The News Alert posted below is from the Special Report From Lighthouse Trails Research Project.
It is a sad day indeed when Christian Church Leader Conferences - in this case the Willow Creek "Leadership Summit" - have speakers who are biblically undiscerning and who endorse anti-biblical methods of spirituality.
This is a very interesting News Alert and it shows just how undiscerning the Willow Creek movement has become.
~Chris Lawson
Spiritual Research Network
~~~~~~
Willow Creek "Leadership Summit" Starts Today
Featured Speaker Promotes Eastern Meditation and the New Age
Aug 10, 2006 -
"I attended a meditation-intensive day at an ashram [Hindu spiritual center]to support a friend. As I sat in meditation in what was for me an unfamiliar environment, I suddenly felt and saw a bolt of lightning shoot up from the base of my spine out the top of my head. It forced me to recognize something great within me ... this awareness of my own divinity."
(from The Highest Goal, Michael Ray, foreword by Jim Collins, p. 28, 2005)
Jim Collins, who wrote the foreword for The Highest Goal will be one of the featured speakers at this year's Leadership Summit, hosted by Willow Creek. The conference will be attended by more than 70,000 Christian leaders, in over 130 locations.
In 1982, Collins took Michael Ray's course, Creativity in Business. The course (and the book named after the course) "takes much of its inspiration from Eastern philosophy, mysticism and meditation techniques" (from the book). In one section of the book it talks about "your wisdom-keeper or spirit guide-an inner person who can be with you in life.... We meditate to unfold our inner being." The book also presents Tarot cards.
Collins was so inspired by Ray's course in 1982 that he wrote the foreword for Ray's 2004 book, The Highest Goal: The Secret That Sustains You in Every Minute. Collins says the book is "the distillation of years of accumulated wisdom from a great teacher." Collins says he discovered "the path to my highest goal" by reading the book. What is this highest goal that Michael Ray speaks of? Realizing the divinity within. And how is this realization obtained? Through meditation. In the book, Ray tells readers to "[p]ractice emptying your mind," "[e]xperience not thinking" and to "[m]editate regularly." Other quotes in the book include those of Eastern religion gurus such as Ram Dass, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Swami Shantananda.
For Willow Creek to include a speaker at the Leadership Summit who agrees with Michael Ray's Eastern/New Age philosophies on spirituality to the point of actually writing the foreword to this book, is almost unbelievable! Over 70,000 Christian leaders, in churches and auditoriums across North America, will be introduced to Collins at a conference that is advertised as offering "you and every leader on your team a place to rededicate yourselves to God's life-changing work." If the spirituality that Jim Collins promotes is a part of this " life-changing work," we fear it will not be God's work but rather that of deceptive doctrines of demons, and Michael Ray's "spirit-guide[s] " that take place.
Special Note: This news about Jim Collins connection with Willow Creek (named recently as the most influential evangelical church) may be as significant as the news last year that New Age sympathizer Ken Blanchard (with strong ties to the Hoffman Institute) signed on with Rick Warren to help implement the global P.E.A.C.E. Plan. And incidentally, both Collins and Blanchard have spoken with Mikhail Gorbachev and former President Bill Clinton in international leadership conferences. Their influence world-wide is tremendous. How is it that the two most influential evangelical pastors have each linked up with someone who is a promoter of Eastern style meditation and the New Age? Lighthouse Trails is confident that the facts speak for themselves, and we encourage you to check this out for yourself.
See below for further documentation:
Living Leadership
Living Leadership 2004
Defense Acquisition University
Create One
Earth-Friendly Vision
Lighthouse Trails Research Project
Editors - Lighthouse Trails Publishing
Please feel free to distribute this special report.
