español 9Marks Explained : A Letter From Mark Dever

Mike GilbartSmith

Blog posts by Mike GilbartSmith:

Who else but the pastor teacher?

By Mike GilbartSmith | 11.16.2011

25 Years ago Dick Lucas sent out a letter to those who had attended the annual pastors' meeting that has now become the Evangelical Ministers' Assembly here in London.

Reflecting on these words from Charles Simeon to a friend on the occasion of his ordination,

When did baptists become paedobaptists? 9 reasons why we shouldn't baptise young children even if they profess faith.

By Mike GilbartSmith | 3.1.2011

(I've revised this to try to be more concilliatory and show my reasoning from Scripture more. Thanks for comments that pointed out that my post had not been very humble. I'm attempting to be provocative (I genuinely think this is an important topic where we may be putting unecessary burdens on children). I hope also to be gracious.)

Encouraging humility from one of the great preachers of the 20th Century

By Mike GilbartSmith | 2.2.2011

In preparing for a preachers' class tonight, I was reviewing some material from Stott's excellent,"Between Two Worlds"

This is how he begins....

Matthias, You I want to thank for your Yoda-blog.

By Mike GilbartSmith | 12.21.2010

Matthias, 

I don't know if you've realised that by blogging through the whole bible, you have created the first commentary on the whole bible in Yoda-speak for those who don't know any German but are happy to use Google-translator..

Some highlights from a recent post on  James 2-4:

"We are by faith alone saved,"

Stuart Townend on Corporate worship

By Mike GilbartSmith | 11.5.2010

Stuart Townend was speaking today at Oak Hill College on leading Corporate Worship

He used the acronym “A.C.T.”: Adoration, Revelation, Transformation, as a structure for his comments.

I’ve posted my notes from the talk here.

In this post, I’ll just highlight some of the great things he said.

Two great audios on Baptism

By Mike GilbartSmith | 7.30.2010

A conversation this morning about infant baptism with a bloke who's recently started coming to our church led me to recommend two talks by Mark Dever.

They were given about 8 years ago, but since the debates have been pretty much the same for about 400 years, they are none the worse for that. 

Should infants be baptised?

Excellent book on Small Group Bible studies

By Mike GilbartSmith | 7.22.2010

How can one lead an interactive bible study that is truly a bible study, but is also truly interactive?

I've attended (and led) bible studies that are effectively sermons with (a little) time for Q&A afterwards. I've attended (and led) bible studies that are meandering conversations where we learn a lot about the various opinions of the group, but very little about the bible passage we are supposed to be studying together.

Skillfull biblical preaching isn't enough

By Mike GilbartSmith | 7.8.2010

Marcus Honeysett writes:

Accurate word handling is, of course, absolutely crucial. But with the eyes of hindsight I am shocked at what we didn’t teach our preachers. What we simply assumed.

We didn’t teach them:

World Cup evangelism: bringing back such pleasant memories

By Mike GilbartSmith | 6.25.2010

Mike McKinley

Thanks for your post of world cup evangelism. As a Brit who lived in America for three years it brought back so many fond memories of our differences concerning sports. It also reminded me of conversations I used to have with American friends as I endured watching your sports. I too looked for culturally senstive conversation starters...