Directory of Contemporary Worship Musicians - Way of Life Literature

2011. He contributed to the songs “Friend of God” and “SaySo” with Israel Houghton.He is the founder of Bloom Church in Denver, which is afellowship of house churches that meet together for jointworship on Sunday nights. eir objective is to build thekingdom of God on earth toward “the healing of the world.”eir statement of faith is very brief for the sake ofecumenical unity.Gungor is a big proponent of contemplative spirituality, andas with many others, it has led him to a pantheistic concept ofGod, which is clear evidence that the practitioners arecommuning with demons masquerading as angels of light.Pantheism is the doctrine that God is everything, whereaspanentheism is the doctrine that God is in all things.“With panentheism you still have a personal God (theism)coupled with God’s pervasive presence in all creation(pantheism). ... At the mystical level, they experience this Godforcethat seems to flow through everything and everybody. Allcreation has God in it as a living, vital presence” (Ray Yungen,A Time of Departing, pp. 29, 30).is is exactly what happened to Michael Gungor on acontemplative retreat in Italy in 2010. First, visiting Romeand hearing the pope speak, he showed his spiritual blindnessby saying that this “was not a bad way to start a spiritualjourney” and that it made him “want to be aCatholic” (“Pilgrimage: Meditation,” gungormusic.com, citedfrom “Tens of ousands Introduced to ContemplativeAdvocates,” Lighthouse Trails, Aug. 28, 2012).Gungor then spent time at an interfaith retreat center inAssisi which had statues of Mary, Buddha, and Hindu idols.In that pagan atmosphere during “non-judgmental”contemplative meditation he learned that “God is somethingto be experienced, not to believe in” and that “God is thebasic Reality of the universe,” that “whatever is, that is God.”He said that he felt so close to God through meditation “that‘You’ almost seems funny.” In other words, he came to believe161