At Slice of Laodicea we have the following from Ingrid Schlueter informing you of one of the things your evangelical pastors attending Zondervan’s NPC 2008 will receive instruction about in order for them to then bring it back into your local church.

It seems that the wife of Emergent Church pastor Doug Pagitt will be sharing her specialty. Ingrid tells us:

Yes, folks, it is time again for the National Pastors Convention in San Diego. Cue the sitar players, start up the incense, and drag out the yoga mats! You think that I jest about the yoga, and you are wrong. Under the heading, Christian Yoga, it reads:

“Join Shelly Pagitt for a time of prayer, stretching, and meditative reflection as you begin your day at the NPC. If possible, please bring a mat with you for the stretching time.”

Shelly Pagitt, wife of emerging Pied Piper, Doug, will be bowing before the pastors and their wives and saying, “Namaste”. That’s how a yoga session starts, and the words are Sanskrit for “I bow to the divine within you”… (Online source)

You can read the rest of Ingrid’s post here. And know also that Apprising Ministries already tried to warn that by embracing the emerging church, where so-called “Christian” mysticism has been a core doctrine since its inception, this “evangelical” pastor’s conference would metastasize its pseudo-spirituality like a cancer throughout the Body of Christ.

Well, here’s some more spiritual monkey business aka neo-gnosticism going on at NPC 2008 sponsored by Zondervan:

Experience a Deeper Connection with God

Experience God’s transforming presence in this special overnight retreat designed specifically for you. “Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership” challenges participants to forge a connection between their souls and their leadership. This National Pastors Retreat provides leaders with a safe place to be honest about the challenges of sprititual [sic] leadership, to experience spiritual rhythms of solitude, prayer, and community, and to deepen their understanding of leadership that flows from one’s authentic self.

Led by The Transforming Center leaders Ruth Haley Barton and Joe Sherman, this retreat offers a meaningful introduction to the community, spiritual rhythms, teaching themes, and guided experiences that will come to characterize National Pastors Retreat. (Online source)

The blather about “understanding of leadership that flows out of one’s authentic self” reveals the denial of mankind’s true depraved nature, which is itself classic Gnostic mysticism. Um, well it’s now also becoming classic evangelicalism as more and more succumb to becoming lovers of self (see—2 Timothy 3:2). If you’d like to know the truth about your “authentic self” from God’s perspective I refer you to Your Evil “True Self”.

We’re also told that featured speaker and spiritual guru Ruth Haley Barton:

is co-founder and president of The Transforming Center (www.thetransformingcenter.org). A teacher, spiritual director, and retreat leader, she has served on the pastoral staff of several churches including Willow Creek Community Church. (Online source)

The Transforming Center website then further informs us that your evangelical pastors attending this “retreat” will be introduced to the supposed “spiritual disciplines,” which originally developed in the monastic traditions of apostate Roman Catholicism. In the end it’s simply the same spiritual skubalon spewed by Quaker mystic and Living Spiritual Teacher Richard Foster.

But the Truth is that this Reformation-reversing subjective existential experience over Scripture has no place in the Church of Jesus Christ.

See also:

RICHARD FOSTER AND GNOSTIC MYSTICISM

MEDITATING ON CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER

RICHARD FOSTER AND QUAKER INNER LIGHT