Checklist Approach

The second attitude is often a reaction to this modernist refusal to take God’s Word seriously. In this reaction, the list of attributes ceases to be descriptive of a certain kind of man and hardens into a checklist. And as with all “checklist” approaches to godliness, a clear arbitrariness begins to creep in—no less humanistic, even though it is thought to be “strict” or “conservative.” Countless churches have fallen away from faithfulness to Christ into an unbiblical woodenness because they were faithless first in how they selected their leaders.

Douglas Wilson, Fidelity, pg. 192.