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As I write, India and New Zealand are battling it out in a cricket Test match in Christchurch. When this happens, it doesn’t take much to transport me back to my childhood in India and the way it gave me my love for the game. Although we moved to India when I was 3 years…
READ MOREOne of the best and most basic models for training preachers is The Five Looks, devised by Andrew Reid: Look Up (in prayer and faith); Look Down (in exegesis); Look Back and Forward (with biblical theology); and Look Here (in application). In our Langham training this model is often used to help develop sermons which target three criteria:…
READ MOREDalrymple, google maps, and wikipedia have become such a happy triumvirate in my life. Because of it, his books take so long to read, especially this one where he traces the journey of a Byzantine monk through Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt: From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium…
READ MOREIsn’t it great when a vision comes together? For a few weeks I’ve had my eye on framing these two photos and then keeping them near each other. On Sunday, the deed was done. I am a happy chappy. May I tell you about them? Like the stereotypical preacher, I’ll use a few few words…
READ MOREIt happens every now and then. Some jolly person bounces up to me and exclaims, ‘I was in your class thirty years ago.’ It is nice, even humbling. Deeper down, however, in a silent space, there is a shudder going on: ‘Ugh, I wonder what that course was like way back then?’. This is because I…
READ MOREEvery aspiring cricket player, at some point in their career, ends up playing Monopoly with the Australian commentators, hearing them say either ‘Send to Jail’ or ‘Pass Go and Collect $200’, as they survey the player’s talent. In the years of Richie Benaud & Bill Lawry, not only were these guys so informed about the…
READ MOREIndia & Burma. 1793 & 1813. English & American. Serampore & Moulmein (or, more accurately, Srirampur & Mawlamyine). Baptist & Baptist. William Carey & Adoniram Judson (even with plaques next to each other at Carey Baptist Church in Kolkata). Famous names in our upbringing, especially for Barby, whose brother-in-law (Dale) is a direct descendent of…
READ MOREThe primary reason for our visit to Mawlamyine was to discover the sites related to the work of Adoniram Judson and the early Baptist m-workers from the USA. They arrived with the gospel in 1813, just a few months before Samuel Marsden landed in New Zealand, with the same good news. The quality of the…
READ MOREI am sitting in the Cinderella Hotel in Mawlamyine (formerly Moulmein, in Myanmar), racing through a biography of Adoniram Judson, and I encounter this paragraph: Scattered around Moulmein are many Baptist churches and schools. Those schools, built and run by missionaries for more than a hundred years, are now nationalized. The government has taken over…
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It may not roll off the tongue quite like ‘two weddings and a funeral’, but with our holiday into a new part of India (for us), we were captivated by two cities and a mountain. We knew about the two cities beforehand. Afterall we had to make travel and hotel bookings. But we did…
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.