Creating Community – Part 2: 40 Days of Change through a New Way of Thinking

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Creating Community – Part 2 Managing Change through a New Way of Thinking Rick Warren sees a a more inclusive vision of oneness By Berit Kjos – November 2004 Part 1 – Transformational Leadership

For background information, please see: Systems Thinking    Unity & Community

“Welcome to another exciting chapter in the history of Saddleback
Church as we begin 40 Days of Community this weekend! We anticipate the
next 6 weeks to be a… turning point in the life of your small group and in your life
personally.”

[1]
Rick Warren

“But all this is not
about us…. It’s all about the global glory of God!
We intend to leverage the attention that the
Purpose Driven Life has garnered to bring about a whole new way of thinking
and acting in the church about our responsibility in the world.”[2]
Rick Warren

“

Fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness are not problems to be solved — they are frozen patterns of thought to be dissolved.  The solvent we propose is a
new way of thinking,
feeling, and being: a culture of systems. Fragmentary thinking becomes systemic when we recover
‘the memory of the whole,’ the awareness that wholes actually precede parts.”[3]



Peter Senge and
Fred Kofman

“The challenge to humanity
is to adopt new ways of thinking, new ways of acting, new ways of organizing
itself in society, in short, new ways of living.”[4]
UNESCO

---

“It changed our
church!”  “It’s amazing!”  “Transforming!  “The fellowship is
awesome!”  “We’re growing!”…

The chorus of praise
for Rick Warren’s “40
Days” programs sounds impressive, but it’s not surprising. The dynamics
behind the facilitated small group — the heart of the 40 Days process —
are both exhilarating and transformative. But they’re neither new nor Biblical.  They
are merely postmodern adaptations of the old
Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, Esalen-based
encounter groups and all
the other expressions of the Human Potential movement that helped transform
western culture in the 60s and 70s. 

This social
transformation had been planned decades earlier. [See
Steps toward Global
Mind Control] By 1948, when the World Health Organization (a UN
agency) had established its
anti-Christian “Mental Health” program, globalist visionaries in both
Europe and North America were experimenting with behavioral psychology as a
means to eradicate traditional values and Biblical absolutes. They hoped to
“un-freeze” minds and release them from the old values, promote
open-mindedness to their revolutionary ideas, fill minds with pluralistic values,
and then “re-freeze”
the new collective views in the public consciousness.

They succeeded!
Working through

UNESCO’s education program, WHO’s global
mental health program, national and
local governments around the world, the
mainstream media and countless private and non-governmental agencies around
the world, they fueled the
social forces that shaped today’s postmodern mind and culture. Liberal churches
were among the first to embrace the
postmodern thinking, but soon evangelical churches began to accommodate
the rising cultural resistance to absolute truth and moral boundaries. To
grow, they argued, churches must trade God’s unchanging Word for feel-good
adaptations.

A website focused on
“Organization Development” gives us a brief glimpse into the dark history
of government mind control:

“In 1947, the
National Training Laboratories Institute began in Bethel, ME. They
pioneered the use of T-groups (Laboratory Training) in which the
learners use here and now experience in the group, feedback among
participants and theory on human behavior to explore group process
and gain insights into themselves and others. … The T-group was
a great training innovation which provided the base for what we now know
about team building. This was a new method that would help leaders and
managers create a more humanistic, people-serving system….

“Success in these goals depends, to a large extent, on the implied
contract that each participant is willing to disclose feelings…
and to solicit feedback.”[5]

What’s new in group
dynamics is mainly the
feedback technology and marketing. Today’s corporations hide their manipulative psycho-social
strategies behind nice-sounding organizational buzzwords, while church leaders mask them with
Biblical terms and pleasing euphemisms. The guiding assumption seems to be
that the ends justify the means. As Rick Warren points out in Purpose
Driven Life, “The importance of helping members develop
friendships within your church cannot be overemphasized. Relationships are
the glue that holds a church together.”[6]

Andy (my husband) and I discovered
the seductive power of encounter groups back in 1970, when we were invited to join a “Quest
for Meaning” group in
the home of a respected business acquaintance.
We had no idea what to expect, and we saw no reason to reject the offer.
After the first group meeting, we were hooked. The friendliness of the
leader/facilitator and the openness of the dialogue disarmed us and made us feel
more than welcome. So we returned to this virtual “family” week after week
for the next few months. By then, foreign names such as
Teilhard de Chardin
had been introduced, and our topics included some strange notions about
spiritual evolution toward a utopian world of peace and
oneness.  We began to feel uneasy but were reluctant to turn our backs
to this satisfying fellowship. Finally, after a weekend retreat designed to seal
the group relationships, we were asked to sign a pledge and formalize our
commitment to a common vision. By now, our eyes were opened and we left.

1. A changing church for a changing world.

Not long after our
departure, I
became a Christian. God immediately led me to a local veterans hospital where I volunteered
as part of the chaplain service. Longing to share God’s love and hope with
lonely and needy patients, I began my Spirit-led training in speaking His
truths and answering challenging questions.

One day, the chaplains told me about an encounter session
(a form of  Gestalt therapy) recently started for both patients and staff.
It called for authenticity, self-disclosure, sensitivity to
diverse views and all the other interpersonal skills so important to
contemporary group synergy and transformation.
Seated in a circle, everyone would vent their feelings and empathize with
each other.  Any expression — no matter how extreme —
would be tolerated and respected. “It really freed me up,” said one of the
chaplains one morning as I arrived. “I’m a different person. More open…. You ought to try it.”

I did — without checking with God or my husband. Seated in the circle, I
heard the same profanities that bombarded me daily on the medical wards as young
veterans tried to shock and challenge me. But
something was different. I had entered a spiritual battle zone without
wearing my
spiritual armor. Since God didn’t send me, He allowed me to face the consequences of
my foolish choice. Driving home, I kept hearing in my mind the same vulgar
words that had been spoken by the members of the group. I felt polluted and
horrified. Though I confessed my sin and prayed for His cleansing, He
allowed those profanities and suggestions to torment me daily for nearly three months. Then He suddenly
caused them to disappear, but I had learned my lesson.

I know that
the process works! Facilitated dialogues, based on a strategic set of well-tested ground
rules, feel good to group members who commit themselves to the process.
Whether these psycho-social strategies are marketed under business labels,
New Age forums, or Christian terminology, they transform the thoughts and
values of cooperative participants. Christian or not, people feel they are becoming “better” people
because they have chosen to set aside their former assumptions and divisive
beliefs in order to empathize with contrary views. They learn to
tolerate, accept, respect and appreciate behaviors and
expressions that earlier seemed wrong or unjustifiable. They judge nothing
[other than people who seem divisiveness or uncooperative] and
identify with everything. They praise each person who transcends the old
barriers, and they celebrate each new step toward unconditional conformity and
unbiblical unity. 

Pastors and church
leaders seem as eager to implement the new management strategies as schools,
community groups, corporations, government and the United Nations. Across
the board, leaders and followers are learning the same
new ways of thinking, acting, speaking, listening and serving. The “UN Report of The Commission on Global Governance,” titled
Our Global Neighborhood, illustrates this worldwide march toward an
integrated global management system based on these psycho-social practices:

“By leadership we
do not mean only people at the highest national and international
levels. We mean enlightenment at every level — in local and
national groups, in parliaments and in the professions…. in small
community groups and large national NGOs, in international bodies of
every description, in the religious community and among teachers…
in the private sector and among the large transnational corporations, and particularly in the media….

“The new
generation…[has] a deeper sense of
solidarity as people of the planet
than any generation before them…. On that rests our hope for our
global neighborhood.”[7]

Pastors and management
gurus
such as Rick Warren, John Maxwell, Bob Buford and Peter Drucker are
promoting this new organizational model around the world. One of Pastor Warren’s
Ministry Toolbox Issues commends an
influential book by Dr. Peter Senge (the secular/holistic founder of
MIT’s Society for
Organizational Learning) titled The Fifth Discipline.
Rick Warren’s website
calls it “one of the best books of the last 10 years on the subject of
organizational transitions.”[8]

It has nothing to do with
Christianity, but it has everything to do with social transformation and the
new way of thinking.

2. Systems thinking

“It is interesting that the words
‘whole’ and ‘health’ come from the same root (the Old English hal…),”
wrote Dr. Senge in The Fifth Discipline.
“So it should come as no surprise that the unhealthiness of our world
today is in direct proportion to our inability to see it as a whole.”
With that revealing introduction, he goes on to define systems thinking:

“Systems thinking
is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing
interrelationship rather than things, for seeing patterns of change
rather than static ‘snapshots.’ It is a set of general principles…. It is also a set of specific tools and
techniques…. [T]hese tools have been applied to understand a wide
range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological and
even psychological systems….

“I call systems
thinking the fifth discipline because it is the conceptual
cornerstone that underlines all of the five learning disciplines of this
book. All are concerned with a shift of mind from seeing parts to seeing
wholes….”[9]

Dr. Senge also co-authored the report,
“Communities of
Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations,” which
summarizes the key parts of his highly praised book. This report focuses on the
“fragmentation” that keeps us from trading our old Biblical view
of reality for a more systemic or holistic perspective:

“Fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness are not problems to be solved —
they are frozen patterns of thought to be dissolved. The solvent we propose is
a new way of thinking,
feeling,
and being: a culture of systems. Fragmentary thinking becomes
systemic when we recover ‘the memory of the whole‘…. Competition becomes cooperation when we discover the
‘community nature of the self‘…. 

“In the
new systems worldview, we move from the primacy of pieces to
the primacy of the whole,
from absolute truths
to coherent interpretations, from self to community….  

“Thus the nature of the commitment required to
build learning organizations goes beyond people’s typical ‘commitment to their organizations.’ It encompasses
commitment to changes needed in the larger world and to seeing
our organizations as vehicles for bringing about such changes.”[10]

Today’s purpose-driven church movement fits right into
the worldwide transformation envisioned by secular leaders ranging from community facilitators to
the highest levels of national and international management. And two of our
earlier articles, “Spirit-Led
or Purpose-Driven? Part 2: Unity & Community and
Part 3: Small Groups and the Dialectic Process,” show how the
purpose-driven model matches this vision of social change and facilitated
oneness. Please read them, since I won’t repeat the same information.

Then ponder the
following slogans and statements from Saddleback’s 40
Days of Community campaign. These affirmations of collectivism may
sound true, but — as you will see in a moment — they imply
unbiblical absolutes that clash with actual truth. As you read
the quotes below, please
remember that (1) the word “we” refers to two or more people, not you
and your Lord; and that (2) “lone ranger Christian” in this context would
include God’s faithful disciple who is rejected or excluded by a
compromising church (see “Dealing with
Resisters“):

“‘WE’ is more powerful than
‘me.'”[11, pages 44, 46]

“There is power in partnership….
Evangelism is always a team effort.”
[11, pages 44]

“There’s no such thing as a lone ranger Christian…. We’re better
together and we belong together.”[12 – CD
#1]

“The Bible says we’re better together. We were created for community.”[12 – CD
#3]

“Why are we so reluctant to admit our need for each
other? There are two powerful reasons: First, our culture glorifies individualism…. Second we have pride…. But there is absolutely no shame in needing others.
God wired us that way! He wants his children to depend on each other.”

    
“We were designed for relationships. We were formed for fellowship in God’s
family and created for community.”[11, pages 68]

 

“God hates loneliness….
You’re not just a believer, you are a belonger….

     “…when God calls the church ‘the Body of Christ,’ he has a human body in
mind where every part is interconnected and interdependent. … Each of us finds our meaning
and function as a part of his body‘ (Romans 12:5a, Msg). And like parts of any
living body, it’s impossible for believers to thrive without each other.”

    
“You must be connected to a church fellowship to survive spiritually. More
than that, you need to be in a small group of people where you can love and be
loved, serve and be served, share what you’re learning and learn from others.”[11, pages 69]

“We
must continually remind ourselves that we belong to each other and need
each other.”[11, pages 70]

“Love requires community. We cannot obey Christ’s command in isolation.
We have to be connected to each other in order to ‘love one another.'”[11, pages 17] 

[Note: Remember the  testimonies of persecuted saints
both in Roman catacombs and Communist prisons. Those faithful believers proved God’s gracious
sufficiency in the midst of solitary confinement and unthinkable pressures
to conform to socialist thinking and communal values.]

Pastor Warren wrote the foreword for a fast-selling book by Erwin McManus
titled  An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church GOD had in
Mind. “To get the most out of this book,” wrote Warren, “pay close
attention to the metaphors and stories…. If you change the metaphors, you
can change the world! Jesus did…. This book models what a postmodern,
purpose-driven church can look like…. I love this book because Erwin
loves the Church.” 

With such a glowing endorsement, Pastor McManus has caught the attention
of church leaders around the world. Ponder his view of unity:

“When God creates, he creates with relational integrity. Everything is
connected and fits together. This is not only true in the physical realm,
but even more so in the spiritual. The Bible tells us that when man sinned, all
creation groaned.

“Those who study science have told us that a butterfly fluttering its
wings in South America could, in some sense, be the primary cause
of an avalanche in Antarctica. This level of complexity strikes us as new
and innovative, and yet the Scriptures have advocated this kind of
interconnection for thousands of years….

“According to Scripture, everything is connected, and every action has at
least some effect on the whole. In the same way the church is part of the
whole….”[13]

Those supposed absolute truths taught by Pastors Warren and
McManus sound
good, don’t they? But there are at least four Biblical reasons why the above
affirmations twist our understanding of God
and present one important part of the Christian life as being only
option and absolute truth.

(1) Our wise and wonderful Lord wants us to “depend on”
Him, not on people. Sometimes He separates us from people so that our
reliance will be on Him alone. He is our strength and sufficiency — now and forever! See Psalms 18, 23, 45, 73 and 75.

That’s how God trained David, the shepherd
boy who became Israel’s king. His youth was spent herding the family sheep
alone in the open pastures of the land. There, in those lonely places, he
learned to know and trust the Lord as his Rock and Refuge, Shepherd
and King. David was still a solitary shepherd boy when he
faced the mighty Goliath and the trembling armies of Israel. Taught by God
Himself, the young shepherd had the wisdom to reject the ungodly
counsel of those who doubted that a boy with a sling could kill a giant with
a sword. Confident that God was with Him even if all others turned
away, he spoke the memorable words recorded in 1 Samuel 17:37 — “The Lord,
who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He
will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine!”

(2) While God will never fail us, people
will. That’s why Jesus “did not commit [or entrust] Himself to them, because
He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He
knew what was in man.” (John 2:24-25)
He alone knows our hearts and all of our spiritual needs; therefore He tells us
to trust Him rather than human strength or wisdom. While He can work through
human friends and counselors, our ultimate confidence must rest in Him, no
one else. (See

Guidance)

(3) We belong to God, not man, even when we commit ourselves to serve, work,
love and live with one another. He who created us also holds our future in His
hands. “…do you not know,” asked the apostle Paul, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is
in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you
were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in
your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Corinthians 6:19  “For if we live, we live to the Lord;
and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”
Romans 14:7

(4)

There can be no Biblical unity between sin and
purity, between pagan myths and God’s truth, between our holy Lord and the
opposing forces of darkness. See
2
Corinthians 6:12-18
and “Loving evil more
than good.”

3. Unity in Diversity?

On the other hand, Pastor Warren’s affirmations of unity would generally be true, if the small groups were made up of committed,
regenerated Christians who were truly one in Christ through God’s
saving grace — and who loved and followed His Word (including
the less acceptable passages about sin, guilt, and self-denial). 

But such Bible-focused groups would be incompatible with today’s
dialectic groups, for the purpose-driven groups must be diverse and
open-minded (free from non-negotiable absolutes) in order
to fulfill their hidden purposes.
The synergy that supposedly energizes group members is fueled by
the dialectic process of reconciling opposing views and values.

Since these strategic small groups are designed to (1) meet felt needs
of the unbeliever and (2) build
common ground, they cannot meet the true spiritual needs of the
believer. Individual freedom to share and delight in Scriptures must be limited, since
the very nature of God’s Word is considered divisive. You can’t speak
Scriptures that might offend
other group members. Since
church growth is one of the driving purposes (though it’s not among the
official five), you cannot walk in the footsteps of Jesus and
risk exposing “the offense of the cross.”

Yes, God does call us to share His love and
truth with
non-Christians. He also tells to
encourage us through fellowship with other believers who love His Word and
long to serve Him. But those are two separate functions.

When outreach to unbelievers and
fellowship with believers merge into a single practice (the dialectic
experience of the mixed group), the
Biblical fellowship naturally yields to politically correct, cross-cultural
dialogue. The demand for a “safe place” where unbelievers can feel
unconditionally affirmed rules out all those precious Bible
truths that might bring conviction or sin or sound too inflexible. 

Yet, Rick Warren tells us that these small
groups that draw thousands of unbelievers into seeker churches are also designed to meet the
believer’s need for Biblical fellowship. But
he can’t have it both ways! That is, unless his real purpose is
more aligned with the world’s purposes than with God’s purposes. Maybe our
spiritual “eyes” are so blinded that we no longer notice the
direction the world
around us is headed. If so, it might be good to consider what UNESCO wrote
in Our Creative Diversity, the report from its Commission on Culture
and [human] Development: 

“The challenge to humanity
is to adopt new ways of thinking, new ways of acting, new ways of organizing
itself in society, in short, new ways of living…. We have not yet learned how to respect each other fully,
how to share and work together…. It
means an open mind, an open heart, and a readiness to seek
fresh
definition, reconcile old opposites….

 

“Extreme
doctrinaire views look to an imagined past, seen as both simpler and
more stable, thus preparing the ground… for the intimidation of
individuals and indeed entire communities….

 

“Education everywhere,’ says David Hamburg, president of the Carnegie
corporation….’needs to convey an accurate concept of a single,
highly interdependent, worldwide species — a vast extended family
sharing fundamental human similarities…. The give-and-take fostered
within groups can be extended far beyond childhood to relations
between adults and to larger units of organization….'”[14]

In the mid-eighties, few of us realized that David Hamburg, President
of the globalist
Carnegie Corporation, was using his authority to negotiate
a binding US – USSR Education
Exchange Agreement with the Soviet Union. Signed by Mikhail Gorbachev
and President Reagan in 1985, its terms required
that we trade our education technology for the brainwashing strategies
(primarily the dialectic group dynamics) used to indoctrinate Soviet
children, change thinking, modify behavior, and monitor the masses to ensure compliance with
Soviet ideology.[15]

Thanks to Peter Senge, Peter Drucker, John
Maxwell and Rick Warren, today’s world leaders know that their quest
for solidarity — which requires freedom from the old Biblical restraints
— can be met through facilitated small groups that join Christians,
Muslims, skeptics, pagans, atheists, and all
the rest who are simply caught up in the
excitement of unconditional acceptance and a sense of belonging. Ponder
these statements by Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, who
claims to have become a Christian:

“Incorporating the
dark and the light, the sacred and the profane, the
sorrow and the joy, the glory and the mud, its conclusions are well
rounded…. Be fully aware of human variety, and you will recognize
the interdependence of humanity.”

 

“Community is a spirit–
but not in the way that the familiar phrase ‘community spirit’ is
usually understood. … The members of a group who have achieved
genuine community do take pleasure — even delight — in themselves
as a collective.”

 

“The spirit of community is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. This
does not mean that community is solely a Christian phenomenon. I
have seen community develop among Christians and Jews, Christians
and atheists, Jews and Muslims, Muslims and Hindus.”

“Community is integrative. It includes people of
different sexes, ages, religions, cultures, viewpoints, life styles, and
stages of development by integrating them into a whole that is greater—better—than the sum of its parts…. Community does
not solve the problem of pluralism by obliterating diversity. Instead it
seeks out diversity, welcomes other points of view, embraces opposites….
It is ‘wholistic.’ It integrates us human beings into a
functioning mystical body.”[16]

That mystical body that integrates moral and
spiritual opposites is not God’s Church, the Body of Christ. As His
people, we cannot trade the spiritual unity we have in Christ for today’s
systems thinking and an extra-biblical view of a human “family” and
a humanistic
interconnectedness. He makes that very clear to us in His Word:

“…what communion has light with
darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a
believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of
God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has
said: ‘I will dwell in them
and walk among them.
I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’

      “Therefore ‘Come out
from among them and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘Do not touch
what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to
you….”  2 Corinthians
6:14-18

“If anyone teaches
otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the
words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which
accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing…. From
such withdraw yourself.”

1 Timothy 6:3, 5

Romans 8:35-39

7. Our Global Neighborhood,
“UN Report of The Commission on Global Governance”
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); 355, 356, 357

8.
Ministry Toolbox Issues
Ministry Toolbox (Issue #175, 10-6-2004)
at http://www.pastors.com/RWMT/?ID=134.

9. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth
Discipline ( Doubleday, 1994), pages

10.

Peter Senge and
Fred Kofman,
“Communities of
Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations“  

11. Rick Warren, Better Together (Lake Forest, CA:
Purpose Driven Publishing, 2004).

12. Rick Warren, 40 Days of Community, CD.

13. Erwin McManus, An Unstoppable Force (Group
Publishing, 2001), pg 15.

14. Our Creative Diversity,
UNESCO, 1995, p.11-12, 67, 168. 

 15.
I have a copy of that agreement, provided by Charlotte
Iserbyt. Read more about this education exchange at
US – USSR Education Exchange
Agreement

16.
The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pages 65, 73,
75,
234.

For background
information, see:

Reinventing the World Part 2: The Mind-Changing
Process