RECOMMENDED:
CARM.org – Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry. The premier Christian apologetics site for Christian message board discussions, I’ve found it to run well and be administrated fairly. It’s a little slim on casual conversation and general fellowship, but it’s top notch on what it’s designed to be, a Christian apologetics research site. Still, be prepared for its heavy-handed authoritarian administration. It doesn’t long-suffer either promotion of heresy or activity outside strict site rules and TOS.
Challies.com… Informing The Reforming. They don’t call Tim Challies the Calvinistic captain of the blogosphere for nothin’ – he’s been doing it for quite a while and he does it quite well. Challies is attended to very daily, is always informative, and measurably uncontroversial with just a dash of disagreement. There’s his very popular “A La Carte” smörgåsbord compendium, where he rounds up interesting titbits (as in mousely, or tidbits to most of the American audience) from across the Web and links to them with the briefest of summaries. There’s the ever generous urim/thummim potluck gifts from his sponsors on FREE STUFF FRIDAYS, usually books for a providential few.
Most of the rest of the time Challies is about books – book reviews, things learned from books, where to put books, how to build stuff out of books, coffee and books, books on tables, coffee table books, one book, two books, red books, blue books, how books saved the forests and Christian civilization, how many books it takes to screw in a light bulb, writing books, books made from potatoes or electricity, why pastors are phat, and what mom tried to tell us about books and women. Tim kindly waxes more to piety than poetry, and tends to express an engaging and generous egalitarian netiquette more than theological apologetic, but doctrinal Calvinism is in the mix, and he has definite opinions that of necessity have a huff or puff attached, but gracefully so.
If there’s a critique to be made, it’s that he’s often busy enough gathering, collating, and sharing data for the blog to be about extensive participation in the conversations of his readers at Challies. Oh, I’m confident he reads the comments, and sometimes his wife Aileen does too, but I think for Tim the place is more about giving than receiving, of sharing his goods, inviting his readers to pick his brain, and wisely steering clear of anything approaching debate. It’s a nice home, and one very much senses socked feet crossed from an easy chair before a cozy fireplace. In olden days there’d be a pipe.
SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED, BUT PROBLEMATIC:
NOT RECOMMENDED, BUT INFORMATIVE:
Crosswalk.com The Intersection of Faith and Life, and forums.crosswalk.com – As part of Salem Communications Corporation, the nation’s fifth largest radio station provider, and the Salem Web Network, Crosswalk deigns to be a strong Christian presence on the Internet, along with sister sites such as Godtube, Tangle, MatchWise, Xulon Press, Christianity.com, BibleStudyTools.com, LightSource.com, Preaching.com, YouthWalk.com, OnePlace.com, CrossDaily.com, several similar online Christian magazines and Gospel music stations, such as Townhall Magazine, the Singing News, Today’s Christian Music (CCM Magazine), theFish.com, Christian Music Planet, and even such vocational basics as ChritianCollege.com, ChristianJobs.com, and ChurchStaffing.com. Join one and you pretty much join them all, as their accounts are generally interconnected. If such interconnectivity is valuable to you then Salem Communications and Crosswalk is the place for it, but there are significant distractions.
Crosswalk goes back to 1993, but after being the first publically traded Christian organisation in 1998, at $12 per share, it quickly fell out of favour, down to less than 60 cents a share at the end of 2000, with it’s CEO in criminal proceedings. Many other Christian .coms met a similar fate at the time. It was eventually acquired by Salem in 2002. As a former contributing author to Salem Communications I have to agree I’ve been so disappointed with what I’ve found in the community forums aspect at this and other of it’s interconnected forum sites. Fred “Fritz” Alberti, aka Fritzpw, is Director of Social Media for Salem Web Network and the chief administrator at most all of its forum sites. He rightly has a long and terrible reputation across the Web in how these forums are administered. There’s even a Badge of Honor site intended to relate individual negative experiences at Christian message board communities, and almost entirely devoted to administrative abuses by Fritzpw at Salem Communication forum sites. I’ve been a member in good standing without censure at Crosswalk for many years, and through its merger with Christianity.com and other Salem sites, but I’ve had run-ins with Fritz and can testify it’s truly saddening how one Christian admin can administer so much damage to the body of Christ without mitigation. I’m sure he has an upside, as does Crosswalk, but if one’s looking for a long-term Net community home without sudden ridicule, account-kill syndrome, and very real-life harms at an admin’s whim with no appropriate rationale, look elsewhere.
Puritan Board : A ‘Puritan’ message board community, yet discounting the differentiation between Puritan Anglicans and the predominant conservative Presbyterians of the board, even including some Baptists strongly favouring adult-only baptism and outside original Puritan and Reformed nomenclature, not that this in itself is in any way detrimental to board comportment. Originally of C. Matthew McMahon (owner, sometime RPCGA – a micro-Presbyterian splinter denomination of about 8 churches), now also with Rich Leino (owner, a Regular Baptist), Bruce Buchanan (PCA), Joshua Hicks (Reformed Baptist), Chris Coldwell (PCA, Naphtali Press, Confessional Presbyterian Journal), Lane Keister (PCA, CRC, RCA), & others.
Though somewhat well-intended (perhaps initially), and like many a similar Christian Internet community (as if that’s any comfort), the board is not true or honest to its own offering of Terms of Service, regularly banning members without sufficient warning or repeated (or even any) violation of Board Rules, as stated in its TOS. With all due loving concern and admission of my own faults, I personally find the Puritan Board essentially is disrupting and dividing of conservative Reformed communion, though coalescing certain disparaging elements, and is an execrable and inadequate forum bully pulpit with culpability by all administrators, some of whom I otherwise admire and many of whom are otherwise ministerial. It even defends dishonest administrative practice as praiseworthy and purifying, yet with great and needless slight to others, both personally and publically. It disingenuously operates in continuing violation of its own stated Terms of Service and oaths of administration, and is perhaps the most divisive message board of its kind, castigating Christian brethren even of its own confession in a continual barrage of misspent furore and false-speak. The PB nonetheless is participatory of many Reformed members and elders, while adopting an olden though quaint façade of ‘Puritan’ profession. It claims to be a confessional board, by which it requires a self-styled adherence to some traditional Calvinistic creed, only really abiding by a legalism that favours the quirks of its operating staff, sometimes even against said creeds – that is, it is intended as authoritarian, as set against any accountable protections of Board Rules, TOS, and the Reformed confessions of its requirement. It fractures general community and Christian love and charity, and almost any impetus of theological ecumenism (none of which are listed in its otherwise extensive headings and forums), the which in practice it counts as fundamentally corrupting and evil, which is in contradiction to the teachings and prayers of Christ and the creeds of PB acceptance.
For such a large and ‘open’ gathering of Presbyterian and Reformed ‘Puritans’, the Puritan Board seems a sad and austere testament contrary to what either the Reformed faith or Christianity uprightly declares itself to be, but which is indeed often a false caricature to Puritanism. Yes, it offers some sound theology, but not in the peace of Christ, and as a conservative Presbyterian I’m quite ashamed that it seems so apparently proselytising of its dearth of both Christian charity and purity; but this presently is similar to many Christian Net communities and blogs, as some might fairly claim of my own in this review.
One need not go far in researching the PB legacy to gain fair assessment of its poor quality of puritanism and its apparent disregard of both Christ and Christians on several elements of theology and practice. Indeed, the PB may justly be thought to give “Puritan” a bad name, both in doctrine and attitude, dishonouring many antecedent standard bearers. Still, there exists some measure of strongly edited conservative Puritan value and some loving expression toward one another, especially among staff or of an ‘in’ crowd. However, it is a bane to any minister who may long venture there or especially rest his shingle of service there, tainting the reputations of those supporting falseness in the board’s administration. Perhaps I too am being unlovely, since mom proverbially says if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all; but the wary should be forewarned that the Puritan Board takes its wielding of purity from that graceless form of Pharisaic stringency said (not by me) to encourage its members to be “twice as much a son of hell” (Matthew 23:15) – though that very off-putting quote it substantively how their purity and stringency too often is applied and derives, rather than that any of them is actually a “son of hell”; for even if giving appearance as false shepherding, they are aptly confessed as beloved brethren. After repeated efforts by many to mitigate PB harms, let’s just again say Christians should be forewarned, the PB takes no prisoners in blindly who’s ‘in’ or who’s ‘out’, and offers little regard of those for whom Christ died, disqualifying participation with them in Christ, even amidst some sound doctrine in most things other than Christian love and devotion.
With many follies of supposed ecumenism apart from the PB, I’m quite hard-pressed to view that we may cavalierly claim some Christian mark of being TR (truly Reformed) without a much greater respect for charity and unity than observed to date. The Puritan Board admirably has a forum on the Confession of faith; it has major listings on Scriptures, theology, the Church, the Christian walk, apologetics, education, and general fare; it supports discussion on philosophy, on spiritual welfare, on Church history and Church order, on worship and preaching and missions; it has forums reserved for baptism, the doctrines of grace, Covenant Theology, and even two distinct ones for debate and controversial topics; but as of this review there is no a major heading, forum, or even sub-forum on Church unity, ecumenism, peace, or Christian love, and I find that very telling, troubling, and accurately descriptive of PB operations. I simply find it odd and out of character that unity not only seems a neglected ‘Reformed’ or ‘Puritan’ practice at the PB, but is regarded a boogeyman, a dirty word, or, in fairness, a “pie in the sky by and by” dream of distant ethereal sugar plums, and not the daily work, the very mark of the Church by which Jesus says men will know Him.
TO BE AVOIDED:
Bibleforums.org - Sporadic gems in fellowship don’t make up for BibleForums falling into divergent and even illegal administration. It reviews itself as welcoming Christians of all denominations, but then adds it’s only for orthodox Protestantism (though a recent update of rules now confuses orthodoxy (sound doctrine) with the Eastern Orthodox Church – the site’s not very theologically minded, not that that’s in itself a detriment); which is a false conveyance, for further inspection relates it considers itself a solely Pentecostal and non-denominational ministry aligning with Pelagian theology (found heretical by most Christians for centuries) and quite contrary to mainline Protestant denominations. It is as intolerant of traditional Protestantism as Catholicism, and considers both Catholicism and original Protestant theology of the Reformation satanic, repeatedly posting so. It does allow for some non-Christian sentiment, as a long-time Jewish member usually holds the site’s post-count lead; and it at least temporarily allows for Calvinists and Catholics to join, but mostly to ridicule them openly with such hate-speech as equating them with Satan and censuring any defense supposedly guaranteed in site TOS.
Bible Forums suffers the ills of a self-justifying, self-absorbed moderator/’ministry’ culture, insensitive and hurting to members apart from staff, often posting debilitating PMs from mods, and often attacking members with an unaccountably false ‘last word’, silencing any sound apologetic otherwise. It’s Terms of Service under which members join and contribute claim certain guarantees in oath from its moderators (“facilitators”), and yet time and again I have witnessed these thrown out of any consideration, let alone abidance of guarantee. Though claiming to be a licensed ministry, soliciting funds as such, as of this post BibleForums is actually run by an untrained stay-at-home wife admitting to know little theology and liking it even less.
Often, too, the BF site has technical problems, slowing to a crawl, with little attention paid to many members seeking relief and solution, and usually blaming even the site’s technical difficulties on member routing services, where other sites load quickly and run well. After original site owner and chief administrator, Ken Smith (under the alias projectpeter), handed the reigns over to user-named member threebigrocks, proselytising a Pentecostal prophecy church which places dreams on a par with Scripture, the BF anti-Protestantism & negation of TOS quickly became too detrimental to site peace, legality, and sound Christian doctrine for continued regular participation. It stays perched on the brink of what has been disastrous for larger Christian boards, and often takes the plunge. It presents a façade of Biblical Protestantism claimed in Terms of Service, initially drawing traditional Protestant groups and support, but its administration abandons the ethics of TOS guarantee to actively bully traditional Protestants away from membership, respecting no Christian denomination but its twisted own, and leaving many to wonder where silenced long-time members went. It simply will not abide the loving and respectful proclamation of the plain Gospel of Jesus Christ and Biblical Christianity.
ChristianForums.com - A member of ChristianForums for over 6 years, having served in several staff capacities including its moderating staff, and with thousands upon thousands of posts, I’ve been there through the major changes and administrations, but continue to find it a disappointing testament to online Christianity, abusive and mismanaged. The way the site is structured it’s not surprising that members, even moderators, may post oblivious to its ills for an extended period of time. In fact, some areas may work in relative peace as a community within a community, rarely engaging other areas. I find it to at once be a place of Christian fellowship and yet one of the most disturbing and dangerous places for Christians or seekers on the Internet.
Though the site is now but a shadow of its former self, and while large ecumenical forums like CF indeed face special challenges, in all the time I’ve been at ChristianForums (even when briefly changed to Forums4U) I’ve never seen the site function even close to its stated goals or within its frequently changing Terms of Service. Even he who might be thought of as its primary founder, Dr. Erwin Loh, sold the site and virtually left in disgust over what it became, continually saddened with what he had to deal. The site has fared no better under new ownership and direction, and is still one of the most poorly and inconsistently moderated Christian sites. At one time CF had the admirable goal of uniting Christians, including both Catholics, Protestants, and others, as well as offering ample participation from non-believers, atheists, and other religions; but it’s proven an illustration of Christian morals run amok, regularly banning long-term members on whims of an admin having nothing to do with site rules, and both it’s chaplaincy staff and administrators are notorious across the Web for discrepancies of their claims in façades from one board to the next, sometime even posing as a Mormon of the opposite gender or an atheist or new convert.
There are indeed some pockets of relative peace, kind comportment, and prayerful concern, but the site is mostly a mess of missed opportunity and tragic assault upon unsuspecting members, even with real-life stalking of members. It is not a site to be recommended for either new Christian, seasoned believer, or seeking questioner. Its primary benefit is the many spin-off boards in the wake of its troubles. Some of these have mostly been a source of further abuse, but a few have served to coalesce worthy examples of how a Christian forum community ought to function.
