Dan Kimball: Modern Day Christianity Needs Combination of Nouwen and Maxwell

Excerpts from

Dan Kimball:

Modern Day
Christianity Needs Combination of Nouwen and Maxwell

Editors at
Lighthouse Trails
– July 27, 2007

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http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=226

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In a Christianity Today article
titled, “Shape-Shifting Leadership,” featuring Dan Kimball, Mark
Driscoll, and Leith Anderson, Kimball states:

I’ve read Nouwen’s In the Name of
Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership a dozen times. It
convicts me to the core about motives and the heart of
leadership. But Henri was shepherding and loving a relatively
few people. Leading a church that is growing, launching new
ministries, and building multi-level leadership teams needs
Nouwen, but also [John] Maxwell.1(see
also

Maxwell/Blanchard book)

Kimball is proposing that in order to be
a successful, effective leader in today’s church, we must combine
the “heart” of Henri Nouwen with the leadership skills of John
Maxwell. What is wrong with that?

We must first understand that Nouwen’s “heart of leadership” is
mystical. He says so himself right in the book that Kimball
recognizes. In In the Name of Jesus, Nouwen states:

Through the discipline of
contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen
to the voice of love … For Christian leadership to be truly
fruitful in the future, a movement from the moral to the
mystical is required.

Moving “from the moral to mystical” is
another way of saying that mystical experience is more important in
leadership than doctrine or theology. Interestingly, Leith Anderson
who contributed to the Christianity Today article with
Kimball and Driscoll has stated virtually the same thing. Roger
Oakland explains:

In 1992, Leith Anderson (Doug
Pagitt’s former pastor), currently the president of the National
Association of Evangelicals, spoke of this new emerging 21st
century church. His views eventually
became set in stone as the emerging church has chosen experience
over doctrine. Anderson reveals:

The old paradigm taught that if
you had the right
teaching, you will experience God. The new paradigm says
that if you experience God, you will have the right
teaching. This may be disturbing for many who
assume propositional truth must always precede and dictate
religious experience. That mindset is the product of
systematic theology and has much to contribute … However,
biblical theology looks to the Bible for a pattern of
experience followed by proposition. The experience of the
Exodus from Egypt preceded the recording of Exodus in the
Bible. The experience of the crucifixion, the resurrection
and Pentecost all predate the propositional declaration of
those events in the New Testament. It is not so much that
one is right and the other is wrong: it is more of a matter
of the perspective one takes on God’s touch and God’s truth.

Anderson is saying that the Word of
God is still being written,
and today’s experiences can dictate what that Word is. (Faith
Undone, p. 55,56)

Nouwen reveals what he means by
“mystical” when he states: “The quiet repetition of a single word
can help us to descend with the mind into the heart … This way of
simple prayer … opens us to God is active presence” (Way of the
Heart, p. 81).

Dan Kimball proposes that leadership must combine Nouwen’s
spirituality with John Maxwell’s leadership skills. Someone who
emulates such a combination is business guru and meditation
promoter, Ken Blanchard. Blanchard sees great value in meditation
and has endorsed and promoted avid meditators for over two decades.
His current participation in the Hoffman Institute shows that he is
still in support of such a philosophy.

This may come as a surprise to some, but Rick Warren (who has won
the trust of hundreds of thousands of pastors and church goers
around the world) shares Kimball’s views. On his pastors.com
website, Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus is a recommended book.
(Nouwen devotes an entire chapter of that book to contemplative
prayer.) And in a Saddleback training book, Soul Construction:
Solitude Tool (p. 12), Nouwen is quoted as saying we need to set
aside a “time and space to give God our undivided attention.” Ray
Yungen explains Nouwen’s “space”:

When we understand what Nouwen
really means by “time and space” given to God we can also see
the emptiness and deception of his spirituality. In his recent
biography of Nouwen, God’s Beloved, Michael O’ Laughlin
says:

Some new elements began to
emerge in Nouwen’s thinking when he discovered Thomas
Merton. Merton opened up for Henri an enticing vista of the
world of contemplation and a way of seeing not only God but
also the world through new eyes.… If ever there was a time
when Henri Nouwen wished to enter the realm of the spiritual
masters or dedicate himself to a higher spiritual path, it
was when he fell under the spell of Cistercian monasticism
and the writings of Thomas Merton.

In his book, Thomas Merton:
Contemplative Critic, Nouwen talks about these “new eyes”
that Merton helped to formulate; he praises Merton who “had such
an impact” on his life, being the man who “inspired” him
greatly. But when we read Nouwen’s very revealing account,
something disturbing is unveiled. Nouwen lays out the path of
Merton’s spiritual pilgrimage into contemplative spirituality.
Those who have studied Merton from a critical point of view,
such as myself, have tried to understand what are the roots
behind Merton’s spiritual affinities. Nouwen explains that
Merton was influenced by LSD mystic Aldous Huxley who “brought
him to a deeper level of knowledge” and “was one of Merton’s
favorite novelists.” It was Huxley’s book, Ends and Means,
that first brought Merton “into contact with mysticism.” …
This is why, as Nouwen revealed, Merton’s mystical journey took
him right into the arms of Buddhism. (ATOD, 2nd ed., pp. 197)

If Dan Kimball’s hope for the future of
Christianity is realized, it will resemble the spirituality of Ken
Blanchard (Nouwen’s mysticism and Maxwell’s leadership skills) who
said that the Hoffman Quadrinity Process made his “spirituality come
alive” (ATOD, p. 165). The Hoffman Institute is:

“… an organization that was
founded by a psychic and is based on panentheism (i.e., God is
in all) and meditation! In the book, The Hoffman Process,
the institute’s mystical perspective is laid out clearly:

I am you and you are me. We are
all parts of the whole…. You can use a short meditation to
remind yourself of this connection to all others in this
world of ours…. As you breathe, feel that breath coming
from your core essence … When you are open to life, you
start noticing the divine in everything. (ATOD, p. 165)

 

For more information read:

From Gnostic Roots to Occult Revival

What
Did Henri Nouwen Really Believe?