The Emerging Network – From the Frying Pan into the Fire

 

Lighthouse Trails
reported last week in our article,

“Some Say the Emerging Church is Dead – the Truth
Behind the Story,” a new
emerging network/alliance is forming among several
disgruntled emerging church leaders such as Dan
Kimball, Erwin McManus, and Scot McKnight.1

According to McKnight, the new network/alliance will
be “committed to the Lausanne Covenant.”


One blog posting said that
the Lausanne Covenant is “more typically evangelical
than Emergent Village is presumed to be.” However,
documentation shows that Lausanne is currently on
the same theological path that the emerging church
has been on all along with respect to ecumenism,
global peace, eschatology, and mysticism. The fact
is, Lausanne has had plans for some time to work
together with emerging church leaders.

A 2005 Lausanne Committee report titled “The New
People Next Door” states that they hope to bring
together “younger emerging leaders” from around the
world and that “[t]ransformation was a theme,”
adding: “We pray for peace and reconciliation and
God’s guidance in how to bring about peace through
our work of evangelization.”(2
This 64-page report by Lausanne claims it is
“heavily drawn” from the book, The Next
Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity
by Philip Jenkins (p. 57),
a book strongly pro-ecumenical and pro-Roman
Catholic. Jenkins is also author of The New
Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice.

To reach its objectives, Lausanne has turned to

Rick Warren, who will be at The Third
Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in
South Africa in
2010. Warren, one of the emerging
church’s strongest supporters and also a major
proponent of the contemplative prayer movement, has
shown an affinity to both Dan Kimball and

Erwin McManus as well as
other emerging leaders. To see where Rick Warren
stands on the contemplative issue, one only needs to
look as far as Warren’s list of recommended
spiritual resources. One of the books that Warren
resonates with is Adele Ahlberg Calhoun’s
Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, which openly
promotes eastern-style meditation.3

Leighton Ford, Honorary Life Chairman for Lausanne,
is also helping to bring about the goals of
Lausanne. Ford came out of the contemplative closet
with his recent book, The Attentive Life: Discerning
God’s Presence in All Things. The book offers a
collection of quotes by and references to some of
the most prolific eastern-style meditation teachers,
including Thomas Keating, David Steindl-Rast, Gerald
May,

Kathleen Norris, and
atonement rejecter and Episcopal priest Alan Jones
(Reimagining Christianity). It is Steindl-Rast who
suggested that the Gospel “gets in the way” between
Christian and Buddhist dialogue (see

A Time of Departing.

The fact that Lausanne is working with two highly
influential contemplative proponents, Ford and
Warren, reveals the organization’s affinity toward
mysticism, an affinity which is shared by the
emerging church, including Kimball and McManus.

As Lighthouse Trails and its authors have stated on
numerous occasions, the “fruit” of contemplative
prayer is interspirituality and panentheism. While
the seemingly heart cry of the emerging church (and
Lausanne) has been missions and global unity, the
underlying force is mysticism, which we believe will
be Satan’s instrument to deceive the whole world
(Revelation 12:9). Mysticism (i.e., the occult) is
overtaking all segments of society, and this means
that the world is falling under the spell of
sorceries (magical arts) that according to the book
of Revelation will deceive all nations (Revelation
18:23 – see last chapter in

FMSC).

It is ironic that Kimball, McManus, and McKnight are
suggesting that they must leave emergent behind (at
least in name) because certain segments of the
movement are not theologically conservative enough.
Translated: Brian McLaren and others deny the
atonement, and that is just too radical, they say.
But the apple may fall quite close to the tree in
this case–

A few years ago, former New Age follower Warren
Smith wrote an article titled “Evangelicals and New
Agers Together.” In the article, he identified a man
named

Jay Gary. Gary served as a
conference planner on Lausanne for three years in
the 1980s. Smith points out in his article Gary’s
endorsement of New Age leader and former assistant
Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Robert
Muller. What’s more, as Smith points out, in
Muller’s book New Genesis: Shaping a Global
Spirituality:

“Muller said
he often heard himself being described as a “Teilhardian.”
He admitted that “…now after a third of a
century of service with the UN I can say
unequivocally that much of what I have observed
in the world bears out the all encompassing,
global, forward-looking philosophy of

Teilhard de Chardin [a
staunch mystic and panentheist].”

“Muller’s unabashed identification with Chardin
should have put Gary on immediate alert. Instead
he seems oblivious to the dangers of Muller’s
doctrine. Perhaps because of his contact with
Muller and others, even his own writing seems to
have an underlying Teilhardian quality.

“Gary had apparently so imbibed Muller’s fondness
for Teilhard’s writings that one of Gary’s
chapter subtitles, “Hymns of the Universe” is
the actual title of one of Teilhard de Chardin’s
most mystical books about the Cosmic Christ! And
wouldn’t Gary find it curious that in Chardin’s
book this mystical godfather of the New Age also
talks about a star that the world is waiting for
– a star that heralds the coming of the Cosmic
New Age Christ.”

Jay Gary is a
link in this emerging shift that should not be
ignored. Today, he is a member of and a speaker for
the World Future Society where New Age leader
Barbara Marx Hubbard is on the “Global Advisory
Council.” Interestingly, the man who Kimball and
McManus wish to distance themselves from (Brian
McLaren) talks about Jay Gary in McLaren’s own book,

The Secret Message of Jesus
(p. 179). In referring
to “eschatological [end-time] intentions,” McLaren
says Gary writes “brilliantly” in his explanation of
the future of the world where Gary describes a
“creative future” that is much different than the
future that is described by those who believe the
book of Revelation.

The Lausanne that Kimball, McKnight, and McManus are
“committed to” is an organization that while
appearing to be more evangelical than the “emergent
church,” gives ample reason to believe they are on
the same track as McLaren and other radical, Bible
rejecting emergents. The break-away emergents
(Kimball, McManus, etc.) see themselves as more
conservative orthodox members of the emergent
movement, but in reality they embrace the same
mysticism and the same eschatology beliefs that have
led McLaren and others like him into radical
apostasy. In essence, nothing is changing at all –
it will be like the child who hides his peas under
the mashed potatoes – they’re still there but just
out of sight for awhile.

For those who are skeptical, let us leave you with
this. It’s been sometime since Jay Gary has been a
part of Lausanne – now it is Rick Warren who is
there as the influencer. But Jay Gary and Rick
Warren share something vital in common –


Leonard Sweet. Sweet was
invited to Regent University a few years ago to
speak with Gary who is on staff there. And just a
few months ago, Rick Warren had Sweet come and speak
at the

Small Groups Conference at
Saddleback. Sweet is a New Age sympathizer, and yet
both men find him appealing. So nothing has changed
at Lausanne, and for Kimball and McManus, who claim
to be going in a more theologically sound direction,
they may be jumping from the frying pan into the
fire and unfortunately taking a vast number of
people with them.

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Related Stories:

The Call to Global Oneness by
Berit Kjos

The World Christian Movement
by Al Dager

Kjos Ministries Database on Lausanne

Evangelicals and New Agers Together
by Warren Smith

For more on Jay Gary, read chapter 10 of Warren
Smith’s

Reinventing Jesus Christ


Brian McLaren to speak at World Future Society by Herescope

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