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This is my final day of some consultancy work in Hyderabad with leaders at Ashirwad (Seva Bharat) – which means, literally, ‘Blessing (Serve India)’. What a place! As I enter the main gates, I am drawn into Genesis One: I walk a little further down to the left and find myself arrested by Genesis Three:…
READ MOREWith all the fire and fury, shock and shame, filling the headlines coming out of the USA these days, it is easy to forget that over there, in the footnotes, there are so many tender, inspirational stories. I’ve loved living in two of them in recent months – both related to the game of basketball…
READ MOREA verandah with a view. A lake in the foreground. A mountain in the background. It was perfect. For six consecutive mornings, I rose early at Lake Toba, opened my Bible and my books – and waited for the dawn to come. The transition from darkness to light is often used as a picture of…
READ MOREAmateur sociologists and historians (like me) tend to be aware of two contrasting realities, spread two millennia apart. In the Western world of the twenty-first century, study after study demonstrates that it is difficult to distinguish the behaviour of a Christian from the behaviour of one who is not a Christian. It is not easy…
READ MOREThe critics tend to hate it, but then I’m not one to let Rotten Tomatoes tell me what to think. Those who lived through the events tend to be annoyed by it – but then don’t they see that the ‘based on actual events’ is modified even further by ‘this story imagines’ those events? All I can…
READ MOREIn my childhood the home was filled with the sound of music. My father was a child prodigy on the piano who later added a celebrated baritone voice to his repertoire. His mother kept scrapbook upon scrapbook of his achievements in music. Flicking through them as a child, I suspect intimidation mingled with admiration more…
READ MOREEarlier this month, the phrase ‘fake news’ was named by the Collins Dictionary as its Word of the Year in 2017. [Dictionaries are clearly specialists in words, not numbers – because ‘fake news’ is actually two words, not one!]. They define the phrase as ‘false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of reporting.’ Two months ago,…
READ MOREMartin Luther bobbleheads. Happy Reformation Day parties. The myriad of memes dealing with either hammers, or theses, or doors. A Halloween alternative? Goodness me, I’m glad we’ve got beyond this silly season. Don’t get me wrong. I’m so grateful to be living this side of the Reformation. I believe the sola-stuff with all that I…
READ MORESadness and grief at-a-distance carries its challenges. Two years ago it was cancer that took the life of my best buddy from childhood – as well as being Best Man at each other’s weddings. This past week it was the death of Denise (once again to cancer), a precious friend and mentor whose orbit of…
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.