September 14, 2024
Today I am celebrating my 75 years of pilgrimage on this planet with my family on a sailing outing. Our vessel is the 125-year old tjalk, or sailing barge, appropriately-named Jacobsschelp. For the ‘St James shell’ or scallop is the symbol of the popular Camino pilgrimage converging on the tomb of the Apostle James […]
September 8, 2024
September 7, 2024
We are privileged to be witnessing the greatest transition in world mission ever in history. The gospel is exploding in the Majority World. Missionaries from countries closed to the gospel when I was born, exactly 75 years ago today, are going to the least, the last and the lost in every corner of the world. […]
August 31, 2024
‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go.’ This verse from Hebrews 11:8 was foremost in my mind half a century ago as I left New Zealand for the first time. […]
August 24, 2024
Superhuman efforts by the some of the world’s fittest and ablest bodies riveted our attention on the Paris Olympic Games in recent weeks. These coming days, the Paralympic Games will bring us more athletic feats, this time performed by the heroic efforts of those overcoming disabilities. They are declaring to the world that social value and […]
August 17, 2024
My first encounter with Amsterdam, fifty years ago this week, was shrouded in confusion. I was on my way to the first of several concerts in the city with the Shekinah Company of some sixty singers, dancers and musicians, of which I was manager. We had just completed a concert tour in England from York […]
August 10, 2024
Competing at the Olympics is like experiencing ten funerals for every wedding. Every one person’s victory is at the expense of many others’ agony of defeat. So writes Ashley Null, chaplain to elite athletes and coaches, who also is an Anglican priest and an academic. The following letter to the Olympians is taken from his […]
August 3, 2024
The small Saxon town of Herrnhut close to the German-Polish border has been recognised as a World Heritage Site, along with two other Moravian settlements planted from Herrnhut in the 18th century in Northern Ireland and Pennsylvania, USA. This was announced a few days ago at the meeting of the UN Educational, Scientific, Cultural and […]
July 27, 2024
Behind the spectacle of the 2024 Olympic Games now underway across Paris, thousands of young Catholics and evangelicals from around the world are engaging in evangelism and cultural activities among the expected 11 million visitors. Alongside activities organised by Youth With A Mission and other movements, eight Catholic dioceses and 70 parishes are collaborating in […]
July 20, 2024
Ten years ago last Wednesday, July 17, a Russian BUK missile launched by Russian-backed rebels shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine killing 298 passengers and crew. Including 80 children. The pain, loss, confusion and anger felt by families and friends, especially of the 196 Dutch victims, was shared with the broader Dutch public […]
July 13, 2024
We Westerners, who have only known the seventy years of peace sustained by the international order ushered in after World War Two, know little of the anxiety and fear Ukrainians and others in war zones experience daily. Horrific reports of the cruel Russian attacks on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv just a few days […]
July 6, 2024
Bucking the current European trends towards the far-right, the British have delivered a landslide victory to the traditionally left Labour Party. ‘KEIR WE GO!’ announced the Daily Mirror in large capital letters against a full front-page photo of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria. The new occupants of 10 Downing Street […]
