John contributes in the following Venn contexts:
Dr. John Dennison was born in Sydney and grew up in Wellington. He studied English literature and Classics at Victoria University, before completing an M.A. in English and a Bachelor of Theology at the University of Otago. Responding to a strong sense of calling to serve God in the university, he completed a Ph.D. at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. That research resulted in a book on the poetics of Irish poet Seamus Heaney, published by Oxford University Press. In 2012 John joined the Anglican Chaplaincy at Victoria University as a lay chaplain, where he had a particular responsibility for the mission to university staff. He then served as Supervising Chaplain from 2019 to 2021.
John joined the Venn team as a Senior Teaching Fellow in 2015. In March 2021 he became Director of Resources, overseeing new initiatives in digital and print. Much of John’s work reflects his deep desire to see others flourish in their life with God, and in their giftings. He regularly teaches on the place of prayer in everyday life and work, and is passionate about creating new resources which will open people’s lives more completely to God’s purposes. John is the editor of Common Ground, Venn’s digital magazine, and is always keen to engage with new and established writers.
Central to John’s calling is his life as a maker, whether that be gardening, working at his carpentry bench, or writing another poem. His first full-length collection of poems, Otherwise (Carcanet/Auckland University Press), was long-listed for the 2016 New Zealand Book Awards and short-listed for the 2017 Michael Murphy Poetry Prize. He is married to Jannah, and they have three sons, Theo, Emmaus, and Blythe.
We’re in Advent, the great front porch of the Christian year, a movement into the bright hallway of God’s purposes fulfilled in Jesus. It’s a joyous time...
In July this year, after a long struggle with illness, our neighbour and friend passed away. She was, as they say, a character; over the preceding eight years...
Joyful in hope. This has to be one of the strangest things about Christians. Followers of Jesus are enduringly hopeful.
In another life, I briefly taught creative writing. We didn’t get off to a promising start: they were undergraduate Communications students, with a large sense of self and little deep experience of life.
Andrew Das is a medical researcher working in the field of cancer biology. He lives with his wife Rachel and their two sons in Melbourne. Here he shares something of his story.
Chloe Williams and Andy Campbell are members of Saint Augustine’s Music, a collective of songwriters, musicians, theologians, and creatives based in Auckland. Here they talk about collaborative process, about God’s work in and through their music, and about their latest EP Death Is Not The End.
There is, let’s say, a difference between knowing about God and knowing God firsthand. It’s possible to have a lot of theology under your belt, to have a good bit of God-theory, and still not know God in your bones.
Dr Pauline Simonsen is Dean of Emmaus Bible College in Palmerston North. A gifted teacher and leader, she’s also a spiritual director.
We asked three people who recently attended Venn’s 2025 Summer Conference to reflect on how they’ve found themselves being drawn deeper into life with Jesus Christ—what’s changed, what life with God is like, and what they long for now.
Dan Sheed is the founding co-pastor of Central Vineyard Church in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. He recently released a new book, Drift No More: An Exploration of Tethered Faith.
The Church is a morning people, a people of Advent. They’re those who understand that, as the Apostle Paul puts it: “the night is nearly over; the day is almost here”.
At Advent we’re reminded that the gates of history stand open, that the darkness of these days is not increasing but diminishing—its tide on the ebb.
Annette McHugh lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney with her husband Rohan and their two boys. With extensive experience of working in and around government, she currently works in the not-for-profit sector.
John helps us to see why celebration is such a distinctive of the Church. Indeed, Christian celebration is a spiritual discipline, a habit of God’s people regardless of what is happening in the world around.
If there is one simple conviction that animates the mission of Venn, it is the confidence that the news of God’s reconciling work through Jesus Christ is good.
Gina Wong lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara with her husband Koryn. She’s a Community Innovation Worker and an Elder at Lifepoint Church—she’s also a first-class sourdough baker. Here, she talks to John about her life and journey with God, and how she came to be involved in work focussed on food, cultivation, and flourishing communities
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Zacchaeus. You know: tax collector of modest stature, loves climbing trees, face a bit pinched, eyes too close together.
To begin with a commonplace, we (still) find ourselves living at the intersection of a number of large crises.
Te Karere Scarborough (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hauā) is Tumuaki/Co-Principal of Te Wānanga Ihorangi.
Theologian Ephraim Radner is Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto. His work is deeply shaped by experiences...
My life as an artist (a bit like you with your painting, I began writing poetry in my late teens) has been marked by an ongoing conversation with myself and others about art: what it is, what I think I’m doing, and what we should be aiming for (authenticity? the recognition of others? social transformation? just making something beautiful?).
Common Ground emerged out of a desire to encourage our readers in the call to live faithfully and wisely, with joy and well-formed intention, to God’s glory.
Sometimes life with God invites us to think about the highest things, about the depths of divine purpose—the resurrection, say. But most often, we’re rightly preoccupied what you could call the mysteries of everyday life.
It’s Eastertide, the season of new life, the season where the Church learns anew to live in light of Christ’s victory over death. For those of us who follow a liturgy, we find praises voiced at the end of every prayer—we’re practically swimming in hallelujahs.
All the world over, wherever God by his Spirit has made people his dwelling place you will find lives resounding with song. Christians sing: when they gather; when they worship; in the morning; in the dark places of the world—they’re always singing.
“God’s got a plan.” That’s one way of summarising Murray Edridge’s testimony on his career.
On the night before his execution, Jesus took off his outer garment and wrapped a towel around his waist. John (in 13:3) writes that “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.”
Spring is near. In my garden, the bulbs are up and waving, and the ngaio is getting ready for another boost. Down the valley, another massive slip is blocking the road after torrential rain.
“Just say that again?” My interest had been piqued. At ease on the couch at the university chaplaincy, my colleague from the counselling service repeated the anecdote: “We’re finding students coming to us saying they feel bad—they feel bad when they’re not working or studying. They somehow feel resting is wrong.”
On the face of it, it seems disappointing—maybe slightly boring—that nothing less than God’s redemption should be framed by a call to humble rest and quiet trust.
The prophet Jeremiah has been on my mind recently. To say he lived in tumultuous times is, well, an understatement, so he is comforting company at the moment.
First published in May 2020, we’ve returned in recent days to this article about the practice of intercession. As we’ve watched events unfold at home and in Ukraine, and as Aotearoa, New Zealand experiences the direct impact of COVID-19, many of you will have found yourselves overshadowed, and heavy of heart.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Frodo’s remark feels more than a little contemporary. The happenings of his time are bad, and he frets at the way the path of his life is taking a sudden turn. “So do I,” sympathises Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
It wasn’t my best work. Loosely stacked in three-line stanzas, any punctuation replaced by large toothless gaps between the clauses, the poem was as awkward as it was exuberant. My lecturer’s question was gently put but pointed enough: “John,” he said, “Don’t you think you can have too much joy?”
In the past year, many of us will have spent more time at home than in any other context. With the impact of lockdowns and altered work patterns, how we think and feel about “home” has become—let’s say—layered and complex, as comfort is tainted by cabin fever and as our settled places are shaken.
It’s been some time now I’ve found myself looking out the window. I come each morning to the task of prayer, kneeling before a window that looks onto the back garden.
“Who are the friends you’re with as you’re learning?” my Professor friend asked me. I paused, mumbled a few names of close friends, then trailed off.
Sarah Askey is a Conservator for the National Library, specialising in books and paper. She works at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.
In 1817, Percy Shelley penned his poem, “Ozymandias,” a meditation on the greatness of human work that is as pointed as it is brief.
What is good work, really? Is my 9-5 job of interest to God, or is it just a way to support mission and put something in the offering bag each Sunday?
How’s work going?’ The question sounds innocuous, on a par with ‘how’s the weekend?’, ‘how’s the family?’. But, breezy answers aside, any consideration of the state of our working lives is frequently complex.
Over a year ago, as New Zealand went into the first lockdown, Venn launched Common Ground.
In tumultous times, we often come to a moment when we pause and look around.
Holy Week is marked by many practices that enable us to remember and have our lives shaped by its events, from fasting to foot washing and from the Stations of the Cross to meditation on Christ’s final words.
Self-made, perhaps; definitely wealthy,
with a seat on the council, and a plot set aside on the hill;
but when it came to it, Joseph of Arimathea
So much is known, and is beyond us still:
leave we must, beloved, until
we are gone from here, and the tree hangs
its empty nests for longer than it takes
For their death read your death;
for I had always read I always;
for nothing that read nothing can;
for moon read mourn;
He is alone.
The Easter moon,
its sheer, unguarded face, floods
the underneath of everything
in the park with darkness.
Ping -“Bear hunts and 49 other things to do with your kids during lockdown.” Ping – “Pro baking for young cooks in lockdown!” Ping – “Whistling while we work: making menial household drudgery fun for your kids!”
One of the very challenging things about anxiety is the way it can shut us inside ourselves: preoccupied with one or other matter over which we have only limited control, we move inwards, turning the problem over and over.