Jul
07
2014
"Christianity in Africa is a river one mile wide and one inch deep." So goes the popular saying. To put it another way: while half of Africa is professedly Christian, the quality of faith of most of those four...
Jun
07
2014
"A pastor needs to read," said one of my students recently. "But we don't have anything to read."
True enough. When students in the past left Zomba Theological College after their studies to take up congregations in the various synods...
May
05
2014
Last week as I walked through Zomba to the post office two men in front of me almost came to blows. Yelling, pushing, shaking fists, I couldn't make out a single word of their high-volume, rapid-fire Chichewa. But I...
Mar
22
2014
It was one of those days when Bible stories came alive around me. Sunday morning I was driving to a colleague’s congregation in the countryside outside Zomba. He had asked me to preach and celebrate the Lord’s Supper in...
Nov
30
2013
The view from our house in Zomba is so good it should make a missionary feel guilty. Perching like eagles at 1000 metres elevation, we look down upon the tail end of the Great Rift Valley, which runs down...
Jun
01
2013
Visiting a prison in Malawi is not a pleasant experience. I imagine the sense of confinement you feel when the iron gate clangs shut behind you, as well as the palpable frustration and despondency in the air is universal...
May
15
2013
Our four-year old son first spotted the snake from where he was sitting on the living room floor. “Daddy, there’s a dead snake on the khonde (porch),” Mio called out nonchalantly, then returned to his Duplo blocks. I wasn’t...
Feb
26
2013
It might have been the Holy Family that I saw. Just after Christmas our family was driving through one of the many villages lining the highway. Through my driver’s side window these villages look all alike: thatched huts, a...
