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It is one of the most eloquent of all Christian truths – the imago dei. Human beings are made in the image of God. There is a God-likeness about us which grants every person a dignity. ‘Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness’ (Gen 1.27). Imagine what the world would be…
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It is often asserted that there were more martyrs for Jesus in the twentieth century than in all the other centuries combined. I thought I’d test out this assertion and see if is true – with my trusty The Future of the Global Church in hand. This book has this series of very cool facing pages…
READ MOREI thought Michelle Obama’s speech yesterday was sensational. The words, the imagery, the warmth, the emotion – and the conviction. It was compelling. But I am not dumb. I know what’s going on. The implicit barbs, dozens of them, aimed at Romney and his friends. The explicit, even desperate, attempt to have the American people…
READ MOREI am in the happy position of having a 19 year old son recommending a Tim Keller book to me. I’m blessed and I know it (ah yes, that reminds me of a song – but we won’t go there). On Joseph’s recommendation, I ordered and read Keller’s The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. It is a…
READ MOREThe New Zealand cricket team is at an all-time low, so I thought I’d try to turn myself into a big rugby fan – and stopped by Bob Howitt’s Graham Henry: Final Word (Harper Collins, 2012) for a read. It is not a classic and I managed to race through it on a return flight to Dunedin…
READ MOREIt is a big day today. It is one year since my father died. Sometimes I wish I could rewind those final days, play them again, and slow them down. It is all such a blur. I had no idea that everything would happen so quickly. On a Friday we realised the end was coming. He…
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I enjoy sport and so there is no time quite like the Olympics. But I am also a Christian wanting to participate in the mission of God in the world. I try to watch the Olympics with other eyes… Watch the Flags—and intercede With the incomparable Operation World alongside, an anthem here and a flag…
READ MOREI have been a closet-anglican and a small-b-baptist pretty much all my Christian life. But it is my love of being interdenominational, international … and interserve (the mission family in which I grew up, known back then as bmmf) that has pretty much trumped everything else. But God has a sense of humour. He called…
READ MOREToday is our 30th wedding anniversary… Barby and I met before we can remember. The year was 1963. The setting was probably a church creche in the Himalayan hill-station of Mussoorie. I may have pinched her, making her cry, and have spent the rest of my life trying to put things right. Her dad was…
READ MOREOn a series of recent flights, I enjoyed the opportunity to engage with DA Carson’s latest book, The Intolerance of Tolerance. His central premise is that the word ‘tolerance’ has become slippery and changed its meaning over time. There is an old tolerance (which is good) and a new tolerance (which is bad). Carson circles around this distinction,…
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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.