Several close relations of mine are involved, to varying degrees, with the enormous mission organization, Youth With a Mission (YWAM). I have some issues with YWAM. One of these close relations asked if I would spell out precisely what my gripes are. I will do so here, and in no particular order:
1. Radical Contextualization – John Travis has developed a “C1-C6 Spectrum”, defining levels of contextualization for Islamic outreach. At level C5, a convert is allowed to remain completely within the Islamic community and refer to himself as a Muslim.
YWAM makes available an article by Travis and Steve Cochrane entitled, “Muslims for Jesus”. This article and another by Cochrane on Travis’ C5 level of contextualization are posted on YWAM’s Article Library, but are locked for YWAM staff only. I found useful information on YWAM and C5 at letusreason.org and InVision (Mission to the World’s newsletter).
To be fair, I have read that Travis’ spectrum is controversial even within the ranks of YWAM leaders. That this would be embraced by even some is disappointing. While I recognize the tremendous persecution facing the Muslim convert, and feel a sense of awkwardness in speaking about this from the comforts of American suburbia, Christ calls us out of darkness into light. Islam is not a redeemable religion or culture. Like all religions, worldviews and cultures opposed to Christ’s gospel, it is a handiwork of Satan.
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
- John Piper on contextualization
2. Egalitarianism
In 2000, Loren Cunningham (YWAM founder) co-wrote Why Not Women: A Biblical Study of Women In Missions, Ministry and Leadership with David Hamilton. YWAM leadership has taken a clear stand on this issue. Unfortunately, it takes the wrong stand.
I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
I Timothy 2:12-14
On what does Paul found the prohibition on women in leadership and teaching roles over men? Unique cultural circumstances? No. Paul founds this prohibition in Genesis 2 & 3 - The Creation Account. I won’t indulge a tangent on gender complementarianism here, but I don’t know how you talk yourself around this text.
What is most disturbing about egalitarianism is not the sight of a skirt behind a pulpit, but the hermeneutic employed to avoid the clear teaching of texts like I Timothy 2. The “cultural” argument used to defend egalitarianism is almost identical to the defense of homosexuality found here and elsewhere.
- Steve Heitland leaves YWAM due to its commitment to egalitarianism
- Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John Piper and Wayne Grudem. A must-read for anyone desiring to understand the complementarian (Biblical) view of gender roles.
3. Moral Government Theology - While YWAM no longer endorses this false teaching, I believe its lingering effect on the organization can be seen in its tacit endorsement of Open Theism (see YWAM reading recommendations under 7. below).
4. Identificational Repentance
“For me at least this is very new. I have been a Christian for 45 years, and I never once recall hearing a sermon from the pulpit on identificational repentance. I have four graduate degrees in religion from respectable academic institutions, and I was never taught a class on the subject. You do not find the issue raised in the writings of Martin Luther or John Calvin or John Wesley.
Fortunately, we now have a textbook on the subject, namely John Dawson’s remarkable book, Healing America’s Wounds (Regal Books). In my opinion, this is one of the books of the decade for Christian leaders of all denominations. Only because we now have access to this book has the United Prayer Track or the AD2000 Movement been bold enough to declare 1996 as the year to ‘Heal the Land,’ featuring massive initiatives for repentance and reconciliation on every continent of the world. This is so important to me that I require my students at Fuller Theological Seminary to read Healing America’s Wounds and I invite John Dawson himself to come in and help me teach my classes.”
- C. Peter Wagner, “The Power to Heal the Past,” Renewal Journal, 1996.
John Dawson is the International President of YWAM. Dawson helped found the International Reconciliation Coalition in 1990.
“From 1996-99 he [Lynn Green] directed the “Reconciliation Walk,” mobilizing thousands of Christians to prayerfully retrace the route of the First Crusade, helping to defuse 900 years of bitterness between Muslims, Christians and Jews.”
- Lynn Green’s YWAM Leadership page.
Lynn Green is the International Chairman of YWAM.
Identificational repentance is the unbiblical notion that Christians can and should repent for the sins of their forebears. While it is certainly appropriate for the Christian to recognize sins of the past, condemn them and repent for personally participating in them presently, there is no scriptural warrant for repenting for someone else’s sin. (Paul Gowdy has written about this issue here.)
While I believe identificational repentance is per se unbiblical, the underlying reason for this practice/theology is even more disturbing. The whole concept fits into a larger spiritual warfare model. It is believed that demonic strongholds can be broken if a particular region’s generational sins are repented of. This is part and parcel of the territorial spirits, spiritual mapping, generational curses… view of spiritual warfare that is rampant in many Charismatic circles, and is promulgated by the likes of Wagner, Dawson and Green.
5. Dominionism - In Making Jesus Lord, Loren Cunningham states the following (p. 134):
“Sometimes God does something dramatic to get our attention. That’s what happened to me in 1975. My family and I were enjoying the peace and quiet of a borrowed cabin in the Colorado Rockies. I was stretched out on a lounge chair in the midday warmth, praying and thinking. I was considering how we Christians - not just the mission I was a part of, but all of us - could turn the world around for Jesus.
A list came to my mind: categories of society which I believed we should focus on in order to turn nations around to God. I wrote them down, and stuck the paper in my pocket.
The next day, I met with a dear brother, the leader of Campus Crusade for Christ, Dr. Bill Bright. He shared with me something God had given him - several areas to concentrate on to turn the nations back to God! They were the same areas, with different wording here and there, that were written on the page in my pocket. I took it out and showed Bill and we shook our heads in amazement.
Here’s a list (refined and clarified a bit over the years) that God gave me that sunny day in Colorado: 1. The home, 2. The church, 3. Schools, 4. Government, 5. The media, 6. Arts, entertainment and sports, 7. Commerce, science and technology.
These seven spheres of influence will help us shape societies for Christ.”
Lance Wallnau, the man who relayed the stories of Cunningham and Bright to C. Peter Wagner, is seen here speaking of the 7 Mountains (spheres of influence):
“…it only takes three to five percent of a population to create a tipping point that creates a culture… because the minority occupying the high places are stronger than the majority that are irrelevant. You’ve got thirty percent evangelicals in the United States, with a five percent minority that is controlling how the agenda works. How could that happen? It happens because we put more energy on making converts than taking converts into the high places.”
According to Wallnau, it seems the Great Commission is all backward. We’re to save cultures, not individuals. This is pure dominionism. We are to preach the Gospel, in season and out of season, to individual human beings from every tribe, language, people and nation. Nowhere in Scripture is the Christian advised to “disciple nations”. (Matthew 28:18-20 is clearly referring to individuals, not nations. I don’t know how one would go about baptizing a nation.)
This is scary stuff. The “…majority (i.e. the poor and powerless)… are irrelevant”? I’m sure Wallnau would retract or clarify this statement if confronted with it, but I think, from a dominionist perspective, it’s right. While there are variations on the theme, Dominionism (Kingodm Now, Manifest Sons of God) essentially teaches that Christians are to dominate the world scene (and all of its seven spheres of influence) before Christ returns. At the Fall, man and God lost dominion of the earth. God is now seeking a people to take it back for Him. (Some see Christ returning to a Church that has dominated and conquered the earth for Him; presenting it as a wedding gift to the Bridegroom.)
If dominion is the goal, then the unwashed masses have no primary concern for the Christian. The powerful, the rich, the influential - the movers and shakers - they’re the ones we need to convert or become. It’s all very efficient. Once a particular culture is dominated or Christianized, the irrelevant majority will fall in line like sheep. The goal is no longer to preach the Good News to lost people, trusting in God’s sovereign grace to call forth His elect. It is now the “Christianization” of cultures - to move a very small number of Christians into the “high places” of influence and power.
The practical political ramifications of this view are obvious and frightening. When reading dominionist literature, I begin to understand the fears some on the secular left have in regards to some on the religious right.
Furthermore, this robs God of His sovereignty. Nothing has ever, is now, or ever will happen outside of God’s will. If we are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), then God planned and predestined the Cross before Creation. Therefore, the Fall is part of God’s plan in history to draw men and women from all nations, tribes and languages to Himself. God did not “lose dominion” of the earth, and He does not need us to take it back for Him.
6. Discernment - Guilt by Association - YWAM has elected to associate with and endorse a host of aberrant and heretical individuals and ministries.
- Benny Hinn
- Loren Cunningham and Joy Dawson have both appeared on Benny Hinn’s program, endorsing him and his ministry. Personally, I find a Hinn endorsement to be, in and of itself, grounds to sever ministry ties, and prima facie evidence of a ministry’s near total lack of discernment.
- International House of Prayer (IHOP)
- Keith Gibson at Sign of Jonah concisely sums up the myriad problems with IHOP here.
- YWAM Leaders Read & Recommend… A lot of really lousy stuff. (And, to be fair, some good stuff. Unfortunately, a little (or much) leaven leaveneth the whole lump.)
- N.T. Wright - Major proponent of New Perspective on Paul (teaches that justification is not about reconciling sinners to God, but a racial reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles). John Piper (among many others) has fought this heresy with a great deal of passion (an example here). The orthodox doctrine of justification (substitutionary atonement) is the bedrock of the Gospel. There is no Christianity without it.
- “I’ve been a YWAMer for twenty-five years but it took Tom Wright to help me understand what the gospel really is–considerably more than an invitation to having sins forgiven and a free pass to heaven when I die. Let’s face it; that’s the message as it is usually presented. Then we wonder why the church is like it is?” - Jeff Romack (YWAM’s regional director for IndoChina & Philippines) in a review of Wright’s What Paul Really Said.
- Greg Boyd – Open Theism
- Steve Goode (YWAM’s Int’l Ministries director for Mercy Ministry) recommends THREE books written by Professor Boyd. If you don’t know the name, Boyd has a local church in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and teaches Open Theism, or the Open View of God. Boyd believes that God is constrained to time as we are and does not (cannot) know the future. This directly relates to Lynn Green’s article on the Tsunami - both Boyd and Green believe that God is NOT ultimately in control of everything and that God does not purpose all things for our good. God has the best of intentions, but sometimes this sick world throws Him a curveball that He simply is unable to manage. (Just heard an amazing sermon on God’s sovereign purposes in Joseph’s trials and tribulations. I don’t know how you reconcile this account with Open Theism. “As for you, you MEANT evil against me, but God MEANT it for good…”)
- Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith) - Emergent pastor of Mars Hill Church in Michigan. Recommended by Danny Lehman (YWAM’s Int’l Ministries director for Evangelism).
- Christianity Today on Rob and his wife:
- They tell how they became increasingly disillusioned with church, even the church they were running. But then the breakthrough came when they “discover[ed] the Bible as a human product,” as Rob puts it, rather than the product of divine fiat. “The Bible is still in the center for us,” Rob says, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.” It was only through their discovery that the Bible is a human product and not a book that was sanctioned or decreed by God that they were able to see things clearly. They continue, “I grew up thinking that we’ve figured out the Bible,” Kristen says, “that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again - like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color.”
- This is typical of emergent teachers. “We don’t know what the Bible really means, so whatever you think it means is cool with us.” While there are certainly difficult texts, if we embrace uncertainty about essential, and clearly taught, biblical doctrines, we run the risk of placing ourselves outside orthodox Christianity.
- Christianity Today on Rob and his wife:
- N.T. Wright - Major proponent of New Perspective on Paul (teaches that justification is not about reconciling sinners to God, but a racial reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles). John Piper (among many others) has fought this heresy with a great deal of passion (an example here). The orthodox doctrine of justification (substitutionary atonement) is the bedrock of the Gospel. There is no Christianity without it.
7. The Sovereignty of God - YWAM tolerates, and at times appears to endorse, Open Theism. I briefly discussed this in regard to Lynn Green’s God and the Tsunami on another post. I believe many of the above problems ultimately relate to this one.
If God is not ultimately in control, behind the wheel of human history, then the accomplishment of His purposes in the earth is, at least in part, up to us. Yes, Christ does call forth His elect, dividing man from brother, bringing the sword of division and promising persecution, but this just isn’t selling in Arab countries. Yes, the Bible speaks clearly about women teaching over men, but if we are to reap the harvest in this generation, we need all the help we can get. No, the Bible nowhere advises us to map territorial spirits, identify generational curses, repent for the crusades… but if we’re not seeing the spiritual results we expect to see in a given area, there must be something we can do to manipulate the spiritual atmosphere. No, the Bible does not instruct us to Christianize or disciple nations, but it is much more expedient than preaching the gospel to individuals – you know, there’s a lot of people out there, and only a handful of nations. Yes, the Bible does instruct us to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it, but that would offend many, and there’s work to be done.
Missions can become really complicated when God is not in control. If He is, then it’s really simple – not easy, but simple.
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20
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In conclusion, I should state for the record that I believe the average YWAM’er to be a brother/sister in Christ. I don’t believe YWAM is a cult. I also recognize that YWAM is a very large, global mission organization, and that the teaching and leadership will vary from base to base. (This is why I have attempted to focus on the head leadership of the organization.)
That being said, I do believe the above concerns with YWAM are serious. With so many solid mission organizations (e.g. SIM (Serving In Mission), Wycliffe Bible Translators, World Harvest Missions and many others) working the harvest, I see no good reason to invest (financially or otherwise) in an organization infected with so much error.
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I located much of the above information directly and indirectly from Herescope. While I do not always agree with the critical assessments of various individuals and ministries found there, I have found Herescope to be a great resource for locating hard-to-find information on some of the above-mentioned groups and individuals. I just wanted to give credit where credit is due. Thanks, Herescope!
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For those who might be interested, my wife’s cousin is a missionary in Kenya. You can learn more about his endeavors here.
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