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These bush fires in Australia have got me thinking about the weather… But I need to reveal my hand a bit at the start. My teenage years were based in New Delhi where I have sat inside – with the only activity being the beating of my heart – and watched the sweat drop off…
READ MOREHelp me out here. This is a serious question. “What is one single redeeming feature of alcohol consumption?” Here is how I see it…The downsides of alcohol consumption are understated. Just scratch the bad stories in the newspaper and the neighborhood a little. Again and again and again the worst evils in our society have…
READ MOREI am aware of so many people heading off on mission trips this summer. I could name half a dozen such (ad)ventures in the making… I have a question. How do these mission trips becoming something more than mere Christian tourism? For me it is all about stones and sponges… As we throw ourselves into…
READ MOREIt is such an apt image: ‘fallen’ … stumbling, grazing, bruising, hurting, slipping. The ‘evangelical’ world in the USA has been shocked in this past week by the fall of one of its leaders(Ted Haggard). It is tragic – particularly for his wife and his children. The last time this happened with someone of such…
READ MOREThe statement has come across my desk again today. Gee – it winds me up! “Today’s generation hears with their eyes and thinks with their emotions.” Then the argument usually goes on to speak of the need for far more visual content in our communication (because people hear with their eyes) and far more story…
READ MORERecently I heard it yet again…A person in pain. A person stumbling through a ‘dark night of the soul’. Things are bleak. And this person is told that their faith is too frail. It is too fragile. ‘You need a stronger faith’. I am not convinced. That is cruel. It is unkind. It is bad…
READ MOREYes – it is a mouthful. [It is a play on a famous article entitled ‘the unbearable lightness of being postmodern’]. I am trying to express an alarm over something which restricts the reach of God’s mission in the world through us. What is it? It is the hold which disjunctive thinking can have over…
READ MOREIn response to a posting on 18 April (‘the doors’), Stephen Garner commented on some research that points to ‘moralistic therapeutic deism’ (MTD) being the religion of younger Christian people today. I’ve been a bit distracted by this research all year! In a nutshell – this is what is meant by MTD: “Good, kind, nice…
READ MOREExactly 40 years ago – and I mean to the very minute – people all over London were heading for the Underground to make their way to Central Hall, Westminster. 18 October 1966. What transpired that night is a ‘defining moment’ in post-War British evangelicalism. Now, now … don’t close this window quite yet?! Stick…
READ MOREThe comment which provoked the most response while teaching in Zambia was when we came to the ‘submission’ passages in 1 Peter 2:11-3:7 and I suggested that we needed to avoid two errors: (a) the ‘cut and paste’ errorThis occurs when we ‘cut’ these verses out of the context of this letter and the occasion…
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.