travel
“One in six people in the world is Chinese, while one in six languages in the world is Melanesian.” This statement has always intrigued me. While it may not be strictly accurate, it certainly infers something surprising about Melanesia. It is a place that gathers an astonishing number of mother-tongue, or vernacular, languages. With this…
READ MORE
It wasn’t a great start. The queue zigged and zagged its way back out of the immigration room, up the ramp, and back into the air bridge attached to the plane. After negotiating the queue I made my way across to the Domestic Terminal, waiting patiently for my flight to Mt Hagen – only to…
READ MORE
When images like these ones went viral on the internet a year ago, my bucket-list had some serious adjustments made to it. “Some day I just have to go to this place.” It did not take long. On our return to South Asia a few weeks ago, I engineered a right hand turn at Singapore…
READ MORE[Added, 23/05/23: a Parihaka update—see below] I picked it up from someone else. I don’t remember who it was, but I am so grateful. It is now one of the most frequent pieces of advice that I pass on to others willing to listen. With the view that opposes your own, always paint it in…
READ MORE
I feel blessed, having just spent three different weeks doing three different things in three different parts of the M-world which speak three different languages. Given the concerns around security in these places, I’ll follow that grand tradition for people like me and express some dependency on images of sunrises and sunsets… Sunrise over Lake…
READ MOREIn the books I read sometimes I need to stop and ask Barby, “Can I read this aloud to you?” Like when Sanneh speaks of an African childhood: An African child hood such as mine was not littered with the kind of stimuli we associate with age-specific gadgets, including toys of every description and sophistication.…
READ MOREHearing Lamin Sanneh speak at a conference in 2006 became a pivotal moment in my life. This Professor of World Christianity – originally from The Gambia in West Africa, but finishing up at Yale University – was used by God to draw me into a fresh awareness and commitment to the global church which contributed to…
READ MOREI’ve been thinking a lot about flags and have come to some conclusions. In a church worship setting, the display of a solitary flag ‘up the front’ invites and condones idolatry. If God’s heart is for the nations of the world – and it is – and if his mission is to reach all of…
READ MOREIt won’t win an Oscar, but nor is it cringe Christian cinema. The Least of These is the story of the martyrdom of Graham Staines and his two boys, Philip and Timothy, and it is well worth watching. The decision to build the plot around a journalist, played convincingly by Sharman Joshi (of Bollywood’s The Three Idiots fame),…
READ MOREIn training preachers across cultures, it is often a struggle to translate the word manner. And yet the manner of the preacher is too important to overlook. One way forward is to see the sermon to be like a song, with both lyrics (what we say) and music (how we say it). Listeners decide whether…
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.