Mark Minnick on Mark Dever

For several years, the best part of Frontline Magazine, a publication of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, has been columns by Sam Horn and Mark Minnick in the central supplementary "Sound Words" section. Here's a snippet by Minnick from the Jan/Feb 2008 issue:

In connection with a series last year on the church, I read 9 Marks of a Healthy Church (Crossway Books, 2004) and The Deliberate Church (Crossway Books, 2005) by Mark Dever. Dever pastors Capital [sic] Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and has shown the courage to depart from much that has been merely traditional in church ministry for the sake of attempting to forge a theology of Biblical ministry. He's a Southern Baptist with almost no exposure to Fundamentalism but with many Fundamentalist instincts. If you're not familiar with his website, www.9marks.org, you might want to take a look at it, especially the interviews section, which consists of downloadable informal discussions with many current Evangelical leaders about a wide range of contemporary issues.

Another impacting book on the church is Josh Harris's Stop Dating the Church (Multnomah, 2004). It's the book you'd like to give to every attender who won't join, but may not dare to. Still, maybe if you just left it lying around . . .