A pastor friend called recently with a question I could not shake. His church has served their local public school for years. Now a congregation from a mainline denomination wants to join the work. Are they sound? Should he partner with them? They will be there either way.
Every pastor I know is living some version of that conversation. The invitation rarely arrives looking like heresy. It comes as a service project, a school function, a civic prayer breakfast, a coalition for a worthy cause. The question underneath is always the same. When does standing beside someone stop being cooperation and start becoming endorsement?
I worked through it the way I work through most things, with Scripture and a little church history. Albert Mohler’s theological triage. The Apostle John’s warning in 2 John. The day, by Irenaeus’s account, that John fled a bathhouse rather than share a roof with a heretic. The piece is my attempt to give pastors a way to think clearly before they say yes to the next partnership.
Baptist Press ran it this month as a First Person. I would be grateful if you read it, and more grateful if you passed it to a pastor wrestling with the question right now.