Shaping the Minds of the Youth

…but first, a
note from the Editors:

Children are at risk! In public schools, in both
Canada and the United States, students are being
introduced to eastern-style meditation through Yoga.1
YMCA clubs are offering Yoga, and many television
programs for kids make reference to various New Age
concepts. Even babies are the target for becoming
mystically attuned.2 
And just this past spring, Washington state students
(as young as 5 years old) were bused in to hear the
Dalai Lama and Rob Bell.

3

But it’s not just children in the secular
world. Children in churches are at risk too.
Churches are introducing kids of all ages to Rob
Bell’s Nooma films (a gateway to the New Age/New
Spirituality), 4
and in many mainstream churches, yoga for the
whole family is being offered.

Lighthouse Trails has reported on “Children and
Meditation” many times. That’s because it is
serious. And if kids don’t get enough influence
of eastern mysticism while they are growing up
to forever change their spirituality, they very
likely will end up in a college that will
 finish the job. And that’s both secular and
Christian. It’s no laughing matter….” [See
the endnotes

HERE]

In
the late 1960s, two youth workers in their
twenties,

Mike Yaconelli and Wayne
Rice (who happened to be working for
Youth for Christ at the time), wanted to
change the way youth ministry was viewed
and approached. They self-published a
small booklet called Ideas, began
talking to senior pastors and churches,
and in 1970 held their first conference.
They called the company
Youth Specialties. Interestingly,
the late theologian Francis Schaeffer
attended their second annual
conference.[1]
Schaeffer would be very
surprised if he had known that thirty
years down the road this young,
sprouting organization would become one
of the major catalysts for the emerging
church movement.

Just a few years after
Youth Specialties
was launched, Zondervan publishers took
notice of the two men’s work:

“Youth Specialties’ passion for youth
workers caught the attention of
Zondervan Publishing House in 1974.
Zondervan came to YS and said, ‘You guys
are weird and unpredictable. We want to
put your books in bookstores,’ recalls
Mike. Zondervan was very Dutch, very
Grand Rapids, very conservative–but
hey, they believed in our mission!’[2]

Zondervan’s interest in Youth
Specialties would only increase, and
over the next thirty years, the two
companies would publish over 500
resources for youth workers. It is worth
mentioning that Zondervan became the
property of Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corporation in 1988. Murdoch’s
corporation, also owner of Fox News, has
been a major catalyst for Purpose Driven
Life and now, we see, for the emerging
church through Zondervan.

This is
significant in light of Rick Warren’s
relationship with Murdoch. Warren says
he is Murdoch’s pastor;[3] it is clear
that both he and Youth Specialties
benefited from a corporation that had a
net profit of 21 billion dollars for the
2004 fiscal year,4 and whose founder
(Murdoch) received a “papal knighthood”
from Pope John Paul II for Murdoch’s
donation of “large sums of money” to the
Catholic church.[5]

In 1984, as Youth Specialties grew and
its circle of influence spread across
the country, Zondervan signed a
co-publishing agreement with Youth
Specialties. Eventually, there was the
National Youth Workers Convention, the
National Pastors Convention, and another
100 seminars throughout the year around
the country.

Twelve years later, Youth Specialties
partnered with San Francisco Theological
Seminary to form the Youth Ministry &
Spirituality Project.[6] The following
year, the young organization was awarded
a grant by the
Lilly Endowment.[7]* By
this time, Youth Specialties had
contacted the new emergent leaders and
said they wanted to work together.
Sharing many of the same spiritual
affinities as Emergent, Youth
Specialties hoped to help take the
movement to the next level with more
books, more conferences, and more
growth.

In 2006, Zondervan bought Youth
Specialties.[8] After the purchase, Zondervan made a commitment that it
would continue its support of the
emerging leaders.

While Zondervan’s role in helping build
the emerging church movement cannot be
minimized, it is not the only Christian
publisher that has added force to the
movement. In fact, most major Christian
publishing houses have released at least
a few books written by emerging church
leaders or books that have an emerging
spirituality bent to them.

The secular publishing industry has also
played a significant part in the
emerging church’s tremendous success in
getting their message out. In 1996,
Leadership Network established a
partnership agreement with Jossey-Bass
(a large San Francisco-based publishing
house), which would turn out to be most
beneficial for both parties.[9]
Incidentally,
Jossey-Bass had a close
ongoing relationship with
Peter Drucker,
who sat on the Jossey-Bass board, and
his Leader to Leader Journal is to this
day published by Jossey-Bass.

Through this strong-arm publishing
alliance of Jossey-Bass and Leadership
Network, the handful of carefully
selected young men (Young Leaders
Network) began writing books, and with
the
Drucker/Buford
marketing energies,
these young emerging leaders became
known world-wide in just a few years, so
much so, that in 2005, Time magazine
named Brian McLaren one of the country’s
top 25 “Most Influential
Evangelicals.”10

In addition to numerous books being
published by the Jossey-Bass Leadership
Network series, several conferences have
taken place that have further propelled
this movement. The secular Mother Jones
magazine took notice of the young
emergent movement and its benefactors,
stating:

“Postmoderns receive crucial
support–financial and otherwise–from
the megachurches. These postmodern
ministries are loosely organized by the
Leadership Network, a Dallas-based
umbrella group for many of the nation’s
megachurches. It’s the Leadership
Network that keeps Driscoll’s bohemian
Mars Hill ministry in touch with the
fast-growing, but more traditional,
University Baptist Church in Waco by
holding conferences and seminars. For
the past three years the network has
sponsored national conferences that
bring together postmodern leaders.”[11]

There is little doubt that the emerging
church movement would not be what it is
today without the zeal, backing, and
efforts of Leadership Network, Rupert
Murdoch, Jossey-Bass, Youth Specialties,
Willow Creek, Peter Drucker, Rick
Warren, Zondervan publishing, and the
Lilly Endowment.

Bob Buford has stated that, “A few men
can make a huge difference,” and he
adds, “[I]t has become my firm
conviction that the way to affect
multitudes is to Focus on the Few.”[12]
With such a stealth backing, I can see
why this would be true. But if these
“Few” are preaching a different gospel,
the “affect” on the “multitudes” could
produce a terrible falling away from the
faith.

If such a process does occur, what will
it look like? Will it happen overnight,
or will there be a seductive alluring
over time? Will the youth be targeted?
And what will happen to those who warn
about this seduction? Will they be
considered out of touch and
narrow-minded, holding back new
frontiers and tides of change?

For Christianity to be restructured, a
spiritual paradigm shift of a
magnificent strength and clever strategy
would have to take place. It would have
to involve all denominations, even ones
that were once biblically based. While
humans will carry out this shift, we
know the Bible teaches that the battle
we face is not against flesh and blood
and that there is an evil one “which
deceiveth the whole world” (Revelation
12:9). When man turns his back on what
the Lord has said, nothing good can come
from it:

“Thus saith the LORD;
‘Cursed be the
man that trusteth in man, and maketh
flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth
from the LORD. For he shall be like the
heath in the desert, and shall not see
when good cometh; but shall inhabit the
parched places in the wilderness, in a
salt land and not inhabited.'” (Jeremiah
17:5-6) (From
Faith Undone, chapter 2)