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When Leaders Wrongly Share Speaking Platforms with Ecumenists and Teachers of False Doctrine

By Chris Lawson
Spiritual Research Network

Many years ago Pastor Chuck Smith’s long-time associate, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa’s Associate Pastor, L.E. Romaine, once told me personally, ”Don’t complain about it unless you first try to do something about it.” Pastor Romaine was exhorting us (pastors) not to complain about anything, unless we seek first to aright the situation, no matter what it is. Obviously, the Bible says we are not to grumble and complain, and Romaine knew that too. Romaine was simply communicating to us that we ought to deal with issues and not make messes in the church; theological, or otherwise. The following material is not meant to be a complaint, but an introduction as to why Calvary Chapel is not standing against Ecumenical compromises. I am not complaining, I am telling the truth.

For the record, I have tried to do something about the issues I am presenting here for years now(2004-2012). Some may say I am wasting my time; however, I have persisted because I care about the countless people who are being confused and spiritually damaged by the many leaders who either won’t apologize for their theological compromises or heavy-handed leadership, or both. When people in Calvary Chapels (and other churches) address ecumenical compromises, pastors either resist and reject accountability, or they obey the LORD, yielding to the principle of biblical separation from aberrant and false teachers/teaching. What I and many others have seen and experienced firsthand, and continue to see, in leaders who are unrepentant, is incredible and thoroughly inexcusable. I personally know numerous pastors that see the problems and yet sit back and remain silent and comfortable, watching from afar and doing nothing.

Based on the sociological dynamics of what occurs when one stands up and attempts to deal with the compromises, it is truly apparent that many are caught in a snare – that snare being the fear of man and fear of being ostracized by bigger name, “higher up” pastors.

“The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe” (Proverbs 29:25).

“Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD” (Jeremiah 17:5).

“A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident” (Proverbs 14:16).

“These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22).

The remedy for this plague in the church however is a healthy and truly reverential fear of Almighty God. Click here to continue reading.

Our product catalog is available as a PDF download. Feel free to print and distribute.

50 Top Organizations With a Significant Role in Bringing Contemplative Spirituality to the Church

100 Top Contemplative Proponents Evangelical Christians Turn To Today

CONTEMPLATIVE
COLLEGE LIST

LTRP Note: This month, New Ager Gary Zukav announced that Oprah would be joining him in a Super Soul Sunday (on 2/12/12) as part of his Awakening to Spiritual Partnership Course. Oprah has been a fan of Gary Zukav’s for many years. In fact, it was she who propelled Zukav into prominence after his first appearance on the Oprah show in 1998, after which his book on spirit guides, The Seat of the Soul, soared to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list. As Ray Yungen points out, ”The book’s basic message is, ‘Dwell in the company of your nonphysical Teachers and guides [spirit guides]” (p. 39). Some have wondered what direction Oprah would go now that her daytime television show has ended. It is clear that she will be including the New Age/New Spirituality in her future (as she has in her past) and in the future of her millions of followers. Below we are reposting Warren Smith’s article on Oprah and New Ager Eckhart Tolle, another New Age guru who is embraced by Oprah Winfrey.

“The Great Heretical Idea: Oprah and Eckhart Do the New Age Shift”

by Warren Smith

“Get ready to be awakened.”[1] – Oprah

“The twenty-first century will be the time of awakening, of meeting The Creator Within. Many beings will experience Oneness with God and with all of life. This will be the beginning of the golden age of the New Human, of which it has been written; the time of the universal human, which has been eloquently described by those with deep insight among you.

“There are many such people in the world now – teachers and messengers, Masters and visionaries -who are placing this vision before humankind and offering tools with which to create it. These messengers and visionaries are the heralds of a New Age.”[2] – “God” Neale Donald Walsch, Friendship With God

“…[T]his book itself is a transformational device that has come out of the arising new consciousness. The ideas and concepts presented here may be important, but they are secondary. They are no more than signposts pointing toward awakening. As you read, a shift takes place within you.”

“This book’s main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to awaken…. It will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless. It can only awaken those who are ready. Not everyone is ready yet, but many are, and with each person who awakens, the momentum in the collective consciousness grows, and it becomes easier for others.”[3] – Eckhart Tolle, The New Earth

“Don’t get attached to any one word. You can substitute ‘Christ’ for presence, if that is more meaningful to you. Christ is your God-essence or the Self, as it is sometimes called in the East. The only difference between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your indwelling divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas presence means your awakened divinity or God-essence.”[4] – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

I stared at the huge stack of books in the Barnes & Noble bookstore. The title of the book was A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life Purpose. The title sounded like a new book by Purpose-Driven pastor Rick Warren, but it was actually the latest selection in Oprah’s Book Club. A colorful orange and blue paper band around the book invited the reader to “Join Oprah and Eckhart for a worldwide web event… Every Monday night beginning March 3, 2008 for 10 weeks… Register at Oprah.com/anewearth.” A personal message from Oprah stated: “Get ready to be awakened.”

It was clear to me that Oprah was no longer content to just popularize New Age beliefs, she would now teach them. This was a bold move by a woman who was obviously willing to do everything in her power – which is considerable – to convert the world to her New Age worldview.

The Shift

With friend and New Age author Marianne Williamson simultaneously teaching A Course in Miracles daily on Oprah & Friends XM Satellite Radio, Oprah now offers two very public New Age classes. These classes are teaching millions of people that the way to save themselves and the planet is not by accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but rather by accepting “the Christ within.” For someone who probably has an aversion to traditional proselytizing, Oprah is giving new meaning to the word “proselytize” as she continues to push her New Age beliefs upon the world. But, in defense of her role as a New Age proselytizer, Oprah would probably be the first to tell you – it’s all for the good of the world. She would also probably argue that what she is teaching is not New Age, but a “New Spirituality.” Curiously, that just happens to be the same term that some emerging church leaders like Brian McLaren are using as they introduce New Age ideas and language into the church.[5]

Oprah can call her New Age teachings whatever she wants, but she and her ever-growing band of New Age colleagues are still teaching that “we are all one” because we are all “God” and “Christ.” As Marianne Williamson writes, “We are all one, we are love itself. ‘Accepting the Christ’ is merely a shift in self-perception.”[6]

The “shift” Williamson, Oprah and Tolle describe is “awakening” to the “Christ within” and the “God within.” “Shift” is the key word. It means to move from one position to another – as in shifting one’s awareness away from the mind and”ego” to the collective “Christ consciousness” or “Christ within.” And, as in shifting your belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to a New Age belief in the “Christ within.” With her New Age classrooms on satellite radio, and now on the Internet, Oprah apparently feels an urgency to teach everyone how to “awaken” and make this “shift” to the “Christ” within. With her Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) kicking in next year we can expect to see her New Age views showcased on an even grander scale.

In her first class with Eckhart Tolle, Oprah asked if people had experienced the “shift” while reading Tolle’s book, A New Earth. The question reminded me of Werner Erhard’s New Age EST program in the 1970s that taught this same idea of shifting one’s perception, and then similarly asking – “Did you get IT?” Obviously, there is pressure to “get IT” – to feel the shift: Oprah felt the shift – did you? Are you understanding this new [age] way of looking at yourself and the world? Or, are you being blocked by your mind and your ego from seeing this New Spirituality that can save our planet? Keep logging onto our classes. Keep reading Tolle’s book -you’ll ‘get it.’

Years earlier, when launching the New Age movement publicly with her book The Aquarian Conspiracy, Marilyn Ferguson introduced this concept of the “shift,” connecting it to the mystical ideas of Teilhard de Chardin – the father of the New Age movement – “whose new perspective would trigger a critical contagion of change” which would result in the “rapid transformation of the human species, beginning with a vanguard” of emerging leaders. She explained how scientist-philosopher Thomas Kuhn coined the term “paradigm shift” to describe “a distinctly new way of thinking” which entailed accepting new truths. When”the new paradigm gains ascendance” and “a critical number of thinkers has accepted the new idea, a collective paradigm shift has occurred.” Ferguson said the “shift” would result in a “new knowing” of the occult world called an”awakening” of “deep inner shifts.”[7]

Evolve or Die

Tolle’s book A New Earth – like A Course in Miracles and other New Age teachings – exploits the idea that the world is at a crisis point and insists that we must “spiritually evolve” as a species to avoid personal and planetary disaster. According to New Age leaders like Tolle, spiritually evolving means “shifting” or converting to the heretical belief that we are all “God” and that we are all “Christ.”

In both his book and his class with Oprah, Tolle reiterated the words that New Age leader Barbara Marx Hubbard was given by her New Age “Christ” – “evolve or die.”[8] In other words, don’t feel any pressure, but if you don’t “shift” your point of view, and “get it” that “we are all one” and that “we are all God,” our planet will probably be destroyed and our human species will become extinct.

Tolle and Oprah stayed away from the harsher aspects of this “evolve or die” dictate in that first Internet class. Hubbard, however, has made it clear that in the future, those who refuse to make the “shift” by seeing themselves as “God” will be eliminated by something called “the selection process.”[9] Hubbard, who is highly respected by her New Age colleagues, claims that her “Christ” has laid out an Armageddon alternative peace plan to save the planet. This peace plan is predicated on accepting the “shift” in consciousness that Oprah and Tolle (and other New Age leaders) are teaching – the “shift” to the Christ within.

Hubbard’s New Age view of the future inspired her to be one of the co-founders of the World Future Society and she is currently listed as a member of its Global Advisory Council.[10] Emergent leader at the “vanguard” of church “transformation,” Brian McLaren, has also written about an Armageddon alternative [11] and just happens to be one of the featured speakers at the upcoming World Future Society’s annual gathering.

Surprised by the Truth

In describing their New Age/New Spirituality “shift” and the necessity for everyone to spiritually evolve, Eckhart Tolle erroneously states that once you “awaken” to your Christ-consciousness and your own godhood, the shift is “irreversible.”[12] What he neglects to take into account is that there are large numbers of us who formerly made the “shift” to these New Age beliefs only to discover – by the grace of God – that we had been greatly deceived by these New Age teachings. The Bible proved itself to be true as it exposed the New Age/New Spirituality for what it was – a lie. It was very humbling for us to realize that the Bible was true after all, and our New Age beliefs were wrong. God was God and we were not. Jesus was the one and only Christ. There was no universal “Christ-consciousness” or “Christ within.” We were amazed to discover that there really was a deceptive spirit world and an actual devil; that we really were sinners that needed to be saved by Jesus Christ. What we came to understand was that the whole New Age plan to save the world was part of the very deception that Jesus warned would come at the time of the end (Matthew 24). We were stunned by the truth of the Bible and shocked at our own gullibility to have believed that we were “God” and “Christ.” We had been very sincere about our New Age beliefs, but we were sincerely wrong – as are Oprah and Tolle.

The New Age paradigm “shift” is a deceptive device that is being cleverly used by a very real spiritual Adversary who is out to deceive the world. One of the definitions of “shift” in Webster’s Dictionary is “a deceitful scheme or method; a trick.”[13] The New Age/New Spirituality “shift” advocated by Oprah and Tolle is such a “shift.” It is, in every sense of the word, diabolically “shifty.”

(See Part II, Part III, Part IV.)

Warren Smith is the author of Deceived on Purpose: The New Age Implications of the Purpose-Driven Church, The Light that was Dark: From the New Age to Amazing Grace and False Christ Coming: Does Anybody Care?

Endnotes:
1. Eckhart Tolle, The New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (New York: Plume, 2005), paper band encircling book.
2. Neale Donald Walsch, Friendship with God: an uncommon dialogue (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999), p. 295-6.
3. Tolle, The New Earth, p. 6-7.
4. Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (Novato, CA: Namaste, 1999), p. 104.
5. Brian McLaren, quote cited in Faith Undone by Roger Oakland (Silverton, OR: Lighthouse Trails, 2007), p. 11.
6. Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), p. 32.
7. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980), pp. 25-32.
8. Tolle, A New Earth, p. 21. Barbara Marx Hubbard lecture at Texas A & M University, September 11, 2002, information taken from The Aggie Daily, September 12, 2002. Warren Smith, Reinventing Jesus Christ: The New Gospel (Ravenna, OH: Conscience Press, 2002), pp. 16, 19.
9. Smith, Ibid.
10.”WorldFuture 2008: Seeing the Future Through New Eyes,” World Future Society conference brochure, http://www.wfs.org/March
April08/WF2008_preliminary.pdf
11. Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything (Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 2006), p. 175.
12. Tolle, The New Earth, p. 7.
13. Websters New World Dictionary (New York: Websters New World Dictionaries, 1988).

See Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.

Originally posted through Discernment Ministries

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Now with Oprah Show Over, Will Teaching Meditation Be Focus?

by Roger Oakland

In a Relevant Magazine interview, Erwin McManus, pastor of a church called Mosaic and a popular author and speaker, states the following:

Because people don’t know where to put our community [Mosaic] they put us in the “emergent” category, and we really are a different animal than emergent. We’re not against emergent, but we are not like them.1

In the interview, McManus says, “Our dilemma is that we are trying to create an entire new category and people keep trying to put us in different ones.”2 While McManus may not be part of the emergent team, he is helping to propel emerging spirituality. Of Dan Kimball’s book, The Emerging Church, he states:

The future of the church in North America hinges on innovators like Dan Kimball and the ideas presented in The Emerging Church. Vintage Christianity can be applied to new and existing congregations to help reach the next generation.3

In 2003, McManus was one of five authors in the book, Church in the Emerging Culture. Two of the other authors were Brian McLaren and Leonard Sweet. McManus’ disclaimer that he is not part of the emerging church does not line up with his words and actions.

In McManus’ book The Barbarian Way, he tells readers they have been “recreated to live in a raw and primal spirituality” and that “Barbarians are not welcome among the civilized and are feared among the domesticated.”4 The theme of The Barbarian Wayis a comparison of the “refined and civilized”5 and the barbarian, who McManus says we should become like. Christianity is something that stands in the way though. McManus explains:

The way of Jesus is far too savage for their sensibilities [those who are “civilized”] … Why a reckless call to awaken the barbarian faith within us at the risk of endangering this great civilization we have come to know as Christianity? … It is time to hear the barbarian call, to form a barbarian tribe, and to unleash the barbarian revolt. Let the invasion begin.6

When, as I mentioned earlier, McManus said it was his “goal to destroy Christianity,” the previous statement reiterates those convictions, and the following statement shows that McManus includes not just Christianity in this upheaval but Israel as well. McManus says that Jesus doesn’t like Israel (7) (although in fact the Bible says He wept for her). He says that since God decided to destroy Israel, we should not think He wouldn’t destroy Christianity too:

Two thousand years ago, God started a revolt against the religion He started. So don’t ever put it past God to cause a groundswell movement against churches and Christian institutions that bear His name.8

McManus erroneously states that God revolted against Judaism, which simply isn’t true. In reality, God established the Law and the Prophets through the Jew whom He refers to as the “apple of His eye”:

When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the LORD’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. (Deuteronomy 32:8-10)

Jesus came as a sacrificial Lamb to save, and He informed His followers that the time is fulfilled—he wasn’t overthrowing a religion—He came to fulfill prophecy. And now McManus’ thinking extends to Christianity, suggesting now God will revolt against it as well.

McManus’ use of words like barbarian, savage, and other warlike terms belittle and mock anything that calls itself Christian. He exhorts readers by saying:

When an opponent beheads one barbarian, he better be prepared, for we will return in force.… We need to move together as God’s people, a barbarian tribe.… There’s a future to be created.9

The Barbarian Way tries to show that to be a barbarian is to live radically for Jesus. But explaining the barbarian life in terms of beheadings, mysticism, and rejection of Christianity will at best give a confusing message to many young readers.

McManus’ “new category” of spiritual quest sounds very much like the emergent quest. By his own admission, McManus resonates with the one element consistent throughout the emerging church—mysticism. For example, at Bethel Theological Seminary where McManus was a professor for the Doctor of Ministry of Emerging Leaders program, he taught with his brother Alex McManus, author of Into the Mystic (a promotion of mysticism). McManus sees mysticism as an integral part of the “barbarian’s” spiritual walk. He explains:

[W]e have to learn how to see the invisible and hear the inaudible. We are called to join the barbarian tribe and to embrace our call as mystical warriors.10

In another interview with Relevant Magazine, McManus explains what is the “core” of his book. He states:

The Barbarian Way was, in some sense, trying to create a volatile fuel to get people to step out and act. It’s pretty hard to get a whole group of people moving together as individuals who are stepping into a more mystical, faith-oriented, dynamic kind of experience with Christ. So, I think Barbarian Way was my attempt to say, “Look, underneath what looks like invention, innovation and creativity is really a core mysticism that hears from God, and what is fueling this is something really ancient.” That’s what was really the core of The Barbarian Way. 11

On McManus’ website, Mosaic Alliance, he includes a section called “Awaken Humanity,” which “serves the purpose of history by maximizing the divine potential in every human being.”12

(This article is an excerpt from Roger Oakland’s book, Faith Undone, pp. 206-210)

Notes:

1. Interview by Al Sergel with Erwin McManus, “Soul Cravings, Q&A (Relevant Magazine, http://www.relevantmagazine.com/godarticle.php?id=7241). [Relevant Magazine has removed this link-on file at LTRP]
2. Ibid.
3. Erwin McManus endorsement of Dan Kimball’s book, The Emerging Church (Vintage Faith website: http://web.archive.org/web/20080831164223/http://www.vintagefaith.com/endorsements.html.
4. Erwin McManus, The Barbarian Way, pp. 14-15.
5. Ibid., p. 32.
6. Ibid., pp. 15, 17.
7. Ibid., p. 110.
8. Ibid., p. 114.
9. Ibid., pp. 134, 138.
10. Ibid., p. 63.
11. Interview by Relevant Magazinewith Erwin McManus, “In That Smoky Room” (Relevant Magazine, http://web.archive.org/web/20070928083059/http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=6989).
12. Erwin McManus “Bio” (http://web.archive.org/web/20100427101301/http://erwinmcmanus.com/bio/).

By Bob Unruh
WorldNetDaily

A stunning ruling from the state Supreme Court in Alabama is suggesting that states simply “reject” the concept of pre-viability abortion-at-will that comes from Roe v. Wade until the U.S. Supreme Court overrules the precedent.

In a powerful statement that appears to affirm the concept of the “personhood” movement, through which pro-life advocates seek to have states recognize the unborn as “persons,” a concurrence from Justice Tom Parker said, “Since Roe was decided in 1973, advances in medical and scientific technology have greatly expanded our knowledge of prenatal life.

“The development of ultrasound technology has enhanced medical and public understanding, allowing us to watch the growth and development of the unborn child in a way previous generations could never have imagined,” he wrote.

“Similarly, advances in genetics and related fields make clear that a new and unique human being is formed at the moment of conception, when two cells, incapable of independent life, merge to form a single, individual human entity.” Click here to continue reading.

LTRP Note: For over two years, Lighthouse Trails has been tracking the story of the lesbian-turned-born-again-Christian, Lisa Miller, and her little daughter, Isabella. Over a year ago, Lisa went into hiding after a Vermont judge ordered her to hand over her daughter to her former lesbian partner who had no legal rights to the child. Now, a book has come out telling the story of Lisa and Isabella Miller. Though she still remains in hiding, while the FBI is frantically trying to find her to appease homosexual activists and lobbyists (as if they had nothing better to do with their time and taxpayer’s money), Lisa’s lawyer wrote the story on her behalf. Lighthouse Trails may start carrying the book after we review it. In the meantime, copies can be obtained through Amazon.

By Matthew Hoffman

Lisa Miller, an ex-lesbian who made national headlines during her battle to protect her daughter from a custody transfer to her former sex partner, is now telling the story of her struggle through a book by one of her attorneys, Rina Lindevaldsen.

“Only One Mommy: A Woman’s Battle for Her Life, Her Daughter, and Her Freedom” (New Revolution Publishers, 2011), gives readers new insights into Miller’s inspiring odyssey from abused and neglected child, through the horrors of sexual and chemical addictions, to redemption through faith in Jesus Christ.

Miller’s final act of bravery was her decision to enter into hiding with her child, Isabella, to escape her former lesbian partner Janet Jenkins, who was successfully seeking to transfer custody of Miller’s daughter, Isabella, to herself. Although Miller remains in hiding, she speaks to readers through journals and letters left with her attorney, and through Lindevaldsen’s own narrative.

At the root of Miller’s nightmarish childhood were two elements: contraception and divorce. Miller’s early memories are filled with the bitter reminder that her mother, who was using birth control at the time she conceived Miller, had not wanted her.

“Whenever my mother was mad at me, she would pull out the oval peach colored pack of birth control pills that she had saved all those years to show me that only one week was missing, and that was the week she got pregnant,” Miller writes. Click here to continue reading.

Related Articles:

FBI Arrests Man Who Tried to Protect Lisa and Isabella Miller From Gay Activists and Vermont Court (America: Punishing the Good, Rewarding Evil)

Vermont Judge Threatens Mother in Hiding With Arrest

Lesbian ‘mother’ case presents constitutional issue

Lesbian-Turned-Christian Mom Fails to Give Up Child to Ex-Partner

For more information about the Bryce Orphan Home Project and Missions for Truth, visit our website, www.missionsfortruth.com. ALSO SEE OUR PDF REPORT SHOWING PHOTOS OF ALL 12 BRYCE ORPHAN HOMES IN KENYA. If you cannot view this video below, click here.

By Ray Yungen

The cover of the July/August 1999 issue of Group Magazine, a leading resource magazine for Christian youth leaders, featured a teenage girl, eyes shut, doing contemplative prayer. The article, “Ancient-Future Youth Ministry” begins by declaring:

It’s Sunday just after 5 p.m. . . . Seven adults are sitting around a “Christ-candle” in the youth room. There is no talking, no laughter. For 10 minutes, the only noise is the sound of their breathing . . . now it’s 7 p.m.—one hour into the night’s youth group gathering. There are 18 senior highers and five adults sitting in a candlelit sanctuary. A gold cross stands on a table. . . . They’re chanting the “Jesus Prayer,” an ancient meditative practice.1

The article discusses two Christian organizations, Youth Specialties and San Francisco Theological Seminary (Presbyterian Church, USA), which teamed together in 1996 to develop an approach to youth ministry that incorporates contemplative practices.2 Mark Yaconelli, son of the former director of Youth Specialties, the late Mike Yaconelli, was hired to direct the project, which was called the Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project. The article is very open to the fact that sacred word repetition was at the heart of this project. These two organizations sponsored the project in sixteen churches of various denominations. The article reveals that, in all sixteen test congregations, middle school and senior high youth “were eager to learn contemplative spiritual practices.”3 One of the church’s associate pastors even went so far as to say, “We shouldn’t be surprised it’s working so well. It’s kind of a no-brainer. If you make the space, the spirit will come.”4 According to the project’s mission statement, this model will soon be “made immediately available to youth ministries nationwide.”5

Just how widespread did this become? In 1997, the Project received a grant from the Lilly Endowment to test a “spiritual formation model.” Furthermore:

Youth ministry leaders were trained to meet regularly for faith sharing, contemplative prayer, and communal discernment . . . communities were then encouraged to begin forming young people in contemplative understanding through silence, solitude, and a variety of contemplative exercises. . . .

Spiritual formation tracks, based on the experience of the Project, were implemented at youth ministry conventions and conferences. . . . National news services such as the Wall Street Journal, Knight Rider News Service, CBS radio and ABC World News Tonight all ran stories on various aspects of the Project.6

Since this project began, Youth Specialties has become a driving force, having a major impact upon evangelical youth work throughout North America, hosting several annual events including the National Youth Workers Convention, the CORE, and the National Pastors Convention. (*Starting with the National Pastors Convention 2006, Zondervan Publishing became the new host.) Course titles for the conferences include, “Creating Sacred Spaces,” “Emerging Worship,” and “God Encounters: Spiritual Exercises That Transform Students.” In addition, each year Youth Specialties holds over 100 seminars that reach thousands of youth workers worldwide—all with its current teachings on spirituality.

Mike Yaconelli’s attraction to and acceptance of contemplative prayer was very similar to the story of Sue Monk Kidd. In his book, Dangerous Wonder, Yaconelli relates how lost he had felt after twenty-five years of ministry. In his “desperation,” he picked up a book by Henri Nouwen (In the Name of Jesus) and said he heard the “voice of Jesus . . . hiding in the pages of Henri’s book” and found himself wanting “to start listening again to the voice of Jesus.”7

In Nouwen’s book, we can find the method that led to Yaconelli’s claim to a newfound voice of Jesus:

Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love and to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them . . . For Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future, a movement from the moral to the mystical is required.8

Nouwen believed that wisdom and courage were found in that place of silence, when in reality they are found in God’s Word. Yaconelli took Nouwen’s admonition to heart and began promoting that prayer method through his own organization.

If this mystical paradigm shift comes to complete fruition, what will the Christian of the future be like? If Christians develop into the spiritual likeness of Henri Nouwen, we will find them meditating with Buddhists as Nouwen did—which he called “dialogue of the heart.”9 We will also find them listening to tapes on the seven chakras10 (which Reiki is based on) as Nouwen did, and above all we will find them wanting to help people “claim his or her own way to God”11 (universalism) as Nouwen did. Nouwen wrote that his solitude and the solitude of his Buddhist friends would “greet each other and support each other.”12 In this one statement lies the fundamental flaw of the contemplative prayer movement—spiritual adultery.

Buddhism proclaims there is nothing outside of yourself needed for salvation. One Buddhist teacher wrote, “The Buddhist approach states that what is ultimately required for human fulfillment is a perfection of being that is found in who we already are.”13 A Christian is one who looks to Jesus Christ as his or her Savior, so to honor the Buddhist approach is to deny the One who gave Himself for us. It is logically impossible to claim Christianity and Buddhism as both being true, because each promotes an opposite basis for salvation. Jesus said, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9). You cannot love and follow the teachings of both Buddha and Jesus—for in reality the choice is either trusting in a self-deity or trusting in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

The only way Nouwen’s contemplative prayer could support the Buddhist view is if it shares the same mysticism, which is the point I am trying to prove in this book. I believe the facts speak for themselves. Once this becomes clear, it is easy to see also that this is the same mysticism many seek to emblazon on the heart of evangelical Christianity.

The question may arise—how can credible Christian organizations justify and condone meditative practices that clearly resemble Eastern meditation? As pointed out earlier in this book, Christian terminology surrounds these practices. It only takes a few popular Christian leaders with national profiles to embrace a teaching that sounds Christian to bring about big changes in the church. Moreover, we have many trusting Christians who do not use the Scriptures to test the claims of others. Building an entire prayer method around an out-of-context verse or two is presumptuous, at best. Now more than ever, it is critical that Christians devote themselves to serious Bible study and discernment regarding this issue.

In the spiritual climate of today, a unifying mystical prayer practice fits the paradigm necessary to unite the various world religions—the contemplative prayer movement is such a practice! I believe this movement is taking many on a downward spiral that could lead to the great apostasy. For this to happen, as the Bible says, there will be “seducing spirits” who design a spirituality nearly indistinguishable from the truth. Every Christian must therefore discern whether or not the contemplative prayer movement is a deeper way of walking with God or a deception that undermines the very Gospel itself.
Contemplative prayer stands on the threshold of exploding worldwide; it already has found acceptance in every culture and has even found its way into the writings of prominent, trusted evangelical leaders. (From A Time of Departing, chapter 9)

Related Article:

Please Contemplate This by The Berean Call (T.A. McMahon)

Notes:
1. Mark Yaconelli, “Ancient Future Youth Ministry” (Group Magazine, July/August 1999, http://www.ymsp.org/resources /ancient_future_article.html, accessed 2/2006), pp. 33-34.
2. The Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project (history page, http://www.ymsp.org/about/history.html).
3. Mark Yaconelli, “Ancient Future Youth Ministry,” p. 39.
4. Ibid., p. 39
5. Ibid.
6. The Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project.
7. Michael Yaconelli, Dangerous Wonder (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2003, revised edition), p. 16.
8. Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus.
9. Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey, p.20.
10. Ibid., p. 20.
11. Ibid., p. 51.
12. Ibid., p. 20.
13. Reginald A. Ray, “Understanding Buddhism: Religion Without God” (Shambhala Sun Magazine, July 2001, http://www.shambhalasun.com/Archives/Columnists/Ray/july_01.htm), p. 25.

(CNSNews.com) – A federal judge in Manhattan issued a temporary restraining order Thursday allowing the Bronx Household of Faith and 59 other New York City churches to continue meeting for weekend worship services in New York City public schools.

The city had evicted the churches on Feb. 12.

“This court order is a fantastic victory and will calm the 60 plus congregations that were frantically searching for space,” New York City Council Member Fernando Cabrera said. “I commend the U.S. District Court for ruling justly.”

Cabrera has led a growing movement of New York City churchgoers who have been protesting the city’s eviction plans since Dec. 5 of last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Education of the City of New York case and the city re-imposed its policy barring worship services from public school buildings. Click here to continue reading.

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