Hi Arlyn

I’m being deliberately vague because I don’t care to identify the particular person or situation that I am referring to. But yes, the individual who wrote the article is in a position of tremendous influence, although not a household name, I suppose. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific. My point in raising the issue is that we have to be careful about the kinds of things we endorse. It is not that my opinion of a particular group or popular speaker is infallible. But I do want to influence people in a certain direction.

In light of that, I need to take care about my enthusiasms for people who would lead in a different direction than I want people to go.

On the other hand, if I claim to be heading one way, but put out endorsements of folks heading a different direction, I think it would be legitimate to question my claims.

To use an analogy from the sports world, if I claimed to be a supporter of the Edmonton Oilers (which I do), but constantly talked about the Vancouver Canyecchhs, promoted their website, touted their bloggers, pointed others to the fan pages of their players, and said little to nothing about the old Oilers, what would people think of my claims?

I do see this sort of thing going on in the ecclesiastical scene. Erstwhile fundamentalists regularly can be seen pointing people to evangelicals as the best sources on various topics. Little is said endorsing fundamentalists on these topics or pointing out the differences and dangers that might be present in evangelical authors / speakers. One does have to wonder about the fundamentalist claims such men make.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

hi Arlen … attempting this on my phone, not a perfect thumb typer…

what you are saying is not that far different from what I am saying. I am not advocating that I should be the sole arbiter of who someone else should listen to. I am accountable, as you say, for who I promote.

What I am arguing against is men in positions of influence, such as yours as a Cbristian school teacher, giving unqualified recommendations of other men. I think you and I might differ to some extent on men we would recommend without much qualification, but let me propose a scenario…

Suppose you were requested by a group of students a list of blogs and books they should read over the summer as an aid to their spiritual lives. Suppose you compiled a bit of an annotated list of 8 to 10 resources. Suppose ALL but ONE were non-evangelical or at best extreme left wing evangelical (some emergents and Christianity Today types come to mind). Suppose you made no critical comments but said ‘this guy is good on X topic’ and ‘that guy is the definitive source for Y subject’).

Now, what would such a list say for your evangelical credibility, much less a fundamentalist creds? that scenario is exactly what I am arguing about, although much furter to the right. A fellow in a position of influence as a fundie writes an article endorsing a long list of evangelicals and only one fundamentalist.

one could argue with my criticism of the article, but that really isn’t the point.

The point is, what should we say about the separatist credentials of a fundamentalist who unqaulifiedly endorses men opposed to separatist fundamentalism?

I face this issue when I am teaching. However, I teach in a much broader context than any who have been writing. (I teach Bible for high school students in an Evangelical academy) I am careful with what I endorse in my teaching, but I deal with students from a variety of backgrounds whose parents and churches endorse a wider range of authors than what I would encourage.

I have come to realize that it is not my responsibility to screen everything that comes before a student. First, it is impossible.

Second, we are united around the fundamentals of the faith. That is the focus of my teaching. It works very well for us who come from over 70 churches to focus on what are the essentials of biblical doctrine.

If I take it upon myself to screen everything in the diet of my students, I produce a group of people dependent upon me for my evaluation. However, I teach principles of discernment which students can use to evaluate what they take in. Will some of them go further than I would like? Probably. That is true even in the local church. Ultimately, I will be accountable for what I promote, but all of my students will be accountable for what they accept.

Part of my teaching includes a class that explores the highlights of church history. We do a lot of biographical studies of great church leaders from the first to the twenty-first centuries. One of the things I have had reinforced in my research is that no one in church history got it all correct all the time. I ask my students to look for what the man stood for, what he emphasized, what he got wrong, what his flaws were and what lessons we can learn from the man. So far my students show a lot of discernment when taught to look for these simple ideas.

Let’s teach in such a way that when our people are with us for 4-5 years we no longer need to include a lot of disclaimer information. If we are still the key interpreter of correctness after we have served a church for a number of years, have we really taught people to stand in the power of the Lord?

Arlyn Ubben

Well… can’t say that search rankings are a concern at all. Who pays any attention to that? I don’t. That must mean no one else does, right? (joke)

No, if you think my concern is search rankings then you have seriously missed the point. What I am concerned about are fundamentalists (especially those in positions of influence over young preachers) who write “puff pieces” promoting the kind of evangelicals who are among the sources of most of the discontent and defection we are seeing from some of the young. Perhaps if our Influencers refrained from such promotion, or even dared to point out the many problems with such sites, they might influence one or two young fellows to stay the course.

That’s what I’m after.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jeremiah 33.3

“So my unqualified puffing of someone who has serious baggage is not loving my brother.” Yes.

So love gives links, but doesn’t do “unqualified puffing”.

Perhaps the need for “disclaimers”/warnings is somewhat dictated by how well you have trained your audience/readership in that principle.

I say it all the time in my preaching: if you don’t see it in the Word, don’t trust it, whether it is me or someone else. Test everything by the Word. I’ll make mistakes, and so will others you think you could trust. Since I’ve emphasised that so much in my preaching, I might not have to be as careful about quoting people.

I’ve only gone down that path maybe once or twice on my blog, so perhaps I need to be more careful about links than I would be about quotations while preaching. And on a blog, we never know who is reading, or who might read two months from now, and won’t have had that “discernment training”.

The level of caution needed is determined, perhaps, by the audience. I could send you an email referring to something by Mark Driscoll and skip the disclaimers entirely. i’ve figured out that you know about him by now, and I’m not likely to be leading you into some of his errors. :) Know your audience, and decide accordingly — but on a blog, we don’t really know our audience, so decide accordingly.

Thanks for challenging our thinking on it.

@ All

My apologies for not approving Brian, Mark, and Dave’s posts until now. Something is messed up with my blog (again) and it is not e-mailing me all comments. I got Kent’s, then noticed there were three waiting. I’ll see my genius son next week and hopefully he can get me fixed right up! (he has nothing else to do, eh?)

Also, I hope that you all aren’t missing what I am really talking about. I do think about the blogs I link in the sidebar, but that isn’t my primary point.

What I am addressing is what Kent calls “going all goo-goo over the people”. (Love those theological terms, Kent!) And I think that he is right in saying this is a 1 Cor 8-10 issue… it isn’t separation, but influence and being a cause of stumbling that is the critical issue. It matters not that I am ‘separated’ from ‘The Gospel Coalition’ or whoever. When I am writing and preaching, I am exerting influence to some extent. So my unqualified puffing of someone who has serious baggage is not loving my brother.

And let’s note we all have baggage. Kent will link to me under the category of guys he doesn’t entirely agree with. I’ll do the same to him. We have a couple of areas of pretty strong disagreement although we think alike in a lot of ways. I don’t mind Kent’s caution in lending his influence to his readers when he links to me, I think it is entirely appropriate.

@Mark

I do use Weirsbe and others in my study of the Bible. I sometimes quote them, sometimes by name, but usually not. Most of my people wouldn’t know one commentator from another. I wouldn’t necessarily be against using Weirsbe as a study guide for a Bible study, but I would be sure that our folks knew that he was quite antagonistic to fundamentalism, albeit a fairly conservative evangelical. But I probably wouldn’t choose Weirsbe as a curriculum in any case. He has some strengths as a commentator that are sometimes helpful.

@ Dave

No, I wouldn’t say linking TGC lands someone outside fundamentalism. If you look at my blogroll, you will see some guys who aren’t fundamentalists. What I am more worried about are “puff pieces” where erstwhile (and fairly influential, much more influential than me) fundamentalists write an article to promote numerous evangelical sites and writers with NO qualification in the article itself and a very mild qualification in a preceding article (one that amounts to “I don’t necessarily endorse every link I put up”). That doesn’t seem like holding the line as a fundamentalist to me. And I think the weaker brother principle is the one we need to consider. Thanks to Kent for pointing it out.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jeremiah 33.3

You are not disobeying Scripture by providing links for reference or even of good articles written by people you don’t fellowship with. There is a difference between that and going all goo-goo over the people. No one, and I mean no one, thinks you do that. That only criticize you as a faux argument in the secondary separation issue battle. That is so obvious.

Love rejoices in the truth, even if it is truth spoken by someone you don’t fellowship with.

One more thing. There can be a danger to linking, so I’m sure you don’t link everywhere. But it really is a 1 Cor 8-9 issue more than anything. Will it harm others? Whether it harms others is not a secondary separation issue, but whether aspects of the site will cause someone to stumble. I’m guessing you thought of this.