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Chan Steps Down from Cornerstone, Moves to Asia
http://www.charismamag.com/index.php/news/29822-chan-steps-down-from-cornerstone-moves-to-asia
Wednesday, 22 December 2010 10:09 AM EST Jennifer LeClaire
Francis Chan has picked up and moved his family to Asia. Chan pastored the 4,000-member Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, Calif.
Chan was making quite a name for himself in Christian circles, penning two best-selling books, including Crazy Love and Forgotten God, and authoring a DVD teaching series. But he has resigned and left for an unnamed country in Asia. Chan reportedly told his church that he “wanted to disappear far a while” in late September.
“Even in my own church I heard the words, ‘Francis Chan’ more than I heard the words, ‘Holy Spirit’,” CNN’s Belief Blog reports Chan as saying. “I think there has been too much emphasis on me. I want to be used by God, but I think we have this desire to make heroes out of people rather than following God and the Holy Spirit.”
Chan is the founding pastor of Cornerstone Church. He started the church in 1994. This is not the first time he has left the church. In May he left to work directly in mission with the poor locally and internationally.
“When there is a large constituency, there’s a lot of voices,” Chan said in the Belief Blog. “It makes you arrogant or it makes you want to shoot yourself. When thousands of people tell you what they think, how can I be quick to listen, like the Bible says? I don’t want to be a jerk and tune everyone out. At the same time, you can’t love every single person and answer them.”
Chan is the chancellor and founder of Eternity Bible College and serves on the board of directors for Children’s Hunger Fund, an international humanitarian aid foundation to assist the poor, and on the board for World Impact, an inner-city missions organization dedicated to planting churches among the urban poor in America. Chan has given all author royalties for Crazy Love to the Isaiah 58 Fund.
Chan’s blog offers the following message:
“Francis appreciates that you have visited this site and that you may want to get in touch with him. However, due to the many e-mails that he was receiving with regard to his announcement of stepping down at Cornerstone and the many different requests and suggestions he was also receiving, he cannot answer them individually…
“With regard to going on a prayer walk with he and Lisa to the different cities they are praying about possibly moving, they plan to go alone in order to get away quietly to pray. He hopes you understand and certainly hopes you will continue to pray for them whenever you think of it…
“Francis is not currently accepting any speaking engagements until January 2011. After this time, if you are still interested, please refer back to this site for a speaking request form.”
________________________________________
Francis Chan to Critics: How is My Life Weird?
http://www.christianpost.com/news/francis-chan-to-critics-how-is-my-life-weird-47152/
By Michelle A. Vu | Christian Post Reporter
DULUTH, Ga. – With contagious passion, uncensored honesty, and rock-solid conviction, preacher and best-selling author Francis Chan took the stage at the Catalyst conference last week to “brag” about his relationship with God and to counter critics who say his recent ministry decision is “weird.”
Chan declared to an arena packed with 13,000 young Christian leaders that he wants his life to fit in the Bible and that there is nothing weird about believing in the Holy Spirit and following the calling of God.
“When I don’t think biblically, I go nuts. I just go, ‘This is crazy,’” said Chan, founding pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, Calif., last Thursday evening. “But whenever I read this book (the Bible), I think my life fits perfectly.”
Critics have called Chan radical and questioned his theology after the Southern California preacher announced six months ago that he would step down from pastoring his megachurch to pursue a new adventure God is calling him to. Even fellow megachurch pastors have questioned Chan’s ministry decision to forsake everything to pursue a yet unclear calling.
Moreover, Chan shared Thursday during the nation’s largest gathering of young Christian leaders that his wife, Lisa, recently proposed to even sell their house before the family of six (four children) embark on their trip to Asia this week. The Crazy Love author noted that his family would not have a house to return to if they do come back to the United States.
While acknowledging that his life is crazy by most people’s standards today, Chan explained how un-radical his life really is by comparing it with the early disciples.
“If you put my life’s story in the book of Acts, chapter 12, [it would be] James killed, Peter imprisoned and Francis went to Asia,” said Chan to the laughter and applause of Catalyst attendees.
“Whoa, that is radical. He is so weird,” joked Chan, who says he’s been accused of subscribing to “poverty theology” because he gives away about 90 percent of his income and has donated all his book royalties to charities.
Continuing, the popular Christian speaker challenged those in the audience to compare their lives to the Bible and see if it also fits. He said it is more weird that some Christians change churches because of the service time, the music style, or the fight they got into with someone.
“Think biblically ’What is weird?' 'Who is weird?‘ based on the scripture and whether we fit in it,” Chan stressed. “So many things don’t make sense. I got to look at scripture and go ‘Does my life make sense?’ I want my life to fit in this book one day.”
Chan noted how his 14-year-old daughter, who he was the most nervous to break his decision to, ended up being the most supportive of his plan. She told him that she was proud of him for trying to be more like Jesus.
“The Bible says that 'if you try to save your life, you will lose it. But if you lose your life for my (Jesus’) sake then you’ll find it,'” Chan stated. “It’s like my kids; if I try to keep them safe and try to make them happy, I’m going to lose them. But if you let go and start to pursue the things of God, then God says, ‘I’ll take care of them.’”
Chan, who spent 16 years building Cornerstone Church, plans to travel to Asia to witness what God is doing in the Christian body there. He said he might work at an orphanage, but has no clear plan for ministry yet. But he and his family are willing to do anything that the Spirit leads them to do, he shared.
“I don’t know how to defend everything. All I know is when I try to listen to what God is asking me to do, when I take some of these passages, when I made that turn in my life and said I want to just be like Jesus,” he said, “all I know is the more I pursue that the more God listens to my prayers.”
The Crazy Love author shared at the beginning of his talk how God has been answering all his prayers lately to the point he wonders if God has anything else to do but listen and respond to him.
He said that he wants to get up on stage and brag that he knows and understands the God of the universe, and he hopes those in the audience will also brag that they know God.
“I am pursuing this thing,” Chan stated. “I am just trying to walk by the Spirit and it has been amazing.”
Chan was one of about a dozen speakers at this year’s Catalyst conference, which drew young leaders in for a three-day experience aimed at exposing them to cutting-edge ideas from top leaders in business, education, non-profit, and the church. Since its founding in 1999, the annual event has been attended by more than 90,000 leaders.
This year’s conference concluded Friday.
He lamented that Christians were too often “missing it” – the level of commitment and passion to spreading the Gospel demonstrated by the early church.
“You go to church these days and you stare forward and sing a couple of songs and listen to the message and go home,” he said.
“Haven’t you wondered how come everyone’s so content and everyone acts like this is the norm and this is okay when in your heart it’s driving you crazy and it doesn’t square with Scripture?”
He said it was easy for Christians to say “Amen” to sharing in the fellowship, resurrection and glory of Christ, but not so easy for them to say “Amen” when it came to sharing in His sufferings.
Even though it could be difficult, Chan told Christians it was in the midst of the danger and conflict that came with going out into the world and making disciples that the real peace of Jesus could be experienced.
“I feel very concerned for those people who walk into these buildings we call church and think they are Christians because they said a prayer and made a decision,” he said.
“Saying a prayer means nothing if there’s no follow through.”
He continued: “Where’s the obvious truth and where’s the obedience because I think we’ve missed some obvious things and created a system that doesn’t really make sense and we’ve done that because we don’t really want to live out Christianity, we don’t really want to become like Christ.
“Do you really want to be like Christ – rejected your whole life, spit upon, crucified? ... We don’t want that part of Christ and yet it is those times when we are rejected for the Gospel that we really feel the peace and come to remotely resemble Jesus.”
Chan’s appearance at this year’s international CRE comes just weeks after he announced to Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, Calif., that he was stepping down after 16 years as its senior pastor.
He said he had decided to leave the church he and his wife planted because he feared that he liked his popularity too much.
He spoke of his admiration for fellow evangelical pastor John Piper, who recently announced that he was taking some time off to tackle his pride.
Chan will deliver his final sermon at Cornerstone later in the month. He said he plans to move with his family to a developing country.
Francis Chan: Church Today Not What God Intended
http://www.christianpost.com/news/francis-chan-church-today-not-what-god-intended-50000/
By Lillian Kwon | Christian Post Reporter
The Christian Post > U.S.|Tue, Apr. 26 2011 08:01 PM EDT
Church today has become predictable, says bestselling author and influential preacher Francis Chan.
"You go to a building, someone gives you a bulletin, you sit in a chair, you sing a few songs, a guy delivers maybe a polished message, maybe not, someone sings a solo, you go home," Chan says in his latest "BASIC" video.
The Crazy Love author is concerned about the big disconnect between what the church looks like today and what it looked like 2,000 years ago.
"When you read the New Testament, you see the Holy Spirit was supposed to change everything so that this gathering of people who call themselves Christians had this supernatural element about them," Chan explains in the video series, produced by Flannel. His talk on the Holy Spirit premiered recently on RelevantMagazine.com.
It was the Holy Spirit, which came down after Jesus ascended to heaven, that empowered Christians thousands of years ago. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, people began speaking in different languages, people were being healed, and believers had a supernatural love for one another.
The fire that came down from heaven, that rush of wind, however, seems to have disappeared, Chan points out.
"Do you really see this supernatural power at work when the believers gather together for what we call church?" he asks. "Isn't it the same Holy Spirit that's supposed to be available to us today? Why is it so different?"
Chan's frustrations with the church today are what inspired the "BASIC" series. He was successfully leading a megachurch in Simi Valley, Calif., when he began to question and rethink "how we do church." He began feeling uncomfortable with people driving long distances just to hear him speak every weekend and with church having become a once-a-week routine.
After 16 years at Cornerstone Church, he let go of the reins in 2010 and traveled to Asia where he and his family spent time with persecuted Christians and orphans.
He has yet to announce his next ministry move but an update on his blog revealed that he is currently residing in San Francisco. "I am working on some projects that I believe can help the overall health of the church in America," he wrote earlier this year.
Chan filmed a seven-part short film series with Flannel that is aimed at challenging Christians to be the church that is illustrated in Scripture. The videos are being slowly released and the Holy Spirit installment is the third and latest one in the series being made available.
In it, Chan observes what church looks like today and what it's supposed to look like, according to the Bible.
"I heard one person say the church nowadays is neither super nor natural," he says. "Everything is predictable and everything is expected."
"There's a truth to that," he admits. "I feel bad about it. Being around a church culture, even leading a gathering of believers, I've gotten pretty good at predicting what's going to happen in a church service. Was that the way it was supposed to happen?"
"When Jesus said this power (of the Holy Spirit) would come upon you, it really did come upon them and they were powerful beings (Jesus' disciples)," Chan points out. "Why is it that in the church so many people are weak or defeated or we get so insecure because we look at ourselves rather than God? It doesn't make sense."
Though Christians believe in an almighty and all powerful God who places His spirit in believers, the response among His people today is: "Hi, welcome to church. Here's your bulletin. We'll get you out in an hour. Come back next week."
"I mean, really? Is that all God intended for us?" Chan challenges.
While pondering whether Christians really believe the Holy Spirit exists today and can work powerfully, he asks one poignant question: "What would the church look like today if we really stopped taking control of it and let the Holy Spirit lead?"
"I believe this is exactly what the world needs to see."
Calif. Pastor Frustrated with 'Comfortable' Christianity
http://www.christianpost.com/news/calif-pastor-frustrated-with-comfortable-christianity-45153/
By Maria Mackay | Christian Today Reporter
The Christian Post > U.S.|Fri, May. 14 2010 08:30 AM EDT
LONDON – Radical living was not only for the early church believers, but it's what the church today is also called to, said one pastor.
Francis Chan’s latest book, Crazy Love, has sold one million copies worldwide, a figure he says demonstrates the extent to which he is not alone in feeling a sense of frustration with "comfortable" Christianity.
Speaking at the Christian Resources Exhibition Thursday, Chan said he had experienced resistance to the radical extent of his service for Christ, not from non-believers but from fellow believers.
He said that all Christians were called to live like the early church believers who denied themselves, took up their crosses, sold their possessions to the poor, and shared everything they had.
“To me it’s crazy to live any other way than a completely radical lifestyle,” he said.
“It wasn’t just for the apostles. It wasn’t just for the early believers. It’s for us today.”
He lamented that Christians were too often “missing it” – the level of commitment and passion to spreading the Gospel demonstrated by the early church.
“You go to church these days and you stare forward and sing a couple of songs and listen to the message and go home,” he said.
“Haven’t you wondered how come everyone’s so content and everyone acts like this is the norm and this is okay when in your heart it’s driving you crazy and it doesn’t square with Scripture?”
He said it was easy for Christians to say “Amen” to sharing in the fellowship, resurrection and glory of Christ, but not so easy for them to say “Amen” when it came to sharing in His sufferings.
Even though it could be difficult, Chan told Christians it was in the midst of the danger and conflict that came with going out into the world and making disciples that the real peace of Jesus could be experienced.
“I feel very concerned for those people who walk into these buildings we call church and think they are Christians because they said a prayer and made a decision,” he said.
“Saying a prayer means nothing if there’s no follow through.”
He continued: “Where’s the obvious truth and where’s the obedience because I think we’ve missed some obvious things and created a system that doesn’t really make sense and we’ve done that because we don’t really want to live out Christianity, we don’t really want to become like Christ.
“Do you really want to be like Christ – rejected your whole life, spit upon, crucified? ... We don’t want that part of Christ and yet it is those times when we are rejected for the Gospel that we really feel the peace and come to remotely resemble Jesus.”
Chan’s appearance at this year’s international CRE comes just weeks after he announced to Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, Calif., that he was stepping down after 16 years as its senior pastor.
He said he had decided to leave the church he and his wife planted because he feared that he liked his popularity too much.
He spoke of his admiration for fellow evangelical pastor John Piper, who recently announced that he was taking some time off to tackle his pride.
Chan will deliver his final sermon at Cornerstone later in the month. He said he plans to move with his family to a developing country.
Francis Chan Shares Details of Asia Trip at Passion
http://www.christianpost.com/news/francis-chan-shares-details-of-asia-trip-at-passion-48311/
By Michelle A. Vu | Christian Post Reporter
The Christian Post > U.S.|Mon, Jan. 03 2011 07:21 AM EDT
ATLANTA – Bestselling author and pastor Francis Chan shared details of his time in Asia on Sunday to 22,000 students at the Passion conference.
He talked about persecuted Christians he met in India and China who think it is normal for Christians to suffer for Christ, and orphans in Thailand who sing praise songs with so much joy that it left his whole family in tears.
“I heard these stories all my life and I got to meet some of these people. I just wanted to see if this is for real,” said Chan about his shocking decision to leave his megachurch and travel with his family across Asia.
Chan, the author of Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God, had not shared much publicly about his trip to Asia since leaving the country in October with his wife and four children. He announced earlier last year that he was resigning from the Southern California megachurch he founded, Cornerstone Church, to pursue a new adventure God is calling him to. He said his life, including how famous he has become in the Christian circle, no longer fit the Bible and he wanted to take time off to realign it with Scripture.
On Sunday, Chan clarified that he is not holy or godly for leaving the stability and comfort of life in the United States to pursue God in Asia. But rather he was “weak” and “ungodly” and that is why he left to seek wisdom and strength from persecuted Christians who are spiritually stronger and whose life he felt matched with the Bible.
“Can people look at your life and tell that you believe in hell? Can people look at your life and tell that you have been saved from that? Do they see that ultimate joy in you?” asked Chan.
In India, he met a woman who shared that her whole village tried to pressure her to reconvert to Hinduism after she and her husband became Christians. Everyone in the village came to her hut with lizards whose head was cut off and told the couple to drink the blood and convert back. At the time she was pregnant with their first child. The couple grabbed only their Bible and ran into the jungle where she gave birth with only her husband at her side. She shared that her husband struggled to find food to feed her and the baby during that time.
Another believer in India showed Chan scars on his head and body that resulted from his faith in Jesus. He told stories of incidents where he barely was able to crawl away alive from the crowd that was beating him.
Similarly in China, believers in the underground church told Chan about the persecution they endure from the government. But what surprised the American pastor was that they had so much joy and were laughing when they told stories of being chased by police and authorities shooting guns to scare them. They thought it was normal to be persecuted and that Christians everywhere suffered like them, explained Chan. The underground Christians in China pointed to Philippians 1:29, which states, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him.”
Chan shared that in America, Christians change churches over better worship music, service time, or daycare program. The Chinese Christians laughed at him thinking he was telling a joke because it did not make sense to him, Chan recalled.
“I think more and more of us are aware of that. Don’t you just look at certain things in your life and go that doesn’t make sense?” he posed.
“God, can you just raise us all up? Make us a whole new generation that sees the foolishness of a consumer-driven church. This is about us suffering for the sake of Christ and making disciples ourselves, not just hoping that our pastor would lead them to the Lord and our pastor would disciple them.”
He urged students to reflect on their life and check if it matches the Bible that they claim to believe. His message was based on Philippians 1:27-30, which says in part: “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ …”
“I am not asking you to be radical. I am not asking you to be extreme. I’m just asking you to make your life make sense,” Chan stressed.
“People go, ‘Francis, you are so extreme, you’re so out there.’ No I’m not. I’m not even trying to be those things. I’m just looking at what I say I believe and my actions don’t match up sometimes.”
While telling stories about his family and their trip to Asia, Chan also revealed that his wife, Lisa, is pregnant with their fifth child and the couple is in the process of adopting a handicapped boy that they met in China.
The Jan. 1-4 Passion conference in Atlanta will also feature speakers Andy Stanley and John Piper on Monday. Lead worshippers at the event include Chris Tomlin, David Crowder Band, Matt Redman, Charlie Hall, Christy Nockels, and Kristian Stanfill.
In 1997, Louie Giglio organized the first Passion conference in Austin, Texas, which attracted about 2,000 people. The conference, which is part concert part Bible study, has grown to over 20,000 student attendees and began to take place outside the United States in 2008. In 2010, there was a Passion seven-city world tour that included cities: Kiev, London, Tokyo, Manila, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo and Vancouver.
