Christian Leaders Giving Mysticism to Our Youth

Christian Leaders Giving Mysticism to Our Youth

by Ray Yungen

Lighthouse Trails
Research 

Posted July 7, 2009

INDEX of previous
reports from Lighthouse-Trails

Emphasis added

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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 [now run by Zondervan]….

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) [the same book Kay and
Rick Warren recommend] 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 … 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 [A Time of Departing], 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.

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Notes:

1. Mark Yaconelli, “Ancient Future Youth Ministry” (Group
Magazine, July/August 1999,


http://www.ymsp.org/resources /ancient_future_article.html),
pp. 33-34.
2. The Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project (history page,


http://www.ymsp.org/about/history.html, accessed
1/2006).
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, pp. 6, 31-32.
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.

(Excerpt from chapter 9,


A Time of Departing, 2nd edition)

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Source page:

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletter070609.htm#LETTER.BLOCK29