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Looking at endless photos of other peoples’ rocks and ruins trends towards total boredom for me. They put me to sleep as quickly as the arrival of the evening hour following a nap-less afternoon. After meetings in Antalya (Turkey), Barby and I were blessed to be able to visit the Seven Churches of Revelation with…
READ MORE“It wouldn’t take much to draw me back into being a pastor again”.As a student, I heard Dr DA Carson make this comment. I’ve heard him say it a few more times in the subsequent decades. It impacts me. Still does. Why would an academic of this quality make such a statement? I daren’t speak…
READ MOREI love the local church but I do not often love the local church’s mission statement. Lots of reasons. Here are two. The mission statement seems to owe more to the corporate world, than the biblical world. It is part of the response to this chronic fear that the local church might be slipping out-of-date…
READ MORE‘An emphasis in the teacher easily becomes an extreme in the student.’ This dictum comes to mind with the Reformed movement. While it is enjoying a global resurgence, there are a lot of ‘students’ running around out there, narrowing it all down to election and predestination with their ‘full of truth, empty of grace’ attitude.…
READ MOREI travel a lot in my work. On those occasions when there is time to be a tourist for a day here and there, usually when Barby is with me, an odd pattern has developed. I find that books like Lonely Planet are more meaningful after I have visited a place, rather than before the visit. I don’t…
READ MOREThere are a host of hymns that I have only ever sung in public worship when I have selected them. And that was mostly when I was a young pastor all those years ago. Horatius Bonar (1808 – 1889) When I found my heart growing cold – or even drifting a bit – I had…
READ MORESometimes a page is difficult to turn. Like this one. It lists most of the names of those who died in a massacre of 159 missionaries over a few weeks in the summer of 1900 in ‘Shansi’. The right hand side contains the names of those who died from the China Inland Mission, known today…
READ MOREIt is the story of the greatest military failure for any colonial power in the nineteenth century. … a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed it, or…
READ MORETrip Advisor rates it 22nd in their latest ‘best beaches in the world’ list, 3rd in Asia and ahead of anything in Australia and New Zealand (hmmm?!) – but we didn’t know that until after we arrived here for a few days away together. It is Agonda Beach in Goa – and it is spectacular. Here…
READ MOREIn my first post, over ten years ago, I laid claim to a 30:30:30:10 identity (India:USA:NZ:Southland (NZ)). Each of these worlds has shaped me. Because of this I tend to claim some right, even responsibility, to wade into these worlds and reflect on them critically. Right now I am as concerned for the church in…
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.