In a recent meeting of the Minnesota Baptist Association’s men’s fellowship, a question was raised by the panel discussion moderator, Kevin Bauder. The question and answer is highlighted in a post by Ben Wright, claiming that fundamentalist churches have nothing to fear from the ministry of conservative evangelicals, especially the ministry of his hero, Mark Dever.

The question was something like this: should Bauder have availed himself of the opportunity to contribute an article to the 9Marks e-Journal or not? The answer of older pastors essentially was, “No.” Ben explains the rationale this way:

Then the conversation turned to Bauder seeking advice from these pastors as to how he should respond to a request from Mark Dever to write something for one of his publications. (He later identifies this request, which he declined, as an article in the 9Marks E-Journal on what fundamentalists look for in seminary education.

The responses were mixed. The first was a definite no, and the rest were more ambiguous. I was fascinated by what their answers revealed about their rationale, their motivations, and their fears. Their basic argument was that Bauder writing for Dever could function as an endorsement of Dever’s ideas as well as other conservative evangelicals. The chief threats to them seem to be losing members of their churches to Bethlehem Baptist Church (pastored by John Piper) and younger generations of fundamentalists identifying more with conservative evangelicals than their roots.

Bauder comments on Ben’s post, saying that he didn’t write the article due to the press of time more than anything else, and encouraging all to listen to the response of the younger pastors. So I did, and their answer was essentially, “Yes,” with my understanding of the main rationale being, “you ought to take advantage of opportunities to influence young evangelicals towards a more fundamentalist position.” (You can listen to the recording yourself to see if I have gotten it right concerning the answers.)

A comment later in the thread by someone named Dave says this:

The automatic response to avoid assimilation or discussion of conservative evangelicals teaching does not serve most ministries well, these discussions are going on among the “young” fundamentalists and unless you engage in the discussion biblically and with knowledge of the teaching in question (not just what you have heard about the teacher in your camp) you are pretty much ineffective in steering them away from what might be legitimate concerns regarding some of these ministries and teachers.

But let’s be accurate here. I think Dave is reacting to what Ben thought he heard, but that isn’t exactly what the older pastors in the panel discussion were saying! [Read more…]