10 years! Thank you to all my friends!

Thanks for stopping by, Dan!

And the link… lots of memories. Pardon the cliche but how the time flies!

…and the YFs aren’t as Y… :)

Being in my 40’s, I wasn’t really a YF then, and in my 50’s now, I certainly am not! Still enjoy these forums, though. Thanks for the look back, Dan! I have to admit I rarely look at those older posts any more, unless someone posts a link.

it is now pretty dull. Just being honest. I was struck by how different it is now.

I myself was a member from Aug 2005, and I posted a few times for about a year and half. I then moved on.

[dcbii]

Being in my 40’s, I wasn’t really a YF then, and in my 50’s now, I certainly am not! Still enjoy these forums, though. Thanks for the look back, Dan! I have to admit I rarely look at those older posts any more, unless someone posts a link.

Thanks for connecting up at my workplace (7 or 8 years ago):. You were in Minneapolis on business and met me for coffee. Showed me your brand new IPhone.

[Mark_Smith]

it is now pretty dull. Just being honest. I was struck by how different it is now.

I myself was a member from Aug 2005, and I posted a few times for about a year and half. I then moved on.

In the early years of S/I King James Version Onlyism (KJVO was a hot topic. Now dropped off the radar (for various reasons).

I was recently reminded of Julie Herbster having been on here.

3 3 3

It is nice to just pause and say thanks to everyone, to remember that it’s fun to disagree and still hang around each other, kwim.

And I mean that literally…

https://web.archive.org/web/20050406231404/http://www.sharperiron.org/s…

https://web.archive.org/web/20050301065714/http://www.sharperiron.org/

From Wayback link

What happened to these people (I know about Jason J): “The team of Jason Janz, Brad Waite, Ben Young and myself are working hard to make this a profitable place for Fundamentalists of every generation to have fellowship and sharpen one another. We look forward to serving you and edifying the Body of Christ!”

Not sure. They were contacts of Jason who helped with the initial vBulletin setup and custom design. They didn’t end up helping or being very active on the site for very long.

I asked you this one time when we were face to face but perhaps you could share with all a bit about this history of Sharper Iron.

• I know it started with some sort of a survey that Jason did of young fundamentalists
• How did idea of a forum come about?
• The name?
• The early players and how they got together?
• And anything more on the early years.
• Thanks

Hey Jim-

I think the survey of young fundamentalists was announced at the same time that they launched SharperIron; the survey is still floating around on the internet, but you can read it at: http://sharperiron.org/downloads/2005%20Young%20Fundamentalists%20Surve…

[Jim]

I asked you this one time when we were face to face but perhaps you could share with all a bit about this history of Sharper Iron.

• I know it started with some sort of a survey that Jason did of young fundamentalists
• How did idea of a forum come about?
• The name?
• The early players and how they got together?
• And anything more on the early years.
• Thanks

• Jason had already done work on the survey. I believe it had some relation to coursework he had done at Lansdale.
• I had started getting active in blog comments, as well as some other forums, where I had encountered some people like Larry Rogier, Don Johnson, Bob Bixby… My early idea was assembling a group blog of various Fundamentalists from around the country. Jason heard about this, and though we had never met before, invited me to join him in his idea—a combined blog and forum.
• SharperIron was one of the names Jason brought to the table—I don’t know if it was original with him or not, but that was where I first heard of it. The other option I recall was “Iron2Iron”—and SI got my vote.
• The “early players” in the forum came about a few different ways. Jason publicized the launch from the platform at Lansdale’s National Leadership Conference in 2005, and used some of his connections to get some of the more recognizable names to provide some original content—people like Kevin Bauder, Phil Johnson, Holly Stratton, Dave Doran—as well as connections from some Northland undergrad classmates, like Bob Bixby. I assembled the early moderation team from connections I had made in the blogosphere. Word spread, and others were drawn to the discussion.
• You mentioned that the KJV only issue was a hot topic in the early days. That actually isn’t quite accurate. There was a lot of interest in the matter from some, but we recognized early that would lead to conflict and polarization, which was not what we wanted to accomplish. A concerted effort was made to keep every discussion from degrading into debates on that topic (and music styles). We created a special forum category for the text debate, and tried to keep the discussion confined there, with some success.
• Some of the topics that drew the most attention in those early years, as I recall…
  • Phil Johnson’s “Dead Right” workshops that he presented at Shepherds’ Conference, as well as Dave Doran’s subsequent reviews
  • The breaking of the story that eventually led to Dave Jasper’s resignation at MBBC
  • The controversy over gay actor Chad Allen’s participation in The End of the Spear, which attracted national media attention for the site