Bill Gothard and his schtick

[Ernie]

I think your 1% assessment is both accurate and misleading. When one considers ALL the Anabaptists, sure that figure may be accurate. I th8nk he had little influence in the older church structures such as the Amish or Old Order Mennonites.
But within the Charity type section and such he had quite a bit of influence. For even if many were disinterested there was always some that were impacted, and so the impact spreads. I think an issue that continues today is those more transitional groups are always more susceptible to the latest thing than say groups like the Amish or even Eastern.

Back in the 80s and 90s Gotherd and his program was rather influential is Anabaptist circles.

I was answering your question in the OP. But yes, if talking about Charity circles, progressive conservatives, and moderate conservatives, he was quite influential in those spheres.

[JohnH]

Charity is an almost 100% transitional group, as are its reincarnations like Agape today. One tends to find a lot of questionable ideas in transitional circles.

[Ken]

Gotherd only had influence on a small percentage of Anabaptists. It wouldn't surprise me if only 1% of Anabaptists in the 80's and 90's heard of him. It seems like it is often the folks between old orders and mainstream Anabaptists who go after these sorts of personalities.
I learned some good things from him, and tried to eat the meat and spit out the bones. One of my friends didn't like my critiques of him and wouldn't tell me anything about him that might put him in bad light. And then my friend got completely disillusioned with Christianity. Today he is agnostic and I am still a believer...

In the last decade, it is probably Finny Kuruvilla and Matthew Milioni who have had similar influence with the above 1%. Again, there are things I learned from these men but lots of bones to spit out as well. And again, most Anabaptists never heard of them and will maybe only learn about them 10 or 20 years from now when someone on MN starts a thread about them.

In the 80's and 90's, it was Denny Kenaston, Mose Stoltzfus, and Zack Poonan.

Just got home from a huge family reunion. My extended family runs from Amish to secular/urban with lots of intermediate spots in between.

Chatting with lots of relatives I didn't get the sense that really any of them are seeking "outside" ideas for child rearing or frankly anything else. And if there is one thing that the greater Anabaptist world pretty much has nailed down it is child rearing. At least in my enormous extended family, raising children seems more like generational knowledge passed down organically than anything you find in books, especially from non-Menno authors.

[JohnH]

I am sorry to report that Denny Kenaston's "The Godly Home" series is still making the rounds, complete with thick folders full of CDs - and now, even worse, is available online.

On the flip side, I was at a thrift store Saturday and saw a few Bill Gothard books for sale in the discount section (50¢) - the notorious "Men's Manual".

[Judas Maccabeus]

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One thing I will say as a positive about Gothard is that he never tried to get Anabaptists to leave their churches, by calling their churches unspiritual or unbiblical.

Yet everyone I came across that was into Gothard tended to church hop.

[JohnH]

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One thing I will say as a positive about Gothard is that he never tried to get Anabaptists to leave their churches, by calling their churches

Yet everyone I came across that was into Gothard tended to church hop.

It wasn't Gothard behind it, though. The sad reality is that transitional Anabaptists are often very interested in drinking from "other wells", and someone like Gothard who offers something "compatible" with a wide variety of denominations is very attractive to them.

[ohio jones]

This thread has been cleaned up by moving meandering posts to separate threads on Michael Pearl and Doug Wilson. Posts about Hegseth and DC have been moved here.


Edit: And now another one on incompatible beliefs.