Two Prominent Nazarene Leaders Promote Blasphemous Festival

“What is the great danger in the Christian church today?  … The danger to the church today, whatever the denomination, from within, is the person who wears the cloth of Christ… and who stands behind the sacred desk, and who is unfaithful to the word of God.  That is the ultimate danger to the church.  The corrupt and apostate shepherds who infest our theological seminaries and our colleges, and fill our pulpits throughout the United States and Canada, and who know not God, do not believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, and will stand in the way of anybody that wants to preach it.   The cancer is within, and it eats away, and we don’t recognize it.”  The late Dr. Walter Martin

The Wildgoose Festival 2012, coming in June to North Carolina, is the second annual version in the United States of a festival that began in the United Kingdom.

I warned the General Superintendents last year about the same two Nazarene leaders who are organizing and promoting it.  They have not yet in three years said anything significant against this and many other unbiblical events that have plagued our denomination.  Yet, perhaps significantly, they may have quietly approved the ugly attack on many Nazarenes that was written by Rev. Kevin Ulmet in Holiness Today last month.  I believe that that article was perhaps an important shot across the bow to those Nazarenes who dare to speak out against spiritual atrocities that are occurring within our churches, universities and seminaries.  Here are just a few words from Wildgoose:

“We dream of a movement where everyone is welcome to participate.  We are intentionally building a space in which we invite everyone to value, respect and fully affirm people of any ethnicity, age, gender, gender expression, sexual identity, education, bodily condition, religious affiliation, or economic background, particularly the marginalized.  We are committed to fair trade, gift exchange, ecological sanity and economic inclusion. We strive for high standards of mutual respect, non-hierarchical leadership, and participative planning.”  (Source)

“I believe that the Wild Goose Festival is pregnant with potential to alter the face of Christianity in North America and change our culture’s view of what it means to be a person of faith, hope and love.”  (Mike King)

 

“Instead of Bible studies, there were labyrinth walks. Instead of praise-and-worship music, there was hymn-singing in a beer garden and a bluegrass liturgy presided over by a tattooed female Lutheran minister. Visitors were greeted with buckets of water in which to baptise themselves, and tubs of mud to remind them that “dust thou art”. (In Britain, the mud is usually underfoot.) Lecture topics ranged from sex trafficking and social justice to authority in the church and interfaith relations. Visitors could learn from Tom Prasada-Rao, a singer, how to chant “Om” and “Hallelujah Hare Krishna”, or hear Paul Fromberg, a pastor from San Francisco, talking about his 2005 wedding to another man. “God is changing the church through the bodies of gay men,” Mr Fromberg told a packed session on human sexuality. Also under discussion was “religious multiple belonging”—in other words, belonging to a clutch of different faiths at once.” (http://www.economist.com/node/18898389)

Wildgoose is NOT committed to anything approaching the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and you will not find any real reference to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is a festival committed to spirituality which is not Christian; it is blasphemous, disobedient to Christ, and worldly.  This festival  is coming again June 21-24, in Shakori Hills, North Carolina.  I wrote about it in this post last year:  Mike King And Friends: Leading Youth To Spiritual Death.  An apt description of its philosophy would be: “anything is okay, whatever you believe.  We will not judge you in this place.  God’s grace will cover anything you do.”  You will not find the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this place.  You will not find the preaching of repentance from sin here because this event is the devil’s workshop.  But you will probably find plenty of beer and wine parties and the promotion of homosexuality as a “Christian” lifestyle.  You will find pro-tree life and pro-abortion, but no pro-child life here.  And you will find even the planned corruption of children in this celebration of worldliness.

Corrupt And Apostate Shepherds

Here is where you will find some of the corrupt and apostate shepherds Dr. Walter Martin has described,  preaching their false gospels of ecumenism, mysticism, emergent church garbage, embrace of homosexuality, universalism, and the replacement of the biblical Gospel with a radical humanistic social gospel.

The following two Nazarene leaders, who purport to wear the cloth of Christ, are part of this very shameful convocation:

Mike King: adjunct professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary.  He is the president and chairman of this festival.
(Read Mike King’s proud account of the first festival here).  King is also CEO of YouthFront, an organization that promotes contemplative spirituality by way of the preferred terminology of spiritual formation.  They are both the same thing.
And King is also taking part in a conference called Children, Youth, And A New Kind Of Christianity (May 7-10) in Washington D.C.  Some of the promoters of this event include the extreme and radical racist pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  Also, emergent leaders such as Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, Tony Campolo, Samir Selmanovic, and Jim Wallis.  Mike King associates with these people who are unbiblical in their belief system, because he identifies with them!

Gabriel Salguerro: senior pastor of Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York, a member of Sojourner’s, a “Christian” group founded by Jim Wallis which promotes a radical social justice agenda.  You will see and hear Rev. Salguerro in this promotional video (at the 1:07 mark) for Wildgoose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL81L6wmyt4.  Rev. Salguerro is also President of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, a radical group that promotes amnesty for illegal aliens while ignoring the harm being done to citizens and legal non-citizens.  I also note that of the eight Advisory Committee members of this radical organization, two are Nazarene General Superintendents Stan Toler and Jerry Porter, and another is Nazarene Dr. Oliver Phillips, former Director of Mission Support in USA/Canada, and an ordained elder.  How radical are some of Salguerro’s views?  Read Open Letter To Gov. Jan Brewer on Sojourner’s blog which he wrote in opposition to Arizona’s immigration enforcement law.
And in this video on YouTube (Serious and Difficult Interfaith), note his interfaith philosophy which runs contrary to Scripture.

But just regarding Wildgoose festival, these two men are clearly standing in the way of preaching the true Gospel. They are yet again willing participants in an event celebrating not true Christianity, but a false interfaith spirituality.  Jude describes such men well: “These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted;” Jude 1:12.  Yet they continue on to a second year of this utter foolishness and rebellion against the Lord, and what have our leaders said or done?  Is this part of the new diversity that all Nazarenes should embrace now?

Here’s the problem: there are too many others in the denomination who are complicit with these men, and who follow the same underlying ideology.  This is why they are tolerated, because those who are complicit in this, are guilty of all the other errors of the emerging church and contemplative crowd, so they cannot call their own out.  It would expose even more of their hypocrisy.  In my post from past year, I called out Mike King as a false teacher, and Rev. Salguerro is also in the same company.  They are promoting a false gospel.  Unless they repent, they will pay a high price someday in front of God.  Instead of heeding Romans 1:24, they continue to associate with those who teach contrary to the gospel, and that is no surprise, because they do the same.  The right thing for them to do is to turn in their credentials as ordained elders in the church.

And to those who allow this to continue, you might very well also pay a high penalty before God for not standing up against the wicked.

Why do our leaders seem to be tolerating all this and doing nothing about it?  This is the kind of thing that really burns me up, yet it is only the most extreme example of the downward slide a once solid holiness denomination is taking, all the while pretending that the church is doing great things.  

After last week’s post, a friend wrote me and said:

“You ask where our leaders are.  The way I see it is that NOT taking a stand IS TAKING A STAND.  Jesus’ comment was that if you’re not for me, you’re against me.  Some issues demand a decision.”

Manny Silva

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Part Two: The Lineup of Apostates at Wildgoose Festival 2012

Here in Part 2, I list just a sampling of this year’s lineup at Wildgoose.  The complete lineup is at their website.

Common Shared Ideologies:  The vast majority of speakers at Wildgoose are united in one thing: a disregard for the supreme authority of God’s word.  This is reflected mainly in their emphasis on anything but a Gospel centered theology.  You will not find the preaching of the Gospel of repentance from sin here.  Their shared “gospel” is one of inclusiveness, ecumenism, and non-judgmentalism.  What they will not teach is the biblical doctrine of separation, which instructs believers to not join hands with the world.  Scripture teaches us to be in the world, but not OF the world.  These people reject what Scripture teaches, and instead clamor for more and more of what they want to hear, of what will tickle their ears.  So the following short “bios” are short but accurate descriptions of what these people stand for.  They do not stand for the truth of God’s word; they stand for doctrines of demons and their own imaginations.  But don’t take my word for it; look at what they teach, and compare with the biblical Gospel.  See what is the genuine Gospel in Scripture, and then compare with their “gospel”, and determine if it is phony or not.  They speak much of spirituality; however, it is not Christian spirituality they exclusively speak of, but any kind of spirituality.  In fact, they despise what most of us recognize as orthodox Christianity.

Ideologies you will find here: Here you will find the following themes running through the ideologies and belief systems of these speakers:  emergent church thinking; social justice; environmental justice; pro-homosexuality as being compatible with the Christian lifestyle;  pro-abortion (they say pro-choice); interfaith or interspiritual philosophies; ecumenical philosophy; anti-capitalism; anti-fundamentalist Christian; proponents of mysticism and contemplative spirituality; paganists.

What you will NOT find here: Preaching of the whole council of God, including preaching of the need to repent from sin and turn away from it, and follow Christ and His doctrines in ALL that He and His disciples teach in Scripture.

Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock (website: http://savingparadise.net/authors/)

– Member of Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a pro-choice (i.e. pro-abortion group) and interfaith organization (http://rcrc.org/).  It was formerly known as the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, which is more accurate.

– Founding Co-Director of Faith Voices for the Common Good.  Their purpose is: “to create a public awareness of the shared values of the country’s diverse religious organizations…”  Their board has included a Hindu, spiritual atheist, Unitarian Universalist.  The current board includes a Muslim member.

Brian McLaren

Pastor, and godfather of the emergent movement; likens the Cross to false advertising for God, is confused as to whether homosexuality is a sin or not, promotes contemplative mysticism, rejects biblical inerrancy.
Quote: “The Bible is not considered an accurate, absolute, authoritative, or authoritarian source but a book to be experienced and one experience can be as valid as any other can. Experience, dialogue, feelings, and conversations are equated with Scripture while certitude, authority, and doctrine are to be eschewed!  No doctrines are to be absolute and truth or doctrine must be considered only with personal experiences, traditions, historical leaders, etc. The Bible is not an answer book.”
Source: A New Kind of Christianity, p. 52 Published: 2001.

Jim Wallis

Liberal political activist, radical social justice proponent, uses religion to sell his agenda in the political arena.  Founder of Sojourner’s.  Spiritual advisor to President Obama.

Quote: “Being born again was not meant to be a private religious experience that is hard to communicate to others, but rather the prerequisite for joining a new and very public movement—the Jesus and kingdom of God movement. It is an invitation to a whole new form and way of living, a transformation as radical as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It is far more than a call to a new inner life, or a rescue operation for heaven.”
Source: The Great Awakening: Seven Ways To Change The World [New York: Harper Collins, 2008] p56 Published: .

Carl McColman

Author of “The Big Book of Christian Mysticism”, as well as books on Celtic spirituality. Spent several years as a Celtic pagan (neo-druid) before entering the Catholic church.  He is a blogger on contemplative spirituality.  He describes mysticism as Christianity’s best kept secret.

He quotes the writer Abhishiktananda, a Benedictine monk who dabbled in Hindu spirituality: “The life of prayer and contemplation is simply to realize God’s presence in the depth of our being, in the depth of every being, and at the same time beyond all beings, beyond all that is within and all that is without.”

Also he quotes theologian Carl Rahner: “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.”

Quote: “In the history of Christian mysticism, again and again the contemplatives have been the ones who reach out beyond the boundaries of institutional religion to embrace the teachings of other faiths.”  (http://www.anamchara.com/contemplation/the-hidden-tradition-of-christian-mysticism/)

Shane Claiborne: Emergent leader, promotes contemplative mysticism.

Quote: “The time has come for a new kind of conversation, a new kind of Christianity, a new kind of revolution.”
Book: by Shane Claibourne entitled: Irresistible Revolution p. 29 Published: February 2006.

Cathleen Falsani

Director of New Media at Sojourner’s (Jim Wallis’s group); author of Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace.  Promotes homosexuality in Christianity, as reported here: http://apprising.org/2011/01/14/gay-awakening-for-mainstream-evangelicalism-grows-closer/

Spencer Burke

Founder of the website, The Ooze.  Universalist “Christian.”

Quote: “I don’t believe any single religion owns heaven or God—even a religion that tries to include everyone. When I say I’m a universalist, what I really mean is that I don’t believe you have to convert to any particular religion to find God. As I see it, God finds us, and it has nothing to do with subscribing to any particular religious view… Universalism says that a theology of grace implies salvation for all, because if grace could be limited to some people and not to others,… it is in fact no grace at all…grace is bigger than any religion.” (A Heretic’s Guide To Eternity, pg 196, 197, 198)

Mike King

Adjunct professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary; president of YouthFront; chairman of Wildgoose Festival.  Promotes contemplative spirituality (spiritual formation) to youth.

Jennifer Knapp

“Christian” artist who “came out” in 2010 about her homosexuality and her lesbian relationship.  Actively promotes homosexuality as being compatible with Christian living.

Her bio says: “Under heavy scrutiny, Jennifer has unashamedly claimed her faith and her sexual orientation with astonishing straightforwardness and honesty.”

Johnathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Minister, and leader in the new monasticism movement; promotes emergent Christianity.  At the about page of his program, School For Conversion, you will find everything but a purpose to present the Gospel to unbelievers.

Short video at his bio page: http://jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com/bio/.  He never really explains what he found to be what “it’s all about.”  No testimony of salvation as is the case with most emergents.

Karla Yaconelli

Founding member of Wildgoose Board; took over for her late husband as CEO of Youth Specialities, a major group that promotes contemplative spirituality to youth.

‘

Phylis Tickle

Author of The Great Emergence. Emergent leader.

Quote: “The new Christianity of the Great Emergence must discover some authority base or delivery system and/or governing agency of its own. It must formulate—and soon—something other than Luther’s Sola Scriptura which, although used so well by the Great Reformation originally, is now seen as hopelessly outmoded or insufficient …”
Book: by Phyllis Tickle entitled: The Great Emergence, pg 151 Published: 2008.

If you can stomach it, listen to her lengthy dialogue with Tony Jones and Lauren Winter (who has appeared at several Nazarene universities, including MVNU chapel this past March).  I will be compiling a short video highlight of this in the near future.  It is outrageous.

Ian Cron

Episcopal priest, speaker, author, wrote book on St Francis of Assisi and other books.

Quotes mystic monk Thomas Merton on his Facebook page: “Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.” Merton”

Lineup of musicians (described on their site):

2012 Wild Goose music performances come in all shapes and sizes: from oblong-rockers David Crowder and Gungor to the world-beat/sacred harp adventurers Aimee Wilson and Aaron Strumpel! East and West are up to the text – Hindi-flavored Aradhna share  stages with urban-crunch talk-music pioneer, Listener! Hip hop served to collaborative perfection by Eugene IV next door to folk-protest notes-from-the-throats of Damion Suomi and the Minor Prophets and Michelle Shocked! Boy Howdy! Joy Ike’s sweet melodical-periodicals and Tim Coons’ reedy bleats express our collective hope-stories!  Parade-by-numbers with the crowd-sourced carols of Songs of Water,  Tracy Howe Wispelwey and Rev. Vince Anderson!  Siss-BOOM-BAW! All this and many more magic moments – AND compelling open mics and flashmob fiddlin’ will be common praxis, turning the Goose’s world on its rhythmic-drum-inflected, vocal-barnstorming-harmonized, get-up-and-dance axis.

Lineup of Speakers:

http://www.wildgoosefestival.org/the-2012-lineup/speakers-2/

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