a year when I have known so many people struggling with cancer nor a year when I have known so many marriages under stress to the point of breaking apart. On the cancer front, my wife Barby attended…
READ MOREThis week I have been in Chiangmai at the OMF base for the Mekong Region. It is my first venture in my job with Langham Preaching, working to help pastors with their biblical preaching. As I have moved around this Mekong Center I have encountered plaques and pictures (under photos of heavily whiskered men, it…
READ MOREThe forecast was terrible. 80km winds and heavy rain. But we took the 4hr drive from Auckland anyway. State Highway 1 to Route 10. Then just past Kerikeri it is right onto Kapiro Rd and then left on to Purerua Rd and then finally another left onto Rangihoua Rd. A 25min walk down through a…
READ MOREWanting to keep in touch with people as my life faces a shift in focus, I have joined the social-networking site, Facebook. It gives you the opportunity to fill in a ‘Profile’ with one of the questions being ‘Religion’. What do I write? I am not sure ‘Christian’ is that helpful. The word is too…
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.