What are your three favourite pastimes?
Waterskiing, hanging out with my wife and boys, eating a meal with friends. Waterskiing.
What are your three favourite films?
Hard one to answer because the films that I have enjoyed the most can only be watched once because the twists no longer have any impact when you’ve seen them. “Spinal Tap”, “Shrek”, “Rock of Ages”.
What are your three favourite TV programmes?
“The West Wing”, “Hustle”, “Schitt’s Creek”
What are your three favourite pieces of music?
“Bad” – U2, “Lament”- Ultravox, a recent addition to my favourite ever songs – “Running” – by a Kiwi band called “Evermore”
What are your three favourite foods / drinks?
Bushmills 16 year old Triplewood Whiskey, Egg on sourdough with avocado, Goat’s Cheese, pear and fig salad with pinenuts and rocket. (man, I sound so middle class!)
What are your three favourite places you have been in the world?
Kruger Park in South Africa – for the constant feeling of danger and that you are the ones in the cage and the animals are wild!, Zimbabwe – especially, lake Kariba, Stewart Island, NZ – an island the size of London with 400 people there and the sense of being so untouched and unspoilt and as God made it to be.
What are your three most treasured memories? (not including wedding day as that is too cheesy)
The days my four boys were born; the day I first laid eyes on Georgina; Ole Gunnar Solskaer scoring in the last minute of injury time in the 1999 Champion’s League Final.
Okay, so I cheated! Sue me!
What are your three biggest regrets?
I never learned a foreign language. That my electric guitar and amp are in the loft and I am no longer gigging in a band. That I waited until my late twenties to actually start really playing any sport.
What three things have you seen, heard or experienced that have most shaped your ministry as it is?
Stuart Murray’s lecture on Christendom at Spurgeons College in November 1999 – it made me realise that the assumptions that I had about Jesus and the “gospel” were just not as they should be.
Dallas Willard’s talk on Atonement at a forum in Corona, California in April 2000 – it made me realise that my walk with Christ was not as it should be.
“Her Gates Will Never be Shut” by Brad Jersak – it just made sense and gave an understanding of eschatology that fits with the God we see in Jesus Christ. It feels like it completes the picture!
What three things do you want to achieve before you die?
I would like to become the person that Jesus would have me be.
I would like to see our church full of radical disciples, pursuing Christ and serving the poor and the lost and living in and demonstrating the reality of the kingdom of God.
I would like my sons to grow up to become the kind of men that Jesus would have them be.