suffering
It is often asserted that there were more martyrs for Jesus in the twentieth century than in all the other centuries combined. I thought I’d test out this assertion and see if is true – with my trusty The Future of the Global Church in hand. This book has this series of very cool facing pages…
READ MOREIt is a big day today. It is one year since my father died. Sometimes I wish I could rewind those final days, play them again, and slow them down. It is all such a blur. I had no idea that everything would happen so quickly. On a Friday we realised the end was coming. He…
READ MOREI have been thinking deep thoughts and feeling deep felts. There is Mary (not her real name). Mary and I worked together for seven years in a previous life. I think she would say that we were good friends. She had been a missionary overseas. There were little glimpses of life being difficult for her back then and…
READ MORELast night was a night to remember. Our son Stephen organised a knowledge-acquiring, fund-raising event focused on the DR of Congo. He has been in and out of the homes of about seven Congolese families in Auckland over recent months and they were well-represented at the event. Then there were church friends, members of the…
READ MOREOf all the Timothy Keller books which I have read, Generous Justice may well be his finest and most important. Keller’s very last sentence captures his purpose with the book: ‘A life poured out in doing justice for the poor is the inevitable sign of any real, true gospel faith.’ (189). There is something ever…
READ MOREDenver and Dayton will never again be the same for me. Yesterday – on the two hour flight from one to the other – I read (with Barby doing the same, over my shoulder!) through Charles & Joanne Hewlett’s Hurting Hope: what parents feel when their children suffer.. Here and there we shed a tear.…
READ MOREWho could ever have nightmared that in the very month of the 80th anniversary of the Napier earthquake, that nation-defining event, there could be the possibility of it being eclipsed by another quake further down the faultline? I find myself with God’s people in Sri Lanka – tsunami-land – and I have been touched by…
READ MORE10 June 1886Tarawera (eruption) 25 April 1915Gallipoli (war) 2 February 1931Napier (earthquake) 24 December 1953Tangiwai (lahar) 10 April 1968Wahine (cyclone) 28 November 1979Erebus (plane crash) 19 November 2010Pike River (mine explosion) Every decade or two New Zealand is hit with a deep sadness that adds to our self-understanding as a people. Our story can be…
READ MOREWhile in Vanuatu last week I read Miriam Adeney’s, Kingdom Without Borders: the untold story of global Christianity (IVP, 2009). If you love potted and inspiring stories, then this book is for you. [I can actually lose interest with stories and wander off as they are told – but not these ones!] If you want…
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I am a bit slow. The book was published fourteen years ago. I have heard so many people speak so enthusiastically about it. Finally, on a return trip to the UK (and with my first training visit to Cambodia with Langham Preaching later this month), I worked my way through Don Cormack’s Killing Fields, Living…
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.