John F. Funk

[2] Jacob Clemens Kolb, in his preface to Bless the Lord, O My Soul quotes an unnamed commentator who said, "John F. Funk is the most important [Mennonite] man after Menno Simons.

[3] Attended Freeland Seminary (now Ursinus College) to become a public school teacher but taught for only two years in his home community before accepting the invitation of his brother-in-law Jacob Beidler to go, in 1857, to Chicago, Illinois, to join him in his lumber business.

[2] In Chicago, Funk converted, in 1858, to Christianity at a Presbyterian revival and became heavily involved in various church activities and became a close acquaintance of noted American Evangelist Dwight L.

When he moved to Chicago, he began to subscribe to Das Christliche Volks-Blatt, a paper edited by John H. Oberholtzer who had broken from the Mennonite Church near Funk's hometown.

[2] The Herald consisted of a mix of published sermons, short articles of evangelical exhortation, poetry, accounts of journeys, Biblical exegesis, and obituaries.

Though the Herald usually published quite a bit of "original" material, it nearly always also included selections from other publications such as the Sunday School Times or the works of Menno Simons.

These include: John A. Hostetler argues in God Uses Ink that Funk's removal from his position of Bishop in 1902, increasing competition from the Mennonite Tract and Book Society as well as the Gospel Witness, bankruptcy due to a bank failure in 1904, and finally a devastating fire in 1907 caused the steep decline in the fortunes of John F. Funk's Mennonite Publishing Company.