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Every post seems important to me at the time. Otherwise I wouldn’t write it. But trawling through all 400 to select a group that seem to be ‘most important’ now is difficult. So I’ve settled on two categories (only using posts unmentioned in earlier first elevens): (a) ‘most important’; but also (b) ‘most ignored’, which…
READ MORESome posts are more enjoyable to write than others. Not always sure why. Probably a bit more creativity and cultural exegesis at work. I love working in that world. Juxtaposition flips my switch. Often the wave is building in my mind for some months and when it crashes to shore in a post which is…
READ MOREI don’t review every book that I read – but still this blog has accumulated 79 book reviews. I’ve settled on choosing ones in which I have lived the most – and then influenced the most. So, for example, there is no room for Stuart Lange’s A Rising Tide which within ten hours of being…
READ MOREEight years of blogging. This is my 400th post. I love blogging. My friend, Mike Crudge, was the one who suggested it to me. [NB: Mike has recently followed that advice himself, with his own blog here]. Mike was right. It suits me. It is the most energizing thing I do, often early on a Sunday…
READ MORE‘We do not care about a strange war fought by black people somewhere in the middle of Africa’ (334). So writes Jason Stearns in Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (2012). It is hard to argue with him. Truth be told, I don’t expect many of you to go on and finish this post. Built…
READ MOREA year is a long time in sports… One year ago NZ cricket was mired in a mess. The sacking of Ross Taylor as captain was a case study on how not to do it. It was appalling. Someone should have been sacked. I don’t argue with the outcome, as I was one who thought…
READ MOREThis is our one hundredth day living back in India, the land of our childhood. The joys, the frustrations – and the conversations – have not changed much over the decades. Once again Barby and I find ourselves talking a lot about how to live alongside the poor. While it is not the daily ‘in…
READ MOREI’ve been exegeting Sachin’s retirement speech. It provides such insight into an Indian worldview, often so different from those ones associated with ‘the West’. A full text of the speech can be found here. [NB: For those who may be unaware (!), ‘Sachin’ refers to Sachin Tendulkar. His name has the fame that ‘Roger’ has with…
READ MOREHi, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where you are. But I do know that there are heaps of you out there and I find myself thinking about you a lot. So much so that I thought I’d write you a letter. First let me try to ensure that we are talking…
READ MOREI have often given the advice that the way to cope with big bureaucracy in India is to adopt the gait and manner of the big animals in India – elephant, camel and buffalo. Steady. Unruffled. Metronomic. Here was my chance to prove it. Our shipment of goods from New Zealand (mainly my books) are…
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.