Critique of Francis Chan (It's Not About Church History)

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Alright, well just a quick video today. I wanted to address this clip from Francis Chan from a slightly different perspective because to be honest, like the church history stuff, it's very interesting to me, but it's really not my specialty.

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My understanding of church history is, well I think, I'll be honest, I think it's better than a lot of people, but it's definitely not my forte.

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So I'll let people that are much more skilled enough in church history address that part of this.

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It's very, if you have a kind of a cursory understanding of church history though, and hey,

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I'll be honest, I get a little bit of this from my study of Federal Vision. Anyway, if you have a cursory understanding, you can very easily hear what

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Francis Chan says, and maybe if you can't refute it completely, at least you can be skeptical in a healthy way. Before I get into what

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I want to talk about, which again is not the church history aspect of it, I wanted to just say something about my life.

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Now, as I said in my last video, me and my wife were looking for a house to buy in New Hampshire, and one of the things that's made this challenging,

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I'm not going to lie, is I keep thinking as I tour these houses, which is a very frustrating process in my opinion,

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I really don't like doing that. But I keep thinking, where am I going to shoot my videos? That's a tough one, man.

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There was a house that we put an offer in, but we didn't get it, and it had a garage, which normally you'd be like, oh, that's stupid, you can't shoot a video in a garage.

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But this garage had a wood stove in it, and it would have been awesome, would have had these fireside chats, it would have been really cool. Anyway, here's what

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I want to talk about today. So, in my last video, I talked about sort of the

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Founders trailer, and one of the people that was in the Founders trailer, how he really answered in a very weaselly kind of limp -wristed kind of way a direct question about women's preaching and women leading the

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SBC and stuff like that. And I didn't want to beat that guy up too much, even though I thought his answer was the exact wrong kind of answer that we need right now.

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And what I said in there is that the reason why I don't want to beat him up too much is not because I think what he did is excusable, but because I see a lot of myself in the way he answered.

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I know that myself, I've too often given in to the temptation to answer in the kind of way that that guy answered, in a very limp -wristed, weaselly kind of a way.

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And Francis Chan, in this clip, he does something very similar.

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I really, really, really want to avoid talking like this, speaking like this, because it's just not becoming of a

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Christian man. And that's not to say that he's not a gifted speaker, because Francis Chan is clearly a gifted speaker.

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Now, that's a matter of taste a lot of the time. There's a nice young lady that I work with who we were watching a

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Francis Chan clip once before a meeting, and she was saying how annoying she finds

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Francis Chan's voice. And I completely agree. It's just a very whiny, you know what I mean?

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It's a super whiny voice, but that's not what I'm talking about, because he presents very well, he's compelling when you listen to him, and all of that kind of stuff.

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So I'm not saying he's not a good speaker, but unfortunately, he says a lot of weaselly things.

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And I think that, and again, I don't want to beat him up too much, because I see a lot of myself in this. And so when you see me criticizing what

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I'm about to criticize Francis Chan for here, I hope you can interpret this in a way that's like, I know

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I do this too, and I really want to stop. And I hope that I can encourage you, if you speak in this way as well, to stop, because it's not helpful, it's weaselly, it's kind of deceptive.

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And anyway, let me just play the clip, and I'll stop when it's time to stop. It's not going to be the whole clip, but here we go.

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So he's talking about the body and the blood of Christ. A lot of people were saying how this is how

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Francis Chan's talking about transubstantiation. I don't know. I haven't listened to the whole thing. So I'm not talking about that.

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Again, I'm not addressing the church history stuff. Let's go. Again, I'm not making any, like, grand statements.

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I'm just saying some of this stuff I didn't know. I didn't know that for the first 1 ,500 years of church history, everyone saw it as the literal body and blood of Christ.

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And it wasn't until 500 years ago that someone popularized a thought that it's just a symbol and nothing more.

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I didn't know that. I thought, wow, well, that's something to consider. And while I won't make a strong statement,

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I will make a statement about this. It was at that same time that, for the first time, someone put a pulpit in the front of the gathering.

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All right, let's stop right there. Here's what I want to talk about today. It's this idea,

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I don't want to make any grand statements. This is such a rhetorical trick.

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It's kind of akin to saying, with all due respect, as you're about to disrespect someone. Because there's more than one way,

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Francis Chan, to make a grand statement. And the thing is, when you say, I don't want to make a grand statement, and then you immediately follow it with a very grand statement, you come off as disingenuous.

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You come off as dishonest. And again, hear me saying this, guys.

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I do this. I do this. I try to soften an intense statement by saying, well, this is not an intense statement.

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And it's so weaselly. It's so effeminate in a bad way. I don't think this is a good quality for feminine women as well, you know what

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I mean? It's just limp -wristed and weak. Instead, if you're going to make a grand statement like, the church for 1500 years did

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X, that's a long time. And then you're going to follow that up with, it's only in the last 500 years that we did

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Y. That's an intense argument that you're making, and you're trying to pretend like you're not making an argument.

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And you are. You are. This is Rob Bell -style.

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I'm just asking questions here. I'm not saying. But you are, though. And we all can see that.

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So stop being like this. Stop arguing like this. Stop presenting like this.

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Again, I'm not saying he's not a gifted speaker. Of course he is. But this whole idea, well,

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I'm not making any grand statements. And in the middle of essentially trying to downgrade the place that we put on studying and preaching.

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Like, that is a very grand statement. And it requires a lot of grand thinking and grand argumentation.

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It doesn't require just assertions while at the same time trying to soften it by saying, well, I'm not saying.

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You know what I mean? I see a lot of myself in that. It is very limp -wristed. It is the exact opposite of what we need right now.

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The church needs clarity. We need clarity.

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We cannot be afraid to say, thus saith the Lord when God actually spoke.

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We need to be clear where God is clear. And we can hold things kind of tentatively, but not where the scripture is clear.

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Like, the scripture is clear on female pastors, so we need to be clear on that too. The scripture is clear on that.

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Now, I would argue that we all kind of understand that the scripture is clear on some things that maybe other people don't think it's quite so clear on.

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And we can all kind of disagree on some of that stuff. But this whole idea of making, I just, I really, it's not, it's unbecoming of a

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Christian man to speak in this way. I'm not making a grand statement to try to soften the grand statement that you're about to make.

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And it's especially wrong, and I'm not going to make the case for this in this video. But it's especially wrong when you say,

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I'm not making a grand statement. Then you make a grand statement, and it's a grand statement that is completely incorrect. Which I believe is the case here.

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Like, that whole idea of 1500 years, that church was all doing X, that's just not the case at all.

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But anyway, that's just, that's what I want to say here. Because, again, I'm using Francis Chan as an example.

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But I do this myself, I've seen others do this. And in this time of confusion, this time in our culture, we need super clarity.

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Not this weaselly kind of, you know, nonsensical way to argue without offending.

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I just really don't like that. That's not what we need. And anyway, I hope this is helpful.

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God bless. You know,

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Francis Chan, in one of my other videos I mentioned, he was the dude that said that the church had a lot to learn about community and brotherhood from street gangs in California.