New: Lynn Anderson uses Psallo to justify instrumental music and sowing of discord: this has let to a full Rock and Roll performance at Max Lucado's church while the congregations watches in stunned silence.
Home... Apocalyptic... Apocryphal... Awakening... Baptism..... Caneridge... Church.... Colonial... Godhead.... MaxLucado... Lynn.Aderson... Musical Worship... Preaching... Restoration... RubelShelly... Search Our Site... Tongues... Topical..
Neo-Pagan
Parallels
New: Lynn Anderson uses Psallo to justify instrumental music and sowing of discord: this has let to a full Rock and Roll performance at Max Lucado's church while the congregations watches in stunned silence.
Holy Entertainment Pagan Parallels: Lynn Anderson.
Neo- Pagan Parallels: Lynn Anderson
Lynn
Anderson Shepherding
Dancing
on the Rim
Max
Lucado: Discipling Minister
The
Jesus Proposal Rubel Shelly and John
York
Change
Agents: Lynn Anderson Navigating the Winds of
Change.
The following notes follow her basic steps:
Downton notes the common stages that converts to any new religious movements must go through. While we do not quote her, we repeat her steps and recommend that you read her thesis:
First: disillusioned or "upsetting the equilibrium" with "traditional religion." (This is what Hybels pushes for in his destabilization).
This is why people claim to be Grace Centered, love centered, Christ centered or anything to disparage the old, rotten and destructive churches of our youth. It is not possible to convert people to "my" view without making them upset and hostile toward their old views.
Dick Sutphen's clue to human potential The third tip-off: techniques used to increase the tension in the room or environment
Notice that Lynn Anderson went through the "traditional" worship rituals which he disparages because he puts all of his bet on building a successful "assembly" while Christ ordered him to go out. If we expect "worship" to make us feel good or appeal to our right-brain or emotional side while shutting off the rational side of the brain, then we might be disappointed. However, Anderson sets up a "straw man" and then burns him down with some "red hot music" which clearly disassociated the minds of some of the participants. This has always been the methods of the neo-pagans.
However, he has accomplished the first part of his change agent's task: make a few of the worshipers unhappy with the "old paths" so that the new worship rituals can be slipped in past the asleep left-brain. This makes the paying audience feel good and the "evangelist" doesn't have to "go into all the world and preach the gospel" with Jesus saying nothing about teaching them how to "worship."
The second stage is a development of a religious problem solving perspective, which can occur through experimentation with spiritual practices or social ties to the new movement. (Willow Creek's Steps 1,2, and 3).
The old "deleterious" churches may be perfectly happy with their church and not see excitement as spirituality. However, the Change Agent is on a Vision Quest to force his vision into heads which don't fit. The only way to facilitate change by moving them where you feel comfortable to to force them to experience something they have no interest in. Therefore,
Farmer's Branch experiments with Sabbath worship with instruments.
Lynn Anderson: Since the fellowship of which I am a part is heavily left-brained and rationalistic in its emphasis and style, I wanted the class to experience both styles of worship as well as discuss them.
The third stage is a redefinition of self as "spiritual person." While pushing the notion that traditional churches needing changes are rational and legalistic, this third stage involves the "spiritual" person following a new set of laws and "worship" acts. (Baptism, small groups, Networking). These are really ceremonial legalism.
Lynn Anderson says, "I assume their worship was genuine." Why would he question it. He knows that the right brained people were sincere because there was a little hand clapping and one even raised their hands. He knew that it was spiritual because it felt and sounded good and he had forced them into disequilibrium.
The fourth stage is to create a state of helplessness because the goals which are set are unrealistic and the "convert" clearly cannot live up to the new laws and standards. This, again, is destabilization or upsetting the person's sense of security or equilibrium.
Now, when the "worshipers" of the new social order begins, everyone expects to get a sexual sweep of endorphins over the body to make them "know God personally." However, when Monday blues set in the endorphines will have long evaporated and the "backlash" set in and we will feel just terrible. However, we are assured that next week we will have a hyped up "main line" charge ready with a worship facilitator ready to make you feel supercharged. But, you ain't gonna ever feel better for very long. Addiction just sinks you deeper into spiritual despair because spiritual is rational - right brained.
The fifth stage of evolution depends upon social ties such as "prayer partners" in some groups or "shepherds" to whom one must submit. Kaczorowski notes that this stage "the Seeker-outsider" assumes that possession of secret knowledge is what "separates the insiders from the outsiders." These were the ancient "mysteries" to which one must work. This moves the seeker so outside of the group that they must make the decision to join and adopt social and religious thinking and acting patterns like the new "Family." She notes that at Willow Creek this may be within the Disciplemaking small groups.
Dick Sutphen's clue to human potential: The fifth clue that conversion tactics are being used is the introduction of jargon--new terms that have meaning only to the "insiders" who participate. Vicious language is also frequently used, purposely, to make participants uncomfortable.
You have spent your stolen "tithe" to procure a new Worship Facilitator, buying new microphones, new robes to make us all look like girls and you don't feel that you are getting your money's worth. Well, didn't the people tell you that you were building a Secular Seekeer Service? If you don't understand the new "paradigm" it is just because you have not been endoctrinated properly. You had better join one of our "bizziness" circles to get the secret knowledge. Then, you will feel that spending the kid's college fund was worth it.
Stage six is to accept the new religious movement and to want to join it, including participation in its rituals and belief in its principles. (At Willow Creek this could be attendance at the New Community or small groups).
You have been baited and switched and the new "automobile" comes without motor and tires. If you really need them you will have to join the commune where we sell motors and tires. All members of Willow Creek Association, we are told, get discounts. Doesn't that make you want to join?
Stage seven involves "conversion," including a reduction in the ego. (At Willow Creek- Baptism, reception of communion).
Gonna have to take the starch out of the smarty, free thinkers. Get you stripped of all of your dignity and we will let you "eat that cracker but you have to take your bubble gum out first." That will make you feel good and "one of the kids."
Stage eight is surrender to the control of the guru. (The writer notes: Not at Willow Creek). (However, We believe that the reviewer is wrong. We suggest that you Click Here to see that control grows over time)
Stage nine involves a deepening of commitment, including isolation from the outside world. (Kaczorowski notes that this may be be achieved by the community center which serves many of the member's needs).
The final stage is total commitment, meaning that members' identities have been transformed. (At Willow Creek this involves accepting an evangelist role and working with the unchurched).
Lynn Anderson is
asked: "If we use singing
groups and solos in worship, is
there not a danger they will become entertainment rather than
worship?"
In part, Anderson's answer is the definition of entertainment lifted, like Scripture, out of context: "The root word for entertain comes from the idea 'to hold,' as to hold someone's attention." (P. 104). In ancient paganism, being restored, the people striped off naked. Now, that would hold your attention but it would not be edifying.
Entertaining = "interesting and pleasurable diverting; amusing." Amusing = "Causing mirth."
Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, Job 20:4
that the mirth (triumphing KJV) of the wicked is brief, the joy of the godless lasts but a moment. Job 20:5
Renanah (h7442) ren-aw-naw'; from 7442; a shout (for joy): - joyful (voice), singing, triumphing.
Ranan (h7442) raw-nan'; a prim. root; prop. to creak (or emit a stridulous sound), i. e. to shout (usually for joy): - aloud for joy, cry out, be joyful, (greatly, make to) rejoice, (cause to) shout (for joy), (cause to) sing (aloud, for joy, out), triumph.
Many groups have moved beyond this hesitation and identify their theatrical performance as Worship Entertainment.
Remember that Rubel Shelly and Look to the Hills, brought to you by the Zoe Group, wanted a facilitator to move the worshipers into the presence of God:
Facilitation meaning 2. Psychologically increased ease of performance of any action resulting from the lessening of nerve resistance by the continued successive application of the necessary stimulation." (Webster).
Lynn Anderson: "People cannot endure sustained disequilibrium! Here is where most eye-on-the-goal, can't -wait-for-the-plodders style of change agents mess up.
They push people into acute disequilibrium and hold them there till an explosion comes. So, what to do! "
Promise Keepers claim that:
"The spirits are energizing the "revival" through a sense of love, joy, peace, compassion and the need for accountability" through small groups. The pronounced method of changing a group from where they want to be to where you want them to be
is to upset their equilibrium by "moving them out of their comfort zone."
In Brain Washing:
"The first step in religious or political brainwashing is to work on the emotions of an individual or group
until they reach an abnormal level of anger, fear, excitement, or nervous tension.
"The progressive result of this mental condition is to impair judgment and increase suggestibility. The more this condition can be maintained or intensified, the more it compounds. Once catharsis, or the first brain phase, is reached,
the complete mental takeover becomes easier. Existing mental programming can be replaced with new patterns of thinking and behavior.
"Other often-used physiological weapons to modify normal brain functions are fasting, radical or high sugar diets, physical discomforts, regulation of breathing, mantra chanting in meditation, the disclosure of awesome mysteries, special lighting and sound effects, programmed response to incense, or intoxicating drugs.
"The same results can be obtained in contemporary psychiatric treatment by electric shock treatments and even by purposely lowering a person's blood sugar level with insulin injections. Click to see BrainWashing
Lynn Anderson: So that you don't push them over the brink
Weave! Alternate between safety and disequilibrium. Teach new ideas a while, stretching your church out beyond comfort zones and into fresh thinking...Bend but don't break!
Employ prayerful brinkmanship!.. ("To the brink of war. The policy of pursuing a hazardous course of action to the brink of catastrophe." Webster)
In the Commercial Zoe Group the similarity to neo-pagans is clear:
This is explained as: "To live in a quantum world, to weave here and there with ease and grace, we will need to change what we do.
We will need to stop describing tasks and instead facilitate process. We will need to become savvy about how to build relationships, how to nurture growing, evolving things.
All of us will need better skills in listening, communicating and facilitating groups because these are the talents that build strong relationships." -Margaret J Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science.
"Douglass, who has developed the most successful Willow Creek-based church service in Germany, even maintained, "I think this approach is most applicable to the state churches. We have the people, even if they don't attend. We enjoy an incredible edge in confidence vis-āvis the free churches." He cautioned,
"The cost of this approach is hard work and loads of strife with church insiders." Christianity Today
"Recent tests by researcher Herbert Krugman showed that, while viewers were watching TV, right-brain activity outnumbered left-brain activity by a ratio of two to one.
Put more simply, the viewers were in an altered state . . . in trance more often than not.
They were getting their Beta-endorphin "fix."
This certainly describes why the hostile takeover is by younger women or effeminate men.
"To measure attention spans, psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland of the Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts, attached young viewers to an EEG machine that was wired to shut the TV set off whenever the children's brains produced a majority of alpha waves. Although the children were told to concentrate, only a few could keep the set on for more than 30 seconds!
"Most viewers are already hypnotized. To deepen the trance is easy. One simple way is to place a blank, black frame every 32 frames in the film that is being projected. This creates a 45-beat-per-minute pulsation perceived only by the subconscious mind--the ideal pace to generate deep hypnosis.
"The commercials or suggestions presented following this alpha-inducing broadcast are much more likely to be accepted by the viewer. The high percentage of the viewing audience that has somnambulistic-depth ability could very well accept the suggestions as commands--as long as those commands did not ask the viewer to do something contrary to his morals, religion, or self-preservation.
"The medium for takeover is here. By the age of 16, children have spent 10,000 to 15,000 hours watching television--that is more time than they spend in school! In the average home, the TV set is on for six hours and 44 minutes per day--an increase of nine minutes from last year and three times the average rate of increase during the 1970s.
It obviously isn't getting better . . . we are rapidly moving into an alpha-level world--very possibly the Orwellian world of "1984"--placid, glassy-eyed, and responding obediently to instructions.
"A research project by Jacob Jacoby, a Purdue University psychologist, found that of 2,700 people tested, 90 percent misunderstood even such simple viewing fare as commercials and "Barnaby Jones." Only minutes after watching, the typical viewer missed 23 to 36 percent of the questions about what he or she had seen. Of course they did--they were going in and out of trance! If you go into a deep trance, you must be instructed to remember--otherwise you automatically forget
I have just touched the tip of the iceberg. When you start to combine subliminal messages behind the music, subliminal visuals projected on the screen, hypnotically produced visual effects, sustained musical beats at a trance-inducing pace . . . you have extremely effective brainwashing. Every hour that you spend watching the TV set you become more conditioned. And, in case you thought there was a law against any of these things, guess again. There isn't! There are a lot of powerful people who obviously prefer things exactly the way they are. Maybe they have plans for you?
Read Dick Sutphen 's clue to human potential and the neo-pagan connection
Home... Apocalyptic... Apocryphal... Awakening... Caneridge... Church.... Colonial... Baptism..... Godhead.... MaxLucado... Lynn.Aderson... Musical Worship... Preaching... Restoration... RubelShelly... Search Our Site... Tongues... Topical..
Counter added 11/1704 2780 lost counter 5.07.08 5000