by Stephen Rodgers

Due to some changes in the world of static web-hosting, we’ve brought Stoogle entirely in-house (see the top menu). Since I’m sure there’s at least one person out there scratching their head and wondering “What’s a Stoogle?” this is probably a good time to explain.

First, I should mention that I didn’t name it. Someone else did, with the intention of making a portmanteau of “Stephen” and “Google.” However, it turns out that “Stoogle” is also a slang term for stalking someone on the internet using a search engine…but by the time we figured that out, it was too late. The thing was already branded.

But what is it, you might still be wondering. Stoogle is a little search engine I built using the Google Custom Search tool a few years ago to aid in my personal study. You use it just like any search engine, but instead of searching the entire internet, it only searches a small subset of websites. It also categorizes these websites into search refinements if you want to further narrow down your results.

This is not to say that these are the only good Christian websites out there. There are many, many more that could have been included, but weren’t for reasons of time, technical challenges, and/or diminishing returns. But generally speaking, these are reliable websites who aren’t going to lead you astray, even if they might disagree with the LBC Statement of Faith in a few places. As I’ve said before:

Just because a source is recommended here does not indicate that every doctrine it professes reflects the beliefs of LBC or it’s leaders (if you are interested, you are welcome to read LBC’s Statement of Faith) or with each other. Faithful men of God have held positions on secondary and tertiary issues that differ from our own, and we hold them no less Christian for doing so. God calls Christians to love Him with their mind (Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27) and to examine every teaching in light of the totality of Scripture (Acts 17:11).

That being said, Stoogle has saved me countless hours by filtering out some of the more rampant craziness that the internet has no shortage of. I hope you’ll find it helpful as well.