Willow Creek "Leadership Summit" Starts Today
Featured Speaker Promotes Eastern Meditation and the New Age
Aug. 10, 2006 -
"I attended a meditation-intensive day at an ashram [Hindu spiritual center]to support a friend. As I sat in meditation in what was for me an unfamiliar environment, I suddenly felt and saw a bolt of lightning shoot up from the base of my spine out the top of my head. It forced me to recognize something great within me ... this awareness of my own divinity." (from The Highest Goal, Michael Ray, foreword by Jim Collins, p. 28, 2005)
Jim Collins, who wrote the foreword for The Highest Goal will be one of the featured speakers at this year's Leadership Summit, hosted by Willow Creek. The conference will be attended by more than 70,000 Christian leaders, in over 130 locations.
In
1982, Collins took Michael Ray's course, Creativity
in Business. The course (and
the book named after the course) "takes
much of its inspiration from Eastern
philosophy, mysticism and meditation
techniques" (from the book). In one
section of the book it talks about
"your wisdom-keeper or spirit guide-an
inner person who can be with you in
life.... We meditate to unfold our
inner being." The book also presents
Tarot cards.
Collins was so inspired by Ray's course
in 1982 that he wrote the foreword
for Ray's 2004 book, The Highest
Goal: The Secret That Sustains You
in Every Minute. Collins says
the book is "the distillation of years
of accumulated wisdom from a great
teacher." Collins says he discovered
"the path to my highest goal" by reading
the book. What is this highest goal
that Michael Ray speaks of? Realizing
the divinity within. And how is this
realization obtained? Through meditation.
In the book, Ray tells readers to
"[p]ractice emptying your mind," "[e]xperience
not thinking" and to "[m]editate regularly."
Other quotes in the book include those
of Eastern religion gurus such as
Ram Dass, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and
Swami Shantananda.
For Willow Creek to include a speaker at the Leadership Summit who agrees with Michael Ray's Eastern/New Age philosophies on spirituality to the point of actually writing the foreword to this book, is almost unbelievable! Over 70,000 Christian leaders, in churches and auditoriums across North America, will be introduced to Collins at a conference that is advertised as offering "you and every leader on your team a place to rededicate yourselves to God's life-changing work." If the spirituality that Jim Collins promotes is a part of this " life-changing work," we fear it will not be God's work but rather that of deceptive doctrines of demons, and Michael Ray's "spirit-guide[s] " that take place.
Special Note: This news about Jim Collins connection with Willow Creek (named recently as the most influential evangelical church) may be as significant as the news last year that New Age sympathizer Ken Blanchard (with strong ties to the Hoffman Institute) signed on with Rick Warren to help implement the global P.E.A.C.E. Plan. And incidentally, both Collins and Blanchard have spoken with Mikhail Gorbachev and former President Bill Clinton in international leadership conferences. Their influence world-wide is tremendous. How is it that the two most influential evangelical pastors have each linked up with someone who is a promoter of Eastern style meditation and the New Age? Lighthouse Trails is confident that the facts speak for themselves, and we encourage you to check this out for yourself.
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