Born in Horsforth, West Yorkshire, he was educated at Bradford Grammar School and The Queen's College, Oxford, where he read Classics and Modern History. After a year as a teacher in Sierra Leone and another teaching in Birmingham, he studied for the ministry at Wesley House, Cambridge, 1969-1971, and was then stationed as Assistant Tutor at Wesley College Bristol. He served in the Oxford Circuit, 1973-1977, before being appointed as Ecumenical Lecturer in New Testament at The Bishop's Hostel, Lincoln, 1977-1981. After serving in the Manchester and Salford Mission, with responsibility for student chaplaincy, he was appointed as Tutor in New Testament Studies at Wesley College, Bristol in 1984, becoming Principal in 1995. He served as superintendent of the Leeds North-East Circuit, 2001-2007, before becoming a Research Fellow at The Queen's Foundation, Birmingham in 2007 and supernumerary in 2008. In addition to an MA from Oxford and a BA from Cambridge he gained from Bristol University an MLitt in 1977 and a PhD in 1992. He was elected President of the Conference in 2003-4.
He was a member of the British Methodist-Roman Catholic Committee 1978-97 and Co-Chair from 2008, was a Methodist participant in the Formal Conversations leading to the Anglican-Methodist Covenant, 1998-2001, a member, and later Chair, of the European Methodist Theological Commission, 1994-2000, convenor of the working party responsible for the 1995 Conference Statement 'Called to Love and Praise', and Secretary of the British World Methodist Committee 2000-2003. A long-distance runner, he was the first United Kingdom national church leader to run in the London Marathon while in office (2004).
His Peake Memorial Lecture in 1995 was on 'Biblical Interpretation and Christian Experience'. He has also published: Was Jesus Divine? (1979), The Panorama of Luke (1982), Preaching from Scripture (1983), Paul's Language About God (1994), God in the New Testament (1999), Paul for Today (2008).
Methodist Recorder, 19 June 2003