Directory of Contemporary Worship Musicians - Way of Life Literature

Paris preaches an ecumenical unit message through his life,ministry, and music.e song “Make Us One” is about an “undivided body.”Twila Paris’s, uncle, Loren Cunningham, founded thecharismatic-oriented, radically ecumenical Youth With AMission (YWAM). Her father, Oren Paris, runs the YouthWith A Mission near his Arkansas home. Twila has beenassociated with YWAM since 1976. In an interview with aYWAM leader in New Orleans in 1987, I was told that a largenumber of the short-term workers are Roman Catholics.Youth With A Mission was perfectly at home at New Orleans’87, with its Catholic masses and Catholic priests as speakers,with its “spirit slaying” and phony gibberish “tongues.” In1984, YWAM adopted a policy allowing staff to work withCatholics when it was possible and desirable. Since then,YWAM installed a Catholic, Rob Clarke, as director of itsdiscipleship training school in Dublin. Clarke says, “We aretrying to get away from the idea of simply ‘converting’Catholics—that is turning them into Protestants—andtowards a framework of ministry within the CatholicChurch” (Fundamentalist Digest, May-June 1993). AlAkimoff, YWAM’s director for Slavic Ministries, saysYWAM’s missionaries are not aiming to lure Catholics out oftheir churches. In January 1997, Youth With a Mission leaderBruce Clewett (national director of YWAM in Austria)participated in a historic ecumenical worship service at theCatholic City Cathedral of St. Stephen’s in Vienna (Charisma,May 1997).Twila Paris collaborated with Wheaton College professorRobert Webber to write In is Sanctuary, a book on publicworship. Webber was trained at fundamentalist Bob JonesUniversity, but he rejected fundamentalism and movedthrough Presbyterianism to Episcopalianism. He promotedformal Catholic-style church liturgy among evangelicals. Hewas associated with the radical Sojourners magazine and withliberal political causes. In his book Evangelicals on the244