Francis Chan: Churches must bring ‘sacredness’ back to worship as increasing numbers abandon Christianity

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‘We’re seeing the world look at evangelical Christianity as an absolute joke’

Francis Chan
Pastor and author Francis Chan delivers remarks as part of the Q Commons event, broadcast internationally on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019. | Courtesy of Q Ideas/Parker Young

As more and more people publicly walk away from the Christian faith, pastors must urge their congregations to have deep, personal encounters with God and bring “sacredness” and “reverence” back into worship, according to pastor and author Francis Chan. 

“I am seeing so many people, friends of mine who were in ministry, who are just saying they don’t believe, or they’re walking away; ‘I don’t know if I believe that anymore,’” Chan said during Exponential’s Reset Summit this week. “And I just think that’s crazy. We’re seeing people that we look up to, leaders fall. We’re seeing the world look at evangelical Christianity as an absolute joke right now … it’s every day you can just jump on Instagram … and someone is saying, ‘I’m not a Christian anymore.’”

TheUntil Unityauthor lamented that there’s a “lot of Isaiah 29:13” going on in churches and denominations across the country today. The verse reads, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”

“In other words, it wasn’t an encounter [with God],” he said, explaining that true, lasting faith doesn’t come from simply hearing a message, but spending intentional, one-on-one time with God.

“Don’t get away from your own encounter with God,” he said. “We have to make sure we get people to encounter Him, and that their fear of God is not just a commandment that was taught to them by us.”

“This is a new season. And all of this, people walking away and fighting and angry about everything and so opinionated, is because they’ve spent too much time in our presence, and in our evangelical talk, talk, talk, talk presence and not enough time before a Holy God and sacred and reverent, silence and awe and just recognizing their oneness with Him.”

To have more unified horizontal relationships in the church, there must be a deeper, vertical relationship with the Father, Chan stressed.

“The world is going to get worse; persecution is going to get worse. And when they’re alone with Him, is there enough of this awe and enjoyment of Him, and a fear of Him that they can survive anything?” he asked. 

“I think this pandemic showed us that there’s just way too much of this horizontal going on. And now we’re trying to keep these people with us, and it’s more like we have to direct people to Him. We have to do a better job of bringing sacredness back into our worship.”

A recent study found that 43% of millennials stated they either don’t know, don’t care or don’t believe God exists, and 16% of millennials believe that when they die, they will go to Heaven only because they confessed their sins and accepted Jesus as their savior. Yet, 57% of millennials still call themselves Christian.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Michael Youssef, pastor of the 3,000-member Church of The Apostles in Atlanta, Georgia, warned that more and more pastors are “falling into the trap” of woke culture because it’s “popular and appeals to the flesh.”

“Bowing to woke culture allows you to avoid rejection by culture and society,” he said. “It’s a very, very popular message that is now being preached from many evangelical pulpits; traditionally Bible-believing, Gospel-preaching churches. We have gone so far that it just grieves me to the point that I literally sometimes just weep tears.”

“I’ve always believed, as goes the pulpit, so goes the pew. As goes the pew, so goes the culture,” he continued. “As a pastor, I put the full blame on us, right in our laps, because we want to be liked, loved, and followed on social media by millions of people. Pastors are the culprits. We need to be about Jesus, not about being liked, because that is deadly as far as the Gospel of Jesus Christ is concerned.”

Youssef urged those who love Jesus to be “encouraged and motivated to stand up and not to be afraid,” and compel those “teetering” to find the strength and courage to stand for the truth of the Gospel.

“We must take charge,” he said. “Christians have abandoned so many areas of society, from media and the classroom. Instead of withdrawing, we need to go and invade these areas and take them for Christ and not be afraid. We are on the right side. We have read the last chapter, and it says we will win.”

From Christian Post

Reflection on Matthew 17:22-27

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Scripture

“We don’t want to offend them, so go down to the lake and throw in a line. Open the mouth of the first fish you catch, and you will find a large silver coin. Take it and pay the tax for both of us.”

Observation

Jesus again tells the disciples that He will be handed over to His enemies. He will die, but on the third day He will be raised to life.

They arrive in Capernaum where collectors of the Temple Tax come. Peter asks Jesus what to do. Jesus tells him to go fishing and he will find a silver coin in the mouth of the first fish he catches. This will be enough for the tax for both of them.

Application

As the Son of God, Jesus did not need to pay taxes, especially the tax for the upkeep of the Temple where people worshipped him.

Yet He does pay the tax, and on this occasion He does it with a miracle.

What is Jesus doing with this miracle? I think that He was having some fun, sending Peter off to wet a line and providing what was needed in a way that Peter would enjoy. If only all of our taxes and bills could be paid through our leisure activities!

Jesus is demonstrating here that whatever our needs are, He will supply them. We don’t have to be stressed because He sees the need before we do, and He knows how He will meet that need- even if it is through fishing.

Prayer

Thank you Lord for the reminder that you have all my needs covered. All I have to do is rest in you. Please help me to remember that. Amen.

Quote for the Day

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Those who are afraid of being defiled by the world have little faith in the power of the blood of Jesus that continually flows to keep us clean and the power of the Holy Spirit within us to guide, protect, and empower us to make a difference. Bill Johnson

Ephesians 4:25

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Here is my commentary on Ephesians 4:25. I am publishing these once or twice a week, but you can read all of the available articles at our web-site, http://www.new-life.org.au

Ephesians 4:25

“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbour, for we are all members of one body.”

In the previous section, Paul talked about putting away our old nature and putting on the new nature in Christ. We are ”created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” He gives specific instruction in how the new nature should replace the old.

In this verse, he addresses the issue of truth and falsehood.

We are to put off falsehood and speak truthfully to our neighbours.

Some translations use the word lying here, but the idea is broader than that. Yes, we are to put away deliberate lies, but there are many ways to deceive, and all of them are opposed to God.

Deception is any attempt to cause someone to believe something that is not true. That includes lies ( whether “black” or “white” lies), omissions or half-truths, using words in such a way as to make a seem better than we really are.

We must always speak truthfully to our neighbour, even if it seems difficult or costly.

We are followers of Jesus who called himself “ the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Therefore, we are committed to truth-telling by virtue of the nature and authority of Christ.

Our culture is sometimes described as post-truth, that is sceptical or indifferent about issues about truth and falsehood. The argument is that there is no objective test of truth, and it is an obsolete concept.

Regardless of whether you seek truth or deny truth, the law of gravity still operates regardless of your opinion. It can be fatal to ignore some truths.

The Nazi propagandist Goebbels is credited with the statement that any lie repeated often enough becomes true. In our age of information saturation, people lack time or desire to investigate the veracity of political and commercial claims, and so blatant lies tend to become accepted as true.

We are not to live in this cynical way. We must remove all forms of deception and seek to be people of truth.

Paul now gives the reason for this as “ we are all members of one body.” This then raises the question “who is my neighbour?”

It might seem that Paul is limiting his definition of neighbour to fellow Christians. We have a duty to our Christian brothers and sisters to walk in honesty. Deception is about taking advantage of other people for our own game.

We must not use deception or falsehood in anyway in connection with the Christian family.

But Paul does not generally use the word neighbour to describe Christians. Jesus made it clear that to love our neighbour is to love everyone that we might interact with.

If we adopt this definition of neighbour, then Paul’s command here is open-ended. We must deal truthfully with everyone and not just our fellow christians.

In all of our business dealings, our family relationships, our friendships and so on, we must always speak truthfully.

This can be painful when we are filling in tax forms or don’t have enough cash to pay for items at a stall with an honesty box. It becomes very costly when we break the law and and are not caught.

Paul relates this commitment to truth in all situations to being a part of the Body of believers. God’s people are people of truth. Together we follow Christ, and He requires us to walk in truth. If one part of the Body is tainted by falsehood then the whole body is weakened.

Key points in this verse:

  • We are to put off falsehood
  • We must speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
  • This commandment flows from the nature of Christ
  • We have to speak the truth always, not just within the church

Reflection on Matthew 17:10-21

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Scripture

“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’, and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”

Observation

Jesus’ disciples ask Him why the teachers of the Law say Elijah must return before the Messiah comes. Jesus tells them that Elijah had already come, but they killed him, and they will do the same to Jesus.

At the bottom of the mountain, they meet up with a man with a demonised son. The other disciples had failed to do anything for the son. Jesus commands the demon to leave, and the boy is healed. When the disciples ask Him why they were unable to remove the demon, Jesus says “You don’t have enough faith.”

Application

it only takes a tiny amount of faith to work miracles in God’s kingdom. A mustard seed is a tiny thing, but that amount of faith is enough to move mountains and to remove demons.

Atomic faith, nano-scale faith, microscopic faith – -how ever we picture it, the smallest quantity achieves miracles.

Paul says that we all have a measure of faith – whether it is a mustard seed or a whole forest of faith doesn’t matter.

Where had these disciples gone wrong? Perhaps the problem was that they copied Jesus’ words or actions but did not appropriate the power of God.

Real faith has its focus on God, not on the problem being dealt with. It is reliant on the Holy Spirit, not on a method or on getting the words right.

Faith in God changes lives.

Prayer

Lord, please help me to grow in faith in you, so that I can trust you to remove the greatest of mountains. Amen.