Book review
Deceived on Purpose:
The New Age Implications of the Purpose-Driven Church

Full description of book:
Warren Smith, Deceived on Purpose: The New Age Implications of the Purpose-Driven Church, 2^nd Ed., 2^nd Ed (Magalia, CA, USA: Mountain Stream Press, 2004)

Review and critique:

This book by Warren Smith regarding the Purpose Driven movement focuses on the New Age implications and influences in the entire Purpose Driven movement. Most of the book is written in a slight narrative format where Smith discovers for himself the New Age deception found in the Purpose Driven movement, and the link from Schuller to Warren with regards to the New Age and humanistic rubbish that Warren has imbibed from Schuller. He closes this book off with a warning for Christians to be discerning, especially against the New Age deception on which the churches in America are sadly succumbing to.

While this book is generally well-researched, there are certain argumentative errors in which Smith commits. One example is the proving of links between Schuller and Warren. As I have and will mention in my book, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Smith has done a great job in proving that both Schuller and Warren teach stuff that are New Age in content, and that Warren uses similar wording to Schuller in some of his phrases in his messages. Smith has thus proven correlation between both Schuller and Warren. Granted, such similarity, as well as the fact that Schuller and Warren were close to each other, with Warren learning how to do surveys of the community from Schuller, do indicate a strong link between Schuller and Warren. However, to imply that this necessarily means that Warren is Schuller's disciple is a bit stretched and needs further reasoning and clarification. Regardless, Smith has produced ample evidences of the strong correlation between the two, and he has then proved that the humanistic and New Age-like comments made by both of them are false according to Scripture. Thus, while his argumentative techniques are slightly flawed, Smith has, through argumentation in other places, managed to prove both Schuller and Warren wrong ion their views according to Scripture, and thus Smith's points are made, albeit in a more roundabout way.