{"id":7530,"date":"2011-10-19T09:12:25","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T13:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\/blog\/?p=7530"},"modified":"2026-07-19T19:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T02:40:07","slug":"northwestern-college-in-iowa-added-to-contemplative-college-list-teaching-students-centering-prayer-with-labyrinths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\/blog\/northwestern-college-in-iowa-added-to-contemplative-college-list-teaching-students-centering-prayer-with-labyrinths\/","title":{"rendered":"Northwestern College in Iowa Added to Contemplative College List &#8211; Teaching Students &#8220;Centering Prayer&#8221; with Labyrinths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We received the following e-mail this week: &#8220;Are you familiar with Northwestern College in Iowa?&nbsp; (I was told it is&nbsp;a Christian college). How can I find out if they are a&nbsp;biblically sound Christian Christian&nbsp;college or if they are open to emergent beliefs?&#8221; This is our answer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Northwestern College, located in Orange City, Iowa, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwciowa.edu\/about\/history-and-heritage\">Reformed (Calvinist) college<\/a>,&nbsp;is promoting contemplative spirituality and spiritual formation, and in no small way. Just as one example,&nbsp; on their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwciowa.edu\/\">home page<\/a>, they list upcoming chapel services. On October 20th, they will be holding one titled &#8220;Centering Prayer.&#8221; On their &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240804021853\/https:\/\/nwciowa.edu\/faith\/discipleship\">Discipleship&#8221; page<\/a>, they talk about centering prayer as well, stating: &#8220;You\u2019ll be able to explore new ways to pray by walking our prayer<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\/labyrinth.htm\">labyrinth<\/a> or participating in Centering Prayer or 24-hour prayer vigils.&#8221; Speaking of labyrinths, while we couldn&#8217;t find the photo of their labyrinth, we did see this picture of one on their college newspaper, <em>The Beacon<\/em>: <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20101112163626\/http:\/\/beacon.nwciowa.edu:80\/2010\/10\/quiz-in-the-corner-2\/\">http:\/\/beacon.nwciowa.edu\/2010\/10\/quiz-in-the-corner-2\/<\/a>.&nbsp;It appears that much of the contemplative emphasis at the school is entering through their &#8220;Campus Ministry&#8221; department. It is sad when you read one Beacon issue <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20101112163540\/http:\/\/beacon.nwciowa.edu:80\/2010\/10\/campus-ministry-deliberately-focused-on-encouragement\/\">from October 2010<\/a> where students are being led in &#8220;spiritual disciplines&#8221; and encouraged to use labyrinths. We wonder if these young students&#8217; parents know what their children are learning at Northwestern College. Needless to say, Lighthouse Trails has added Northwestern College to our list of Christian schools that are promoting spiritual formation\/contemplative prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Update:<\/strong> Thank you M.,&nbsp;a Lighthouse Trails reader who sent us the following link after reading the post above. This link is to the February 27, 2009 issue of<em> The Beacon<\/em> where an article on labyrinths is included (see page 5): http:\/\/library.nwciowa.edu\/collections\/archives\/beacon\/Feb27_2009.pdf&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Related:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a title=\"Permanent Link to Labyrinth: A Road to Rome?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\/blog\/?p=787\" rel=\"bookmark\">Labyrinth: A Road to Rome? <\/a>&nbsp;by Roger Oakland<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.crossroad.to\/articles2\/04\/labyrinth-muse.htm\">Labyrinths: A Walk to Life or a Walk to Death <\/a>by Steve Muse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We received the following e-mail&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,3780],"tags":[79,152,963,964],"class_list":["post-7530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemplative-colleges","category-labyrinths","tag-labyrinths","tag-centering-prayer","tag-northwestern-college","tag-iowa","wpcat-71-id","wpcat-3780-id"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.4 (Yoast SEO v28.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Northwestern College in Iowa Added to Contemplative College List - Teaching Students &quot;Centering Prayer&quot; with Labyrinths - From the Lighthouse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\/blog\/northwestern-college-in-iowa-added-to-contemplative-college-list-teaching-students-centering-prayer-with-labyrinths\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Northwestern College in Iowa Added to Contemplative College List - Teaching Students &quot;Centering Prayer&quot; with Labyrinths\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We received the following e-mail...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\/blog\/northwestern-college-in-iowa-added-to-contemplative-college-list-teaching-students-centering-prayer-with-labyrinths\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"From the Lighthouse\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LighthouseTrailsResearch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-10-19T13:12:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-07-20T02:40:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lighthouse Trails Editors\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@LTrails\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@LTrails\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lighthouse Trails Editors\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\\\/blog\\\/northwestern-college-in-iowa-added-to-contemplative-college-list-teaching-students-centering-prayer-with-labyrinths\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\\\/blog\\\/northwestern-college-in-iowa-added-to-contemplative-college-list-teaching-students-centering-prayer-with-labyrinths\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lighthouse Trails Editors\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/a36b703d7722ce85599858df8bacc0a5\"},\"headline\":\"Northwestern College in Iowa Added to Contemplative College List &#8211; 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