Pensees: A New Blog

A New Blog

Dave Doran has a new blog you’ll need to keep your eye on if you care what some leaders in the sane part of fundamentalism are saying. Today he demonstrates that he has the ability to state the obvious which is fast becoming one of the critically necessary rarities of leadership. He basically refutes Dan Sweatt’s message with the smack-dab-in-your-face fact that Calvinism is not why young men are leaving fundamentalism.

On another note, I have heard a few knowing chuckles and cynical remarks that Doran’s blog won’t allow comments, but I must say as a veteran blogger of 7 years (few people had blogs then) that there are very appealing reasons for that, especially if you have a farther reaching influence than small-time people like yours truly. Granted, John MacArthur’s blog takes comments, but the man has staff that monitors it for him, folks! He doesn’t even have a computer at his house. There is really no threat of him getting distracted. The fact is that comments from some emotional or dumb person can derail the whole focus of the original statement and its a risk you have to decide you want to live with if you leave the comment thread open. I’m sympathetic to both views on that.

Some of the men in my church have actually suggested that I consider closing the comment section on my blog. Being familiar with the blogosphere culture I know that to close your blog to comments is sort of deemed blogo-bourgeouisie and scandalizes the proud pajama proletariat of the blogosphere. But, I think that’s silly. I stand by my libertarian principles and say that if a man does not want comments on his blog, he should be free to not have comments on his blog! (But you can bet we’ll comment on his blog over here whenever we jolly well please!) So there. That’s my opinion. The comments are open (for the time being) so you can fire away!

Now, I know that some of you are going to be concerned because with this post and an upcoming post I’m going to tip my hat to Doran twice. That will strike you as dangerously sycophantic for a pajama-blogging fundamentalist who has been known to argue with Doran on other topics. Don’t worry. We’ll have other arguments. I’m not a Doran devotee until DBTS gives me an honorary doctorate, but insiders tell me that will never happen until Dave is dead. And he is very young.

But jesting aside, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary and Inter-city Baptist Church are a place that I point to when my non-fundamentalist friends start giving me a bad time for being in a movement that has the preaching the likes of what has been discussed over the past week. There are stellar examples of a better way.

I am a small d Dispensationalist, but as a church we are very much inclined to have missionaries from Inter-city and Detroit. In fact, our conference this year will be practically run by several Inter-city missionaries. They are light years ahead of most churches that I know when it comes to understanding missions.

So, I invite my readers and my church family to put Dave’s blog on your RSS.