{"id":1777,"date":"2010-11-23T15:44:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T23:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2010\/11\/23\/are-we-still-friends\/"},"modified":"2010-11-23T15:44:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T23:44:00","slug":"are-we-still-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2010\/11\/23\/are-we-still-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"are we still friends?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Man, my brother and another pastor both sent me a copy of an e-mail from Matt Olson entitled "Open Letter to Friends in Ministry". I haven’t gotten my own personal copy, even though I know<\/em> I am in Matt’s database. I wonder what that means? I think maybe we aren’t friends anymore.<\/p>\n

Well, seriously, there are some issues between us, and I am still concerned about Northland and the direction it is going. Some of the things in Matt’s letter stretch credulity to the breaking point.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For example, consider the first sentence of this paragraph, Matt appears to be backing down somewhat from his recent invitations of Rick Holland and Bruce Ware to speak and teach at Northland: <\/p>\n

\n

We did not see that having these speakers would be a significant problem. Biblically, we worked through a process of decision making and felt these choices and the context in which they were made were consistent with what we have always believed. Knowing now that these decisions might be confusing, misunderstood, or miscommunicated, we would likely have planned differently. We have no desire to distract from our focus here or on the field of ministry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Really Matt? "We did not see that having these speakers would be a significant problem." Hello??? Do you think we are so na\u00efve as to believe that?<\/p>\n

Let me refresh your memory, Matt. Rick Holland was the reason Dr. Olilla pulled out of speaking at a Pro-Teens conference just a couple of years ago. There were a couple of discussions on Sharper Iron that discussed it at some length (see here<\/a> and here<\/a>). ((some of the internal links in these discussions might be dead)) What changed between 2005 and 2010? (Hint: it wasn’t Rick Holland.)<\/p>\n

And Bruce Ware? Man… you didn’t see that would be a significant problem for other fundamentalists? Did you sleep through all those preacher boy classes we had together, Matt?<\/p>\n

It is simply unbelievable that you didn’t see a huge negative reaction coming.<\/p>\n

What might be believable is that you thought the fundamentalist world was being transformed into the image being touted by certain seminarians and that the rest of the fundamentalist world [the old-style fighters] was a minor irritation that could be ignored.<\/p>\n

And when Matt says this:<\/p>\n

\n

Knowing now that these decisions might be confusing, misunderstood, or miscommunicated, we would likely have planned differently.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We wonders, we really does, what he means by this. "Likely have planned differently," eh??? How so? How would you plan differently?<\/p>\n

Matt goes on to say:<\/p>\n

\n

We affirm that Northland stands in the historic tradition of Fundamentalism and is committed to remain as an independent, Baptist, separatist institution.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, we’ll see.<\/p>\n

Matt seems way too defensive in justifying his invitation of these new evangelicals to his campus, as if this is merely par for the course for an academic institution<\/em>, what’s the big deal?<\/p>\n

What’s the big deal about creating confusion among impressionable students?<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Is it ok, now, to cooperate with the MacArthur crowd?<\/li>\n
  • Would we encourage, now, our graduates to attend Southern Seminary?<\/li>\n
  • Are the pastors of students who take separatistic positions against these groups to be suspected as ‘hyper-fundamentalists’ or (gasp) legalists?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    What is the big deal, after all?<\/p>\n

    I am afraid the big deal is that a lot of fundamentalist pastors like me are no longer recommending Northland and a precipitous drop in enrollment is about to ensue.<\/p>\n

    \"don_sig2\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Man, my brother and another pastor both sent me a copy of an e-mail from Matt Olson entitled "Open Letter to Friends in Ministry". I haven’t gotten my own personal copy, even though I know I am in Matt’s database. I wonder what that means? I think maybe we aren’t friends anymore. Well, seriously, there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[37,71],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-sF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}