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Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Francis Chan at the Catholic Ecumenical Track

I watched the talk Francis Chan's recently gave to a Catholic group:



This is, of course, right on the heels of a sermon in which he was regurgitating Catholic talking-points. A few random observations:

1. Pastor Francis made a number of good observations about Christian piety, unrelated to Catholicism. He usually has some good things to say. I don't think he should be written off. We get different things from different people. He has his own niche. 

2. I can't foresee the future, but I think it's unlikely that he will convert to Rome. He resists being pigeonholed. He's theologically eclectic. I think he views Catholicism as just another box. He may believe it has a few things that evangelicals can learn from or benefit from, but he doesn't strike me as the kind of person to pulls a package off the shelf and goes by that label. He's more independent. What he did in speaking to the Catholic group was more a case of retranslating their piety into his own priorities. 

3. If the viewer was hoping that he'd clarify his position on Catholicism, his discussion was a disappointment. If you don't feel competent or comfortable with offering a public assessment of Catholic theology, don't accept an invitation to speak to a Catholic audience. The Catholic church is far and away the largest ostensibly Christian denomination. Many unbelievers reject Christianity because they identify Christianity with Roman Catholicism, which they think has discredited itself. 

So we can't avoid evaluating what Rome has to offer. We must present constructive alternatives. Pastor Francis doesn't have to be an expert on Catholicism to have a broadly informed, considered position. A basic way to clarify your own position is to understand opposing positions. That often provides a necessary point of contrast. 

6. Pastor Francis seems to think there's a generic, Christocentric piety which Catholics and evangelicals can share in common. He fails to appreciate that devout Catholics detour their pious impulses into the Rosary, eucharistic adoration, reading Catholic saints and mystics. It's going to be a distinctive Catholic-oriented piety. He failed to explain to the Catholic audience where to look for Jesus. How to cultivate fellowship with God. 

7. He acts like refusing to fellowship with Catholics is tantamount to "hating" Catholics, and falls under our Lord's condemnation of those who refuse to love the brethren. But that's terribly confused. 

8. He acts like you can tell who a real Christian is just by looking into their eyes. How well they emote about Jesus. 

9. Pastor Francis distinguishes between Christians who are "in love with Jesus" and those who aren't. He seems to think it's possible or even necessary for a Christian to be in love with Jesus all the time, and he treats that as what demarcates true followers of Jesus from self-deluded churchgoers. 

It's true that some Christians started out very zealous, but their fervor faded over time. There are different reasons for that. A superficial conversion experience. Or boredom caused by thin theology. After a while they think they've heard it all. There's nothing new or fresh. They stagnate rather than grow. 

However, you also have Christians where the zeal has dried out, but the commitment remains. The juice is gone, yet they faithfully persevere. That's actually a better test of Christian fidelity than when they were motivated by gushing fervor. It's like a marriage where the passion is gone but commitment remains. The couple will see it through to the end, even if the emotional dividends are gone. Endurance is a mark of true Christian faith. 

10. Pastor Francis's ideal is the persecuted church. The underground church. But there's a problem with making that the paradigm. 

i) For one thing, his ideal suffers from internal tension. On the one hand he thinks persecution and suffering for the cause of Christ are what promote genuine church growth. But that model only works if Christians remain a persecuted minority. On the other hand, once church growth crosses a threshold, the church becomes worldly, losing its purity and vision. 

So he doesn't seem to think the Gospel can or should spread beyond a certain point, because true Christian piety requires a dominant culture that oppresses the Christian faith and movement. He can't decide if church growth is good or bad. It's good so long as remains underground, but it can't stay underground if there are too many converts. At that point it's too big to be hidden. 

ii) Apropos (i), Pastor Francis seems to define genuine faith or saving faith in terms of heroic faith. The cult of martyrdom. A martyrdom mystique. He doesn't seem to have a model for how or whether it's possible to be a Christian in ordinary times. Can a faithful Christian have a normal family life? Or must true Christians live on the lam, under constant threat from the authorities? 

Has it occurred to Pastor Chan that there's a sense in which it's easier to be a martyr than a lifelong Christian? Martyrdom can be an escape from the daily demands of the Christian faith. Early release from the humdrum, the frustrations, and disappointments. 

iii) He seems to lack much appreciation for the fact that God calls different Christians to different lives of service. For instance, the church needs theologians and Bible scholars. But that requires some breathing space, where Christians aren't constantly under the gun. Where they can pursue education and research, teach and write. 

11. Instead of guilt-tripping Christians who don't suffer horribly for their faith, Pastor Francis should encourage them to make generous use of their blessings for the benefit of others. That's why God has given some Christians greater opportunities than others. On the one hand we need the purifying experience of the persecuted church. On the other hand, we also need the experience of believers in countries where Christianity is legal, where there's the affluence to cultivate Bible scholarship. Seminaries, Christian colleges, and Christian K-12. These two dynamics cross-pollinate.  

12. Pastor Francis suffers from an occupational hazard of gifted preachers. This holds true for talented performers in general. If you're a gifted public speaker, you acquire a reputation as a gifted public speaker. That in turn can make you self-conscious because there's now an expectation to live up to. That's not confined to preachers. Great performers like Laurence Olivier, Franco Corelli, and Vladimir Horowitz developed stage fright because the expectations were so high. Will you dazzle the audience? Will you say something unforgettable every time you step stage? 

One reason preachers should cultivate a text-oriented preaching style is to avoid becoming self-conscious. You stay in the text. And you bring the congregation into the text. You bring the congregation into the world of the narrative. Help them visualize what the Bible is describing, and draw analogies with their own experience. That's easier when preaching from biblical narratives, but the Bible is also chock-full of metaphors. It's good for a preacher to develop the metaphors. Draw a picture in the mind's eye of the congregation. Expand the metaphor into an extended theological parable. 

If a preacher stays in the text, and draws the congregation into the text, he's less likely to think about how he's coming across. He's not thinking about himself and the image he's projecting. Rather, he's projecting the world of the text. 

5 comments:

  1. GREAT OBSERVATIONS about the Christian life. I wish Chan could read them. Interestingly, about 10 years ago [the now notorious] Mark Driscoll asked Chan about the issues Steve brought up regarding suffering: https://youtu.be/3p-SYMis0-w?t=520

    The now apostate Joshua Harris was also one of the interviewers.

    I agree with Steve that Chan has his own niche and that there's a generation that benefits from his style of preaching. I'm glad that a fellow Asian [I'm Filipino] has risen to such visibility in the American church, but disappointed that Chan is the most visible. I've heard other Asian American preachers [Korean, Chinese, etc.] who are much more theologically informed and who [in my subjective opinion] preach better. Chan's goofs in church history and the history of doctrine are embarrassing [see Steve's blogpost HERE].

    I sometimes cringe at Chan's emotional and autobiographical style of preaching which I think can sometimes be excessive. Almost womanly. I have no problem with his level passion. Many pastors probably need to cultivate something similar in themselves. Given the early tragedies in his childhood, I can understand why Chan's preaching is so existential [and therefore autobiographical, emotional]. One online article recounts it in the following way:

    //His mother died giving birth to him. After being raised by his Buddhist grandmother in Hong Kong, Francis came to America at the age of 5. His father remarried, and then his step mother died in a car accident when Francis was 9. Then his father died of cancer when he was 12 years old. The only close relatives he had were his aunt and uncle. But when he was in high school, his aunt and uncle got in a fight, and his uncle shot his wife then killed himself.//

    Chan rightly understands that preaching is serious business, because it deals with eternal life and death for our fellow human beings.

    I don't know about today, but 25 years ago the quality of sermons by Asian preachers at the following church was very good to exceptional. At least to my young and impressionable Christian mind. The preachers were mostly Korean [some Filipinos] who ministered to students who attend University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. My home church back then was a "sister/cousin" church.

    https://cfchome.org/sermons/

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    1. Brah his childhood sounds like that of a certain Arab prophet (Caveat: allegedly, according to the official texts)

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  2. On the topic of Asian Christian leaders, Julius Kim has recently been selected as president of The Gospel Coalition. He's an alum of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. A seminary about 15 miles from where I live and which many Christians living in Illinois are very proud of because of its international fame.

    https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/press-release/julius-kim-selected-as-president-of-the-gospel-coalition/

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    1. I knew him when he was a student at WSC

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  3. Wow . . . both Steve and "Annoyed Pinoy" really hit the nail on the head on analyzing the whole thing. of what I Listened to so far, The video of Chan being interviewed by Mark Driscoll and apostate Joshua Harris has some amazing insights that I had not seen before. (in process of watching all of it)

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