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As Lighthouse Trails has reported many times in the past, Rick Warren
(pastor of Saddleback Church) has been promoting the spiritual formation
(i.e., contemplative prayer) movement for many years. This report will
show that Saddleback Church is directly recommending numerous
contemplative materials to those under their influence
through "spiritual formation" and what they term "maturity."
First of all, it is important to understand what the contemplative means
by "maturity." In Rick Warren's first book, The Purpose Driven Church,
he said he saw spiritual formation as God's way of bringing "believers
to full maturity." He named Richard Foster and Dallas Willard as being
key players in that process and said that the spiritual formation
movement had a "valid message for the church" and gave "the body of
Christ a wake-up call" (pp. 126-127). Because Warren equates spiritual
maturity with Richard Foster, it is logical for us to examine what
Foster thinks about this subject.
In 1994, research analyst Ray Yungen attended a seminar in Salem, Oregon
where Richard Foster was speaking. Yungen had been researching the New
Age and mystical meditation for several years and had become familiar
with the spiritual dynamics of the Desert Fathers and the panentheistic
views of Thomas Merton. Listen to him explain what happened at this
seminar with Richard Foster:
Foster seemed charming, winsome, and gifted in speech. His oratorical
skills reminded me of a Shakespearean actor on stage. His program mixed
serious oratory, music, and humor in just the right doses. However, his
message conveyed that today's Christians suffer from spiritual
stagnation, and consequently need something more. The following are a
few [of his] examples:
* There is a hunger ...
* We have become barren within ...
* We are floundering ...
* People are trying rather than training.
Foster alluded to a remedy for this problem with such statements as:
* We need a way of moving forward ...
* We need a plan to implement the Great Commission ...
* We need a simple mechanism ...
* This might be new or frightening, but you are being drawn.
After the seminar ended, curious about what he meant by these
statements, I approached Foster and politely asked him, "What do you
think of the current Catholic contemplative prayer movement?" [this is
back in 1994 before contemplative spirituality entered the mainstream
church]. He appeared visibly uncomfortable with the question, and at
first seemed evasive and vague....
[H]e said, "My critics don't understand there is this tradition within
Christianity that goes back centuries." He then said something that has
echoed in my mind ever since that day. He emphatically stated, "Well,
Thomas Merton tried to awaken God's people!" I realized then Foster had
waded deep into Merton's belief system. (A Time of Departing, pp.
76-77)
When Foster told Yungen that Merton tried to awaken God's people, Yungen
knew what that meant. Merton believed that there was one essential
ingredient missing from Christianity--that is mysticism. Merton knew
that if Christians would practice mysticism they would experience the
awakening that he had experienced and thus came to believe that God
dwells in every human heart.
We should make no mistake about it, Richard Foster believes that it is
through contemplative prayer that one can enter into spiritual maturity.
That is why in his book Celebration of Discipline he implores his
readers: "We should all without shame enroll in the school of
contemplative prayer" (p. 13, 1978 ed.). And in his book, Spiritual
Classics he talks about the "spiritual disciplines" that help us
move toward this "spiritual maturity" (p. xi).
Where does Saddleback stand when it comes to Foster's spiritual
formation and spiritual maturity? According to their
Spiritual Growth Center under the "maturity" section -- they are on
the same page. Regarding the books they list, they state:
This website is designed to recommend the best resources for your
spiritual growth. We've poured over hundreds of books, articles, and
websites, interviewed numerous staff members, and studied our own book
shelves in order to narrow the list of suggestions to what we think are
really the best of the best. Whether they're the profound words
of a well worn classic or the latest thoughts from today's best loved
teachers, we hope these resources will help you go deeper and
grow stronger in your walk with Christ.
If this is a true statement, then Saddleback has got a serious problem
because a high percentage of the books they consider "the best of the
best" are books written by those with strong contemplative (i.e.,
mystical) propensities. Here is a list of some of them. We have provided
links to more information about each of these authors:
John Ortberg
Erwin McManus
J. P. Moreland
Dallas Willard
Brennan Manning (two titles)
Henri Nouwen (several titles)
Philip Yancey
John Eldredge
Gary Thomas
Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline and Prayer: Finding
the Heart's True Home)
Bill Hybels
Brother Lawrence
Larry Crabb
Lance Witt
Max Lucado
H.B. London (Focus on the Family)
Erik Reese
Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz and Searching For God Knows What)
Eugene Peterson
Michael Casey (Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina)
With many of these names, Saddleback is carrying two or three or
sometimes four titles by the same author. This list of authors
represents a large number of the books that are being recommended by
Saddleback's Spiritual Growth Center. This means that contemplative
spirituality is not just hanging on the fringe edges of Saddleback
Church, but it is an integral part of it. This inadvertently will spill
over into the
Purpose Driven network (which according to Rick Warren has over
500,000 churches), and could potentially influence tens of millions of
people around the world: if the average church in the PDL network is
even just 250 people, this equals over 125 million. The results could be
staggering.
One of the authors in the Saddleback Spiritual Growth Center that we did
not list above is
Adele Ahlberg Calhoun author of Spiritual Disciplines Handbook
(the one Saddleback is recommending). The book is promoting mantra
meditation, giving detailed instructions on several types of
contemplative practices. In addition, the author quotes from many New
Age sympathizers and New Age contemplatives. In Spiritual Disciplines
Handbook, Ahlberg Calhoun encourages the use of centering prayer,
breath prayers, contemplative prayer, labyrinths, palms-up, palms-down
exercises, and recommends for further reading a who's who of mystics.
One of those she lists is Tilden Edwards (p. 62). Edwards, the founder
of the Shalem Prayer Institute, said that contemplative prayer is the
bridge between Christianity and Eastern religion.
1 The Shalem center is a hub of New Age spirituality with an
emphasis on the divinity in all. In her book, Ahlberg Calhoun also calls
Basil Pennington one of her "spiritual tutor[s]." It was Pennington who
stated:
We should not hesitate to take the fruit of the age-old wisdom of the
East and "capture" it for Christ. Indeed, those of us who are in
ministry should make the necessary effort to acquaint ourselves with as
many of these Eastern techniques as possible.
By turning to Ahlberg Calhoun, along with the other contemplative
authors, Saddleback is promoting methods of prayer that will bring
spiritually tragic results in the long run to those who embrace these
non-biblical approaches to God. Rick Warren, wittingly or unwittingly,
has placed his church and many others in the sphere of Karl Rahner, the
mystic who said "The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will
not exist at all."2
Notes:
2. Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, Concern for the Church,
translated Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 149.
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