APPLICABLE BIBLE VERSES:
John 5:43-44-“I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?”
Romans 2:21-“You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal?”
Romans 12:5-“so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.”
Romans 12:16-“Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.”
1 Cor. 3:4-“For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal?”
1 Cor. 12:25-“that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another.”
2 Cor. 11:4-“For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted –you may well put up with it!”
Gal. 1:7-“which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.”
Col. 3:16-“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”
2 Tim. 3:13-17-“But evil men and seducers will go forward to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But continue in the things that you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from a babe you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfected, thoroughly furnished to every good work.”
Matt. 7:13-“Go in through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who go in through it.”
The Willow Creek Association of Bill Hybels will again be holding the Global Leadership Summit August 8-9, 2013. Here are the promotional videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5-__FApYYs, and/or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmiRMh6XVKE.
This event will be telecast or simulcast to other contemporary emerging churches which glory in the Warren/Hybels new paradigm of doing church, i.e., running a church like a business instead of the model created by Jesus Christ. The above thirteen guest speakers include high profile business world instructors, lawyers, psychologists, mega church pastors, new age practitioners and high level government alumni. Only the best of the best were invited this time so that you and your local church “leaders” can learn more about the workings of running a “business model” church that promises to grow exponentially IF you carefully follow their combined wisdom. Oh, what would the church world do without the benefit of their advice? Return to fundamental Christianity? Heaven forbid! The question that will be scrubbed from this conference is: “What would Jesus do?” You can be certain that although these name the name of Christ and claim to be people of faith, (but in what you may ask), they glory in man’s wisdom as an improvement on, and superior to, the Word of God. So get ready for what August will bring in the way of unheard of revelations from this gnostic group.
We will be focusing on several of these to demonstrate that their advice and wisdom is of this world, derived from another gospel that repudiates the true authentic gospel of Jesus Christ, and represents not only a false methodology for doing church, but is poisonous to those who accept their apostate/heretical teachings without comparing to the Bible standard.
We will not be focusing on Bill Hybels, Andy Stanley, Colin Powell, and others who are well known to the church world and the secular world of business. Instead, for the purpose of this post and the overall aim of this blog, we will focus on Dr. Brene Brown, Dr. Henry Cloud, Mark Burnett, and Chris Brown, supplying as much information about them gleaned from their own websites, writings, videos, and other third party sources to uncover what they believe and promote.
WARNING # 1: It needs to be said that churches should not be run like businesses. When churches are run like corporations, pastors, elders and deacons lose whatever humility they once had and become manipulative dictatorial leaders and/or task masters, and discard their roles as shepherds, ministers, caring advisers, and equal members of the body of Christ, under the authority of God. Frequently, and in their sinful arrogance and independent spirit, the result is a complete failure to teach from the Bible, disciple believers, and warn and/or correct the congregation in a loving way about apostates, heretics, false teachers, false prophets, and the twisting of Scripture. Instead, they themselves become the focus of worship, the primary and final arbiters of truth, doctrine, and practice on their own authority. Members are ridiculed for wanting to hear Bible based expository preaching on the pretense that it just makes people fat and lazy, unwilling to work for the common good of the church. Adopting a business-like structure in church creates a hierarchy of authority, a “chain of command”, leads to abuse, contributes to gnosticism, fosters elitism, belittles the congregation as a working class, values performance over grace, diverts from the God-given guidance of Scripture and focuses on implementing the vision cast by leaders, requires the congregation to subject themselves to unbiblical self-appointed change agents, drives the congregation away from the true gospel of grace towards a social gospel of works, creates a socialist, collectivist, community organizational structure that denies or suppresses individualism, individual thought, and individual effort. Compliance and compliant church members fit into this unbiblical business community, and consequently, individualistic personalities are routinely discarded and booted out if they “don’t get with the program”.
WARNING # 2: In our post of February 28, 2013, we showed that Tim Keller is giving advice to mega church pastors, such as at Willowdale Chapel of Kennett Square, PA. As with more than a few of the 13 guest speakers at GLS 2013, Keller is also enthralled with offering a blend of worldly humanistic psychological theories with Scripture, known among discerning Christians as psycho-heresy. Here again is what we posted on February 28, along with the sources:
Sources show Keller may not be the biblical “go to guy” for advice, whether for individual Christians or churches:
The second aim appears to be the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth or at least preparing the way, allegedly to reign, but not to rule, falling just short of the seven “dominionist” aims of the New Apostolic Reformation which includes ruling the culture.
Lost in all this is the one-on-one traditional biblical model of evangelism, as well as the important role of individuals in such. Now, the message is that the sum total of all individuals spreading the gospel cannot be as effective as the collectivist community inside a business model. This is explored at length by Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith (Pirate Radio) in this audio “Resistance is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated into The Community”.
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Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, Ill.
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Gen. Colin Powell, former U.S. secretary of state
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Dr. Brené Brown, research professor at University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work
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Mark Burnett, four-time Emmy Award winner and executive television producer of “The Voice” and “The Bible”
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Vijay Bovindarajan, Top 50 Management Thinker, and author of Reverse Innovation and The Other Side of Innovation
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Patrick Lencioni, best-selling author, founder and president of The Table Group, and named one of America’s Most Sought-After Businesses Speakers by The Wall Street Journal
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Liz Wiseman, executive strategy and leadership consultant, author of the best seller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
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Oscar Muriu, senior pastor of Nairobi Chapel, Kenya, with 14,000 weekly worshippers and a network of 30 churches
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Dr. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologist, leadership consultant and author of the 2-million seller Boundaries
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Chris Brown, co-senior pastor and teaching pastor of North Coast Church with 9,000-plus attendees, 25 worship services and multiple campuses
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Joseph Grenny, co-founder of VitalSmarts and author of four best-selling books, including Crucial Conversations
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Bob Goff, founder and CEO of Restore International, giving voice to oppressed children and the poorest of the poor
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Andy Stanley, founder and senior pastor of North Point Ministries, Atlanta, Ga.
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1) Dr. Brene Brown is described on Emerging Women here: http://www.emergingwomen.com/presenter/brene-brown/.
Dr. Brene Brown’s website, http://www.brenebrown.com/about/, contains a short biography on her own website, which contains a link, http://www.oprah.com/own-supersoulsunday/blogs/Coming-Up-Sunday-Dr-Bren233-Brown-on-Daring-Greatly, to Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday.
Yes, it appears the two are in fact “soulmates”, promoting “psycho-heresy” (psychology and religious heresy mixture), further blended with New Age beliefs and practices such as yoga, mindfulness, holistic medicine, ecumenism, universalism, Hinduism, Buddhism, mantras, breath prayers, contemplative prayer with emptying of the mind, goddess worship, and an array of pagan, mystical ideas. All this while insisting they are Christians!
in which Brown participated and joined with Oprah, the latter claiming to be Christian, but practices and promulgates New Age beliefs, practices, and practitioners. Some examples of sessions with Oprah are in these select
Brown on her concept of “wholeheartedness”:
Brown’s “Parenting Manifesto”:
Brown has written for “Spirituality and Health”, a New Age/Yoga online website here:
Eomega offers:
Quote: “new truths to help you unlock your full potential. Explore the intimate connection between body, mind and spirit through yoga, meditation, spiritual, wellness, and personal growth retreats and workshops.”
and Eomega cites its source at http://www.eomega.org/about-omega/history quote: “The name “Omega” came from the teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a renowned 20th-century philosopher, who used the term “Omega Point” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point, to describe the peak of unity and integration toward which all life is evolving.” Chardin is a New Age mystic, Catholic Jesuit priest, influenced by Charles Darwin’s evolution theory.
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2) Dr. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologist, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cloud.
Wikipedia states “Cloud co-founded and built Minirth-Meier ClinicWest and served as its Clinical Co-Director for ten years.” and “ (has) a PhD degree in clinical psychology from Biola University (1987). He also took classes from Talbot Theological Seminary.” Talbot is at Biola University, and has been one of the top seminaries teaching spiritual formation and contemplative mysticism.
Pat Robertson of CBN interviews Cloud about his book “The Secret Things of God”, and his comments clearly point to a fusion of New Age practices and beliefs with Christianity, and in which he states that the Secret is “basically the New Age philosophy that says your thoughts create reality”. The video of this astounding interview is here: http://www.cbn.com/tv/1418278203001.
This is the book promotion video:
A less than complimentary review of his book was also written at CBN’s 700 Club site here:
http://www.cbn.com/700club/guests/bios/Henry_Cloud040408.aspx. Cloud is quoted as saying about his book therein as “a huge cultural phenomenon and is classic, new-age philosophy. ” And the review further states “As a psychologist, he is amazed at ‘the secret things of God’ validated by research and clinical practice.
‘In fact, I do not know of any successful clinical process or practice that does not agree with God’s secrets’, he says. ” The article goes on to describe a mystical encounter with Jesus by a Jewish woman: “She was going through a challenging time and asked God to show up. She was immediately embraced by the presence of Jesus.”
Cloud has had a working relationship with Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek Association as shown in these videos in which Cloud describes how to do “pruning” in your church.
This is very similar to James McDonald’s “catapulting” uncooperative church members out of the parking lot, and the foul mouthed/cussing pastor, Mark Driscoll’s “blessed subtraction” by getting rid of disagreeable church members by “throwing them under the bus”.
Driscoll’s “pile of dead bodies behind the bus”:
Cloud with Steven Furtick of Elevation Church in this video discussing Cloud’s “Necessary Endings”:
Cloud claims that “dreams respond to positive and negative voices” in this video. Could the negative voices be demonic?
Cloud says traditional bible practices are useless according to the Jeff Prock YouTube video here:
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3) Mark Burnett, married to Roma Downey, were previously covered in a prior post of ours and the pertinent material from that post is copied and pasted here. They are clearly New Agers:
Mark & Roma with Oprah, the queen of New Age:
Roma Downey:
Dave Mosher Blog has a group of excellent posts http://davemosher.wordpress.com/?s=roma+downey on Roma Downey and her New Age beliefs and associations, in particular this one:
http://davemosher.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/touched-by-an-angel-roma-downeys-new-age-ish-little-angels-series-for-preschoolers-claims-to-be-christian/, revised March 27, 2013. In it we see Roma Downey on the cover of OM Times, http://omtimes.com/, a New Age publication. See Downey’s biography and interview at OM Times here: http://omtimes.com/2011/07/roma-downey-truly-an-angel/.
David Cloud’s Way of Life reports:
Roma Downey, the Roman Catholic co-creator (with her husband, Mark Burnett) of the History Channel’s popular “The Bible” miniseries, says Pope Francis is “a new pope of hope” (“Roma Downey,” Christian Post, April 4, 2013). Here is the promotion video of “The Bible” series:
Downey, famous for her role as “the angel Monica” in the new-agey TV series “Touched by an Angel,” plays the part of Mary in “The Bible” miniseries. She says the example of Pope Francis will cause “the seeds of hope to flourish in people’s hearts and people’s lives.” In an earlier interview, Downey said, “I have prayed to Mary and loved her my whole life” (“The Bible: An Epic Mini-Series,” Catholiclane.com, Feb. 28, 2013). Roma attended the University of Santa Monica http://www.universityofsantamonica.edu/, offering Master’s degrees in Spiritual Psychology, “founded by New Age spiritual and self-help guru John Roger” (“Roma Downey Happy Out of Spotlight,” Beck/Smith Hollywood, April 23, 2013). She says that she listens to books on tape by New Age guru Eckhart Tolle, who teaches the divinity of man. The creators of “The Bible” miniseries have not been afraid to add to and change God’s Word.
Christian Research Network discusses Downey and the “Bible” miniseries:
http://christianresearchnetwork.org/2013/03/15/roman-catholic-roma-downey-producer-of-the-bible-miniseries-says-francis-i-will-be-a-pope-of-hope/.
Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church invited Downey and Burnett to do a “question and answer” time during February 2013 showing of the Bible miniseries: http://saddleback.com/blogs/communityblog/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-coming-to-saddleback/.
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4) Chris Brown of North Coast Church, http://www.northcoastchurch.com/, the largest Evangelical Free Church in the U.S.A. What more didn’t we know that we should have known by now?
Chris Brown on avoiding “stained glass” words when inviting unchurched/unsaved visitors to church as part of their Creative Leadership Training:
Brown on “Sermon Series Branding” to make sermons palatable to the world by always changing everything in the church, so it doesn’t look the same as it did 40 years ago. So much for traditional Christianity:
Ceilings of Creativity that hold things back in church, by Brown:
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Here is an example of one mega church, Willowdale Chapel of Kennett Square, PA, influenced by all the emergent leaders including Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, and which will be hosting a live simulcast of the Global Leadership Summit this coming August:
Quote from above link:
Chosen as a premier host site, Olivet will host the live telecast of the Willow Creek Association’s 2013 Global Leadership Summit on August 8 and 9. This two-day event will be broadcast live from Willow Creek Community Church to Olivet’s site at College Church of the Nazarene, North Campus, in Bourbonnais, Ill. Since on-site seats at the main site in South Barrington, Ill., are already sold out, this provides a unique opportunity for local leaders of businesses, churches and organizations to experience the Summit via live telecast.
In 2000, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson bought the Women of Faith franchise and has a strong influence in the organization. Nearly all of the regular Women of Faith speakers are Thomas Nelson authors, and Thomas Nelson books are sold at the Women of Faith conferences, thus women attending the conferences will get a hearty dose of Thomas Nelson.
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