Catholic Mysticism and Third Wayism in the Smallbone Family- Part 1

Original Photo of church by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

A friend of mine, who claims to be Christian and yet is a Democratic Socialist, attends the downtown Nashville location of Church Of The City (COTC). Matt Smallbone, of the legendary Smallbone Family, is the pastor of this church, so I was particularly interested in learning where my friend is getting her theology from. When I started my research into Matt Smallbone, I immediately became very concerned that he had fallen into some dangerous teachings, including spiritual formation (i.e., Catholic Mysticism) and Third Wayism. Below is the first of a multipart series on my concerns regarding Smallbone and how I feel his teachings are leading my friend away from Biblical Christianity.

Who is Matt Smallbone?

Matt Smallbone is the lead pastor at COTC Nashville and was the former bass player for Michael W. Smith. He is also the cousin of Joel Smallbone of the band for KING & COUNTRY. Both men are part of a larger family of Australian musicians who now live in the Nashville area. The Smallbone family moved from Sydney, Australia, to Nashville in 1991 after a financial crisis, and their story of faith and resilience is chronicled in the movie “Unsung Hero“.

Smallbone attended Western Theological Seminary (WTS) in Holland, Michigan. WTS is a moderate-to-progressive evangelical institution rooted in the Reformed Church in America. It is known for its focus on community, social justice, racial reconciliation, and its commitment to ordaining women in ministry, even as leaders over the church. In their Statement on Racial and Ethnic Diversity, a few points need clarification. Is WTS teaching open borders, multiculturalism, and the very divisive Critical Race Theory ideology of “white privilege” here?

. . . we commit to embodying our identity as a Reformed, evangelical, ecumenical community in ways that are alert to how our predominantly white heritage has shaped us, and we commit to seeking to eliminate ways that this heritage has distorted our presentation of the gospel and our community life.

We affirm that in the Old Testament, Jesus’ ministry, and in the New Testament church as it is empowered by the Spirit after his ascension, God crosses boundaries and welcomes those whom the majority culture regards as ‘strangers,’ such that distinctions remain, but walls of hostility and division are broken down. God, therefore, challenges thrones of unjust privilege such that all might have a chance to flourish.

We also reject notions of one-ness in Christ that tend towards the assimilation of diverse cultures within the dominant culture.¹

Unfortunately, WTS also places a strong emphasis on spiritual formation, with required “Abbey” courses for Master of Divinity students, as described in the Formation at WTS Page.

Smallbone’s Mysticism

On the COTC website (this link is to an archived capture and the original has since been taken down), Smallbone shared that he is an Enneagram 7; thereby, indicating that he embraces the occultic and panentheistic tool of the Enneagram. Sadly, he also promotes Spiritual Formation,² which is also based in panentheism (God in all and all in God). He even quotes the 17th-century Catholic contemplative mystic and monk, Brother Lawrence,³ who was known for receiving reminders from God to practice his contemplation and subsequently danced around violently like a madman.⁴ It is unclear whether Smallbone understands the problems with panenthism and Spiritual Formation or the Enneagram’s occult roots. Furthermore, COTC has female pastors on staff, including, at one time, Kristi McLelland of Williamson College.⁵ According to Marcia Montennegro, McLelland also uses the panentheistic tool of the Enneagram, and she supports Contemplative Spirituality.⁶

The Prayer Experiment

In April of this year, Smallbone released his first book, The Prayer Experiment: How Praying Like Jesus Realigns Everything – Our Thoughts, Our Hearts, and Our Posture Toward God and the World, which he dedicates to many people, including the Catholic mystic Brother Lawrence, and the spiritual formation guru John Mark Comer. The Prayer Experiment is “written in a tone that blends the insights of Dallas Willard with the modern sensibility of John Mark Comer”, and the book encourages us to pray the Lord’s Prayer every day for an entire year. It explores how a consistent rhythm of praying the Lord’s Prayer can transform a person’s life by overcoming the feeling that prayer is just a dry, duty-based ritual. However, the kind of prayer life that Smallbone is promoting here sounds more gnostic at times than Biblical.

In this book, Smallbone quotes the panentheistic, contemplative Dallas Willard, as well as other spiritual formation gurus like John Mark Comer and Max Lucado, who, in his 2011 book Cure for the Common Life, discusses the “divine spark” in each person. Spiritual formation has a strong whiff of Gnosticism because it teaches that human beings contain a piece of God (the highest good or a divine spark) within themselves, which has fallen from the immaterial world into the bodies of humans. Thus, the true way to worship is with your spirit, not your mind (the material world).

Alisa Childers, Melissa Dougherty, and Natasha Crain have already done a deep dive into Comer’s 2024 book, Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did, thereby promoting the merging of Catholic mysticism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and charismatic ideologies into our lives.⁷ Lighthouse Trails, as well as Marcia Montenegro, have all spoken out against Comer’s false New Age gospel. It is very concerning that someone of Smallbone’s notoriety is legitimizing Comer’s work.

A Weak Hamartiology (Doctrine of Sin)

Unfortunately, like most books on Spiritual Formation, The Prayer Experiment is very weak on sin. While, as believers in Christ, we are no longer subject to the law, this does not mean we should take sin lightly; it is still cosmic sedition. The following statements suggest that Smallbone has a completely different definition of sin than what the Bible teaches. Smallbone’s statements below suggest that sin is not about rule-breaking but is simply the act of not letting God make us happy. However, scripture says we get hardened by sin. It is the act of going against God and His ways (Rom 3:23). Ongoing sin is a sequence of choices we make, each of which replaces God’s authority in our lives with our own. We cannot have two masters, thus those choices put a wall between our Creator (Matt 6:24) and us. Sin separates us from God (Isa 59:2 and Col 1:21-23).

Now, talking about sin isn’t exactly fashionable in our cultural moment. But maybe this definition that is widely attributed to Ignatius of Loyola will help: “Sin is unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness.” Exactly. The most damaging thing sin does isn’t that it breaks a rule; it’s that it keeps us from joy, peace, and wholeness. God doesn’t hate sin because it breaks a commandment. He hates sin because it breaks us. Sin pulls us out of alignment with how the world was designed to work.⁸

Because honestly, some of the crankiest Christians you’ll ever meet are people who’ve done plenty of singing and sermon-listening and maybe even some volunteering—but very little being held by Jesus.⁹

And then there are the Pharisee types, those of us who acknowledge the spiritual realm but whose response is to double down on personal discipline: reading the Bible, making moral choices, keeping our lives “clean.”¹⁰

Panentheism-Lite?

Dallas Willard [argues that]. . . “the ‘heavens’ are always there with you no matter what, and the ‘first heaven,’ in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body.” In other words, when Jesus teaches us to pray to “our Father in heaven,” he isn’t pointing to a distant galaxy. He’s pointing to the God who is as close as the air on your skin. This is why one of my favorite preachers [John Mark Comer] argues that you could just as accurately translate “Our Father in heaven” as “Our Father in the air.”¹¹

Breathe in God’s presence.¹²

The problem with Smallbone’s statements here is that God is not air, nor the effect of air around us. He is not a force, but a person. “Breath in God’s presence” sounds more like something a yoga teacher would say than anything that resembles the teachings of Christ. God breathes life into us. We do not breathe Him into ourselves. Air is part of the created world. God is not part of creation, and he does not physically live in creation; He transcends it.

Smallbone seems to be teaching panentheism-lite or possibly even pantheism-lite in this passage, albeit probably unknowingly. However, the name of Willard’s book, where Smallbone gets this quote, is The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. While John 15:4 says that we are in Christ, this should not be taken to mean that creation shares the same essence as Christ, or that God lives in Creation (1 Kgs 8:27, 2 Chr 2:6, Isa 66:1, Acts 17:24), or that we could ever become God (Gen 3). It is unclear whether Smallbone is promoting panentheism, but it is concerning that he doesn’t make this distinction within his book.

Willard and Smallbone seem to misunderstand what the word ouranos (οὐρανός) means. Ouranos (οὐρανός) is the Greek word for “sky” or “heaven,” and in the New Testament and Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament), it refers to both the physical sky above Earth and the spiritual dwelling place of God. While it suggests an elevated, transcendent realm where God’s presence is manifested, it does not typically imply a literal, physical residence inside the clouds. Ouranos is also used metaphorically as the “throne of God,” distinguishing it from the “footstool” of Earth, as noted in Matthew 5:34 and Isaiah 66:1. Furthermore, the Septuagint uses ouranos frequently to mean the source of rain and, often, as a metaphor for the height of God’s ways above human ways. It does not mean that God dwells in the air.

In upcoming articles, I will continue to discuss my concerns with Smallbone’s embrace of spiritual formation in The Prayer Experiment. I will also discuss his Third Wayism and how this may have influenced my friend to embrace Democratic Socialism.Ω

Stephanie Potts is the author of, Social Justice and the Deification of Man: What to Know When Talking with the Christian Left. She and her husband, Jim live in Dayton, Ohio, and have been married for 24 years. She worked with the federal government for 15 years as an intelligence analyst and then entered full-time Christian service in 2015. She first joined Haven Ministries in Denver, Colorado, in 2015 and then transferred to Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc in 2021. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations from Florida State University and her Master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems from Penn State University. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Christian Apologetics at Southern Evangelical Seminary. She has special interests in indigenous religions – especially Native American spirituality – and in responding to Catholicism and the social justice movement. Stephanie’s personal website: rainbowapologetics.com

Catholic Mysticism and Third Wayism in the Smallbone Family- Part 1

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