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What Happened to My Question?

By Dr. Paul M. Elliott
No, it didn't go into a black hole in cyberspace...

From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

No, it didn't go into a black hole in cyberspace...

June 2012 - Our readers and listeners around the world ask some really great questions, and we do indeed welcome them. As a rule we try to answer them in the order they are received (I'll explain the one exception below). Our question submission page includes this message:

We welcome your questions, and we will do our best to answer them based on the authority of Scripture. Due to variations in workload we cannot guarantee an answer within a specific time, but we will respond by e-mail as soon as possible...

Over the past few months we've been dealing with an unusually heavy volume of questions from readers and listeners. An unwanted result is that our average response time has become much longer than we would like it to be. We are working to reduce it.

We thought some of you might be interested to know a little bit more about this aspect of our worldwide ministry.

Not All Questions Are Alike

The questions we receive cover a very wide spectrum. For example, some involve matters of doctrine. Some involve questions about particular passages in Scripture. Some ask for an explanation of (or take issue with) a particular point we've made in a broadcast or Bible Knowledgebase article. Some questions concern current issues within the church, or seek information about a particular group, teacher, or organization. Some who contact us are looking for a sound church in a particular area. Some seek personal counsel.

As you may imagine, some of these questions require more time to answer than others. Sometimes we can respond in a just a few lines, perhaps pointing our correspondent to pertinent passages of Scripture or providing links to material on our website or resources available elsewhere.

Other questions are more complex, require a longer answer, and can involve research to provide a complete and accurate response.

Still other questions - especially those involving matters of personal counseling - may require several exchanges of messages, or phone calls, or even a face-to-face meeting if someone is able to come to our office. By these means we endeavor to make sure we understand each situation as completely as we can, so that we can respond Biblically and helpfully. Wherever possible, our response to requests for personal counsel includes encouragement to seek the help of a sound local church.

One Exception to "First-In-First-Out"

We do make one exception to our "first-in-first-out" policy. This involves cases where time is clearly of the essence. For example, we recently received a question on a Monday morning about a critical doctrinal issue in a local church. The questioner, an officer of the church, was going to be involved in a meeting on Wednesday night in which the issue would be addressed. Answering the question involved some research, but we were able to provide one before the meeting took place. As it turned out, the information we provided was important to the outcome, and we praise the Lord that we were able to be of service.

We Ask Your Patience

We hope the information above will give you a better understanding of what we do and how we endeavor to do it. We appreciate your patience as we work through the present backlog of questions and try to get back to a much shorter response time.

One other step we are taking is to set up a system to acknowledge receipt of all questions, and to give you a better idea when you can expect an answer if we are not able to provide one within a few days.

Thank You For Praying

This update would not be complete if we did not thank you for your prayers for this and all other aspects of our worldwide ministry. Please continue to pray for us as we seek to continue, by God's grace, in the work of Equipping the Scripture-Driven Church.

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