Is Francis Chan Woke?

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the

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Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I had a question given to me, what, a week ago or so from a listener.

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He said, hey, is Francis Chan woke? And I don't know how to answer that question. I don't know.

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I haven't done a deep dive on Francis Chan or anything. I actually don't really follow Francis Chan that closely, but I do realize

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Francis Chan has a tremendous amount of influence in Christianity and in evangelicalism.

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And I'll tell you my, what I know about Francis Chan. I started to read his book, Crazy Love, now more than maybe 10 years ago.

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And I guess halfway through like the first chapter, I just, it was too simple for me.

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I just couldn't do it. And it, cause it's written on like a fourth or fifth grade level. And I just, there was other things

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I would have rather read, but I didn't remember seeing anything bad in it. And maybe it was a good book. Maybe it really helps some people.

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He had a book on marriage, I think called You and Me Together Forever. And I really liked that one.

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It's very simple, but I thought it was a book that you could give out to people who wanted to get married or were getting married and it would help them.

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So I did, or I got a bunch of those. This was again, probably six years ago and I would give them to people, friends at weddings and stuff who were getting married as part of our gift.

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And I remember it being very good. I don't remember there being problems with it, but since then there's just been little things here or there.

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Sometimes they're not so little that people have sent to me. They just make me concerned. Ecumenical things, especially coming from Francis Chan that I just don't quite understand.

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I did go to the same seminary that he graduated from, Master's Seminary for one semester. And we had a

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D -Lab, it was called Discipleship Lab, and they had two professors that would kind of, one would be there one week, one would be there another week.

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And I don't know why the class was set up this way or called D -Lab. I'm really not sure, but mostly what we talked about were like people, and it wasn't even me,

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I didn't talk about it, but mostly what the professors would talk about was kind of like their issues with people like Mark Driscoll or Francis Chan or, you know, it was just a lot of like, here's who's doing something that we don't agree with.

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It's wrong and evangelicalism. And Francis Chan, there was a whole class once on Francis Chan and just the whole story of his experience at Master's Seminary and where he went from there and why he was wrong.

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And it was just, I didn't know what to do with that stuff at the time. It was just, it was kind of, but looking back now that I think about some of the things that were said in that class,

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I think, you know, there's probably a lot of truth to what was said there. There were people that probably knew him because he went to that seminary and maybe they saw something that I just did not see back then.

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It's very possible that they did. And so I will say this,

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I'm concerned about Francis Chan and I'm not an expert, I haven't seen everything, but when I see him doing joint things with Roman Catholics in the way and doing so in a way that makes it seem like they're theologically on the same page or at least enough on the same page that they can have, they can worship together, they can pray together, these kinds of things that they're, it's not like a pro -life rally where you have a common objective and you're there for that common objective.

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It's more like he's speaking at conferences that their specific goal is worship or whatever the theme is, spiritually speaking.

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And it's just, at the very least, it's confusing. At the worst, it's very ecumenical and not good.

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So I have to say that kind of upfront, whether he's woke or not, there's some other issues that maybe people would want to look into with Francis Chan to see if this is the guy you want to follow.

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And again, that doesn't mean everything he said is wrong, though. It doesn't mean all his books are wrong, it doesn't mean that everything from his early years are all bad and that all the spiritual growth that happened when you were reading some of his stuff or gleaning from his, it doesn't mean that that's all illegitimate or anything.

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There are people like Horatio Spafford, who wrote some of the greatest hymns, who started off theologically seeming pretty good, it seemed like, and then got into false teaching land more at the end of their life.

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Even from the early church, there's people like Tertullian, who might fit that bill to some extent.

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And so I am not the kind of person who just dismisses every piece of someone's work because of something that, some error that occurred later.

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But I do have the caution. I do want to bring up, hey, watch out for that stuff. Don't think that because, and in fact, why read that book?

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We have other resources from people who are solid, who still are solid, who've always been solid.

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And we can just give you those books. Right. And so that's kind of my thought on that. I don't give out Francis Chan books anymore, even though I think his book on marriage is pretty good.

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I don't give them out at weddings or anything like that anymore. So there you go.

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I know some people might not agree with me. Some people might agree with me. And that is totally fine. It's not really the subject of this because I'm going to show you this video.

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The question is, is he woke? I just wanted to say up front that I think there's other questions that might be more important for some of you to answer first if you're trying to determine whether or not his ministry is a good one or not.

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But we will get into the subject at hand. We will talk about whether or not he's woke. Before we do, I want to mention this.

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No one's paying me to mention it. And I don't even know to what extent this is a good organization, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

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Someone emailed me and said, hey, John, if you have an organization that you know of that needs diversity training, why don't you send them to Unity Training Solutions?

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And why is that? Well, because Unity Training Solutions, apparently they don't buy into critical race theory, but they also provide the kind of training that sometimes if you're an employer or you're in an organization, you have to.

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You're by, you know, I don't know if it's by law, but by the requirements of your organization, they want you to do diversity training of some kind.

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So here's an organization that apparently does that kind of. And I don't know how they do it, but they're not using critical race theory to do it.

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They're doing it differently. Now, I can't say anything more than that because I don't know anything about the organization, but I figured I'd throw it out there at least because I realize there are people in those positions and maybe this will be something helpful to you.

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So Unity Training Solutions dot com. Let's watch the video here. This is Francis Chan.

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A world where you say one word wrong and everyone's just ready to fight.

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And so we're all sitting here going, well, I say it like this or I say it like this or I say it like this, you know, and it's just.

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Because there's just so much pent up anger, and I agree, it's.

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The problem is there's not this type of John 13 unity we make,

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OK, we're going to, you know, this white church is going to combine with this black church on Sunday, you know, once a year and we're going to shake hands and, you know, one is going to lead worship and the other one, their preacher is going to preach.

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And it's just it's still very token compared to the depth of, you know,

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Jesus says that John 13 of man, I want you to love each other like I've loved you.

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And it's in the in the in the context of community, in the context of he's about to go to the cross and die for them.

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And now he's saying, I want you to have that kind of love for one another. Man, we're just so far from that, it's hard to know even where to start, and some of it.

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I was ignorant of like I could see it in my own church growing up in a Chinese church, extremely prejudiced.

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I mean, so much of it going on like we're just an all Chinese church and and we would never say it publicly, but it's privately the things that went around and things

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I've addressed and said and but it's it's pretty deep rooted. And then being in Simi Valley, which is primarily a

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Caucasian church and and trying to fight some of that stuff there, but then going into the inner city, you know, in San Francisco and a

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Bayview and and trying to bring unity. Now, suddenly, I'm trying to get, you know, my

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African -American brothers and sisters, you know, joining us. And they're just like, you know, which

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I feel like this is the most racially diverse church I've been a part of. And I'm so grateful for it.

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But even so, you know, I didn't realize how strong it was on the other side of man.

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No, you know, who do you think is an Asian man coming up here and you and your, you know, and you have these white friends, you got cops in your church, you know,

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I'm not going to be a part of that. And it's like, wow, it's just so there's so much of this in the church itself, so far from what

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Christ died for that becoming one man that I think sometimes it's hard not to feel paralyzed, like it's too big.

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The church is so, I mean, one of the things that's so endearing is when you watch the news and you see the protests and how many of those protesters are not

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African -American. Right. Like it looks like a lot of places, the majority is not.

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And in a lot of ways, it's a better picture than the church of coming alongside each other.

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And I don't know, those are the only thoughts that come to my mind. But again, it's like it's a bummer because I think as a whole, as people, we're just on edge somehow and ready to fight.

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And that's why it's hard to speak, because you go, doesn't matter where my heart is.

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People are going to try to find something to divide over. And you see that in the church more than ever.

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I mean, I face it all the time. Just anything I say is some segment of the church is going to blast me and hate me for it.

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We're going to not even say anything, just be on this call with you guys somehow. For some reason, something's wrong here.

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And someone's going to think about it. Yeah. And I just want to... All right. So he says at the end, yeah, for some reason, something's wrong here because he keeps getting blasted with it.

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That happens a lot of times when you're kind of being unclear or you're fence sitting or you're just not.

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I mean, one of the things about Francis Chan is he is so sincere the way he comes across. I think that's his main reason he's appealing.

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I think there's other people like that, too. I think Paul Washer's a little bit like that. You might be surprised I'm putting them both in the same category, but they're both...

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That's one thing that they have going for them. People are tired of fake. Francis Chan comes across as sincere.

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Paul Washer comes across as sincere. They're not trying. They don't seem like they're trying to hide anything. They seem like they really care.

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They really have passion. And that's one of the things I think that attracted me a little bit.

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I was never a big follower of Francis Chan, but I'm thinking like 12 years ago when I thought, oh, maybe

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I'll try reading Crazy Love. I think that was one of the things that I might have seen some clips of his. And I thought, this guy seems like he really loves the

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Lord, like he's sincere about things. And he could be. And I don't want to take away from that. He could be a very sincere guy.

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But it's clear from this clip, and maybe this was from June. This is when certain cities in the

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United States were burning, actually, from June of 2020. Maybe he's changed something since then.

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This is the only thing that I've seen of him talking about this subject. He's clearly not thought through this.

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The few things he says in this that are concerning are that, one, that somehow the world is demonstrating unity better than the church.

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And you hear this an awful lot. How is it, though, that the world is demonstrating unity better than the church?

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In what sense? Because there's churches that, like he said, he was in a Chinese one, and there's primarily white churches.

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I mean, is that the reason? Because we're all still unified in a universal way, in the universal church of Christ.

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It's the Holy Spirit that unifies us. It's not the particular place we go to church, necessarily.

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So I'm not saying that there can't be a problem in a community where one church doesn't like another church, and there's not unity there.

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But the Holy Spirit is grieved or something. I'm not saying that can't happen. I'm just saying that what he's talked about so far is just that there's these different churches.

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There's Chinese churches. He was in a Simi Valley, in a primarily, quote -unquote, white church. He's kind of vague about what he means by prejudice, just that there was prejudice.

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So take him at his word. Just say that there was. But that the world somehow is that they're more diverse.

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But what's the evidence for the diversity? What's the evidence, or the unity, rather? What's the evidence for the unity in the world? White people or other ethnicities marching in BLM protests.

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That's the evidence. So have you thought about the

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BLM organization? Have you thought about what the movement itself stands for? Have you thought about, you know, maybe these shootings or these deaths attributed to racism maybe aren't actually attributed to racism?

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Maybe this isn't actual due process to charge, to say that these are hate crimes.

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Maybe it's actually not as the media is telling us it is. But he kind of assumes all that, that this is part of racism.

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And he's encouraged to see all kinds of people marching, all different ethnicities marching for BLM.

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And that somehow the church, I guess, can follow that example. The church needs to be like that. Which would mean that the church needs to get on the

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BLM train somehow. The church needs to accept that narrative about what these police killings, et cetera, represent.

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They do represent actual racism, systemic racism, et cetera. And there needs to be some kind of change.

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I'm sure Trancis Chan, I'm pretty sure at least, he wouldn't agree with the organization and some of the things that they stand for. I would hope not, at least.

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But you leave yourself open to people that will go that far because you're not being clear.

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You're not giving them any brake pedal. You're not giving them any, you know, or stop.

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Really, you should put the car into stop. Because, you know, this is not where you want to go.

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You don't want to go down that street. You want to park over here because this will lead you. In a bad direction.

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I don't see unity. I don't think any Christian who's being honest about this can see unity. The kind of unity that the

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Gospel of John talks about, certainly in a BLM protest. I mean, what they're unified around is a false narrative that they're pushing in order to enact revolutionary change to the fabric of American society.

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That's what they're unified in. That is not what Christians are called to. So is

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Francis Chan woke for saying that? Well, he's going along with it. I'd say on some level, yeah, but it doesn't sound like he's thought through it quite deeply enough.

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It sounds to me like he's kind of feeling his way through this and that's a dangerous thing to do. Now, if something comes out now that he says, you know what,

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I understand now what those working issues are. I understand what critical race theory is and I'm against it for these reasons. You know, we can evaluate that when it happens.

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I haven't seen any evidence that that's happened. It looks to me like on some level, I would say yes, Francis Chan is woke on some level.

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He's not maybe as self -aware as other people. He hasn't thought through it maybe as much, but he's a leader and he is leading people when he says things like that.

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So that's my short answer to the question. I would be careful about Francis Chan's level of discernment in these things.

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Again, not judging his sincerity, but you don't wanna follow someone just because they're sincere.

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Someone should be an example or a role model. You wanna read their books because sincerity can play into it, but it's gotta be a lot more than that.

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It needs to be because they're defenders of the truth and they have really good insights through just they can apply reason well.

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The Holy Spirit is within them, helping them understand and they're relaying that understanding to you.

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They're faithful. They match the qualifications in scripture for what an elder is. And one of the things, and I'm talking specifically about church related, authors, et cetera.

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One of the things about someone who wants to be an elder in a church, and this is of course in a local assembly.

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I realized we have this sort of parachurch, Big Eva thing. And I realized to some extent, I'm part of that in a way. I'm not Big Eva, but I'm part of, this is not,

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I tell people, this isn't a ministry. This is my podcast. This is me expressing thoughts to you guys to help you guys.

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And sometimes it takes a sort of a ministry role. This isn't the local church. So I realized that there's a place for that.

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One of the things though, and I think it's important in scripture though, about elders is that they are to be able to refute those who contradict.

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Francis Chan is clearly not that kind of a person who's able to do that. And that's a glaring issue.

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I would extend this out to people in parachurch ministries who are taking leadership roles.

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I think it's a good idea. Even if you're not a quote unquote elder at your local church, you need to be, we need to be trying to match those things.

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You want to have those character qualities. Francis Chan is lacking severely in one of those avenues, one of those areas.

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So that's my thought on it. Some of you may not like me for saying that. Again, nothing personal against Francis Chan.

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Actually I really, the problem is I really actually like the guy. It's hard for me to do this because on a personal level, his personality,

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I love it. I really do. It's a breath of fresh air to listen to him sometimes. His attitude and the way he comes across.

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But again, truth is important guys. It's important. Discernment is very important. And for someone who's done the ecumenical things he's done and at the very least being very unclear about what he thinks about the social justice movement, not even unclear, he's endorsing it actually.

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That raises some red flags. So I hope this is taken in the spirit of love and concern that I have.

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And I don't have an ax to grind and I'm not trying to hurt Francis Chan in any kind of unfair way.

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I don't have anything to gain from doing that. But I want to warn you all a little bit about following his advice on the social justice stuff and maybe even beyond that.