But rather than just complain about it, Chan calls us to reclaim a high view of the church and return to its New Testament foundations. In it, Chan admits that God is displeased with his church (24). Though he admits that the church has real problems, Chan wisely encourages Christians not to give up on the church, for “Jesus still refers to the Church as His Body, His Bride!” Therefore, he urges, “we must love His Bride, not gripe about her or leave her” (22).Ĭhan’s Letter to the Church is an honest and insightful critique of the American Evangelical church.
His vision was to establish in the United States what he saw overseas. Chan and his family eventually returned to San Francisco, California where he began the “We Are Church” house church movement. Chan took his family overseas to India, Thailand, and China (18), where, as he explains, he experienced the church, not as he had in the United States, but as the New Testament describes. Then, after years of explosive growth and burdensome building projects, he realized “something was off” and walked away from it all (13). He planted the church in 1994 when he was only 20 years old. By many measures, Chan was the “successful” pastor of Cornerstone Church, a mega-church in Simi Valley, California. But have you ever been so discouraged by the state of the church today that you would walk away from it? That’s what Francis Chan did. Something is wrong with the American Evangelical church.
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