Posts by Mark Minnick
What’s an Evangelical to Do? (3)
Mark Minnick FrontLine • September/October 2008 Part 1 ♦ Part 2 Resurrecting the Question The last week’s column began discussing a persistent problem confronting conservative Evangelicals: How should they to respond to unorthodox “Evangelicals”? A case in point is their position toward British theologian N. T. Wright. Wright insists that almost all Christians for the…
Read MoreWhat’s an Evangelical to Do? (2)
Mark Minnick Yesterday we ran part 1 of this article. It closed with these words: There are some counterfeits that you can’t detect over lunch, but you can when you hear them preach or if you spend a little time circulating inside their ministries. But from the passage it appears that there’s also a kind…
Read MoreWhat’s an Evangelical to Do? (1)
Mark Minnick In 1989 the National Association of Evangelicals, together with Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, sponsored a four-day conference for over 650 Evangelical scholars, pastors, and leaders. The purpose was to discuss which truths of the historic Christian faith that a person must affirm in order to be termed an “Evangelical.” Plenary speakers and respondents…
Read MoreTruth through Personality (2)
Mark Minnick Yesterday we began an article by Dr. Minnick which introduced the lectures of Phillips Brooks on preaching. This article is an edited version of Brooks’ first lecture. The key idea of preaching, in Brooks’ terminology, is found in our title, “Truth through Personality.” Part One introduced these two components of preaching and then…
Read MoreTruth through Personality (1)
Mark Minnick One of the striking anomalies of church history is that God sometimes uses even unorthodox preachers to throw brilliant light on sacred subjects. A case in point is the 19th-century Episcopalian minister Phillips Brooks. Brooks considered himself an evangelical and even led in prayer during a series of evangelistic meetings held in Boston…
Read MoreThe Preacher’s Charge Defined
Mark Minnick Nearly every preacher has his favorite definition of preaching. A thoroughly Biblical one comes from the phrase “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2). Taken literally, the expression might be explained as “heralding what God has already said.” Although “what God has already said” is not an exact translation of logos (the Greek term…
Read MoreWould You Like Some Wise Counsel? (2)
Mark Minnick Yesterday’s introduction: Every pastor occasionally feels the need for wise counsel. Unfortunately, he’s not always able to get it from a busy contemporary. But happily I’ve discovered that it’s often available at my leisure on the shelves of my library. For instance, how about an hour or so with John Newton?
Read MoreWould You Like Some Wise Counsel? (1)
Mark Minnick Every pastor occasionally feels the need for wise counsel. Unfortunately, he’s not always able to get it from a busy contemporary. But happily I’ve discovered that it’s often available at my leisure on the shelves of my library. For instance, how about an hour or so with John Newton?
Read MoreWorth Reading — The Christian Ministry
Charles Bridges’ The Christian Ministry Mark Minnick In 1839, a saintly young Scottish pastor named Robert Murray M’Cheyne took up his pen to write to his dear friend, Andrew Bonar, about a trip to the Holy Land. The purpose of the six-month visit was to inquire into the state of the Jews in the hopes…
Read MoreStubborn, Ceaseless Civil War (2)
Mark Minnick In Part One, Dr. Minnick writes to us of the struggle of the spiritual life, instructing us of the Nature of the struggle and assuring us of the Normalcy of the struggle. The Enormity of This Struggle Though everything described thus far is the normal experience of all Christians, it isn’t their experience…
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