# Starting to Begin

I found myself sitting next to two pleasant young lawyers on a flight in the USA in 1989. When they told me that they were Baptists I asked them if they had read the book, “Twenty Hot Potatoes Christians are afraid to touch,” by Tony Campolo. Even though they said they hadn’t, I was so excited to be talking to two of the author’s fellow Baptists that I said, “The most interesting chapter, I think, is where he asked the…

My father was born in 1911. His school days were served at The Matata Convent School. He would often say that he went to school until Standard six. Which roughly translated, meant that he joined the workforce when becoming a teenager. His attitude towards Higher Education was typical of most working men of his time. Education was judged by its usefulness—that was it! Advanced education was, in his mind, only for Medical practitioners, Engineers that built dams and bridges, and…

If old age is called the ‘Golden years,’ then youth is aptly called the ‘Titanium years. ’Its hard to believe that during the years of the bubonic plague that many people didn’t live past thirty years old anyway. Youth was a luxury reserved for the offspring of the idle rich. Everyone else started work as soon as they were physically and mentally able. Today, you and I are likely to celebrate our eightieth birthdays in relatively good health. Youth disappears…

.”My first sermon may not be remembered by anyone else but me, but it did have some redeeming qualities: *It was mercifully brief. Only twenty minutes in length, it was easily fifteen minutes shorter than the average Sunday morning sermon of 1978. *It was extremely well rehearsed. I literally stood in the old Otumoetai church of Christ pulpit and repeatedly preached it to an empty auditorium in the dead of night. No ‘off-the cuff’ content included. *When I stood up…

Back in the mid-1980s Dan Martin invited me to write articles for his “Evangelism Dynamics” paper. An offer not made lightly. I appreciated the offer, but I had to decline. I didn’t tell him why, but he could probably tell by the look on my face—fear had gripped me. Apart from assignments at Bible College, I had not written an ‘article’ in my life. And even over the decades to come I would write but a few ‘Bulletin Articles.’ I…