"Am I therefore become your enemy,because I TELL YOU THE TRUTH...?"
(Galatians 4:16)

Rick Warren Promoting Contemplative Spirituality...More evidence

Issue 321 of Rick Warren's weekly e-newsletter to over 400,000 church leaders shows further indication that the Purpose Driven movement promotes and stands by the emerging/contemplative church.As has been reported and documented many times in the past,Rick Warren is one of the major catalysts of the emerging church movement as well as the contemplative prayer movement.Some of this documentation includes his 2003 endorsement and participation in Dan Kimball's book,The Emerging Church and his 1995 participation with New Age sympathizer Leonard Sweet in an audio series called Tides of Change as well as Warren's 1999 endorsement of Sweet's emerging book,Soul Tsunami, just to name a few.This week's newsletter has an article titled "Surviving Life as a Pastor's Spouse"by Pete Scazzero's wife, Geri. While the article is benign,Warren's reference to Pete Scazzero's book at the end of the article is not.The newsletter states:
Geri Scazzero directs large group events and the marriage ministry at New Life Fellowship Church in Queens, N.Y. She is a certified Pairs trainer and speaks, along with her husband Pete, to pastors, leaders and their spouses across North America on integrating the groundbreaking principles found in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (Nelson, 2006).
The concern is that the "groundbreaking principles found in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality" are contemplative principles as we reported in November 2006. Scazzero's book favorably quotes and/or references some of the most blatant mysticism proponents such as Meister Eckhart, Daniel Goleman(scientist who studies and promotes Buddhist meditation), Thomas Merton, Tilden Edwards, and several others. The book also promotes contemplative practices such as centering, lectio, and going into the silence. While Warren promotes Pete Scazzero's book in a round about way (through Scazzero's wife's article), he nevertheless does promote the book and points people to it as "groundbreaking." Warren calls it groundbreaking because he knows that contemplative is a "hot topic," which he told Lighthouse Trails in 2003 (see p. 143 ATOD, 2nd ed.).In this week's e-newsletter, Warren makes other references to show his support for contemplative/emerging spirituality. A reference to Focus on the Family's contemplative proponent H.B. London is one, and a write up about the upcoming Catalyst Conference, which will feature emerging/contemplative speakers, is another.
http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/

As in the days of Noah...