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They even looked a bit alike. They were even diagnosed with cancer at about the same time. And now they have both died, just 11 months apart from each other. Having both enriched my life in such different ways, I took such delight in knowing that there was that day when they met each other,…
READ MORESix years ago I published my first ‘prw cricket rankings‘. With six of the eight nations playing each other at the moment and the Twenty20 World Cup around the corner, it seems a good time for an update. These are rankings with a difference. Highly and intentionally subjective. As a cricket fan, it doesn’t matter…
READ MOREA couple of weeks ago I shared my admiration for the person and ministry of Charles Simeon, reawakened by a book that I had read. This renewed a conversation with Mark Meynell, the leader of our ministry in Europe & the Caribbean – and in the recent past, a member of the pastoral team at All…
READ MOREDenzel (Washington) made me do it. The other night he pushed me over the edge. Here I sit, still recovering from the Fast & Furious family saying grace around the table at the end of a movie of excessive violence, destruction and abuse, and now … there sits Denzel. Struggling with alcoholism, there is this touching…
READ MORECharles Simeon was a big part of my life through my twenties. Like many before me, I was introduced to him in the writings of John Stott, a man who lived his life with a similar symmetry more than a century later. As a young pastor I read the biographies, capturing numerous illustrations on my…
READ MOREA day to remember in Yangon. A visit to the family homes of two great leaders of the twentieth century: General Aung San and Secretary-General U Thant. General Aung San is the father of the nation – and the father of Aung Sang Suu Kyi, whose party is soon to assume political power, as the…
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Corruption. Prosperity teaching. ‘Big Man’ leadership. The evil trio. The devil’s trinity. Everywhere I go in this job, it does not take long for these three to surface in the conversation. I am just home from a visit to Ghana, and the combo was present there, too. It started at the airport, on arrival in…
READ MORENot so long ago, Barby and I had a pretty typical weekend in Bangalore. On the Saturday, Barby and I wandered through the local shopping area. She is dressed in salwar kameez (and I am occasionally wearing a kurta). As we wander, it is hard not to notice the many Indians, young adults and young families,…
READ MOREBarby and I have just returned to India – after thirty days in New Zealand (over Christmas) where we engaged some Kiwi beauty: in creation and in grandchildren. The beauty of creation: The beauty of grandchildren: nice viewing Paul
READ MOREAtul Gawande’s Being Mortal takes me back to grace and truth. The author is concerned that we lack ‘a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, (as) we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers’ (9). Drawing a little on…
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.