Francis Chan to So. Baptist Pastors: Where's Your Desire for Christ?
BALTIMORE – Crazy Love author and pastor Francis Chan expressed concern to Southern Baptist pastors that there was no desire to go deeper in their relationship with Christ.
The California preacher cut prayers short to express his worry. "I'm seeing a lot of ritual, a lot of faithfulness over the years but I'm concerned that there's not this desperate like cry like 'God, I feel like walk into service and I feel it's so dead. God I got to have your power, I got to have your presence and maybe I substituted that for just going through the service order another weekend,'" he said.
Chan said there is more to the Christian faith than building bigger churches, publishing books and going through the motions of worship every Sunday, but too few Christians know that because they don't "know" God.
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A former megachurch pastor, Chan said church leaders are busy doing things they believe are right without stopping to even ask God what He wants them to do. As a result Chan said their words and actions ring hollow.
He questioned "How many times do we have services and events where we quote Him, will say things about Him, but is He really behind it? Is He the one really moving through a person and saying these things or are we just standing up here representing Him and we're harmless, we'll quote Him, we'll say good things but is He the power behind it?"
Church members, Chan said, are guilty of just being satisfied with knowing movement leaders rather than knowing God.
He explained "We are content to hear from another speaker, or podcast another guy or read another book when the scriptures teaches I can literally walk up that mountain, I can come in the presence of Him, I actually see His glory but we're just content taking selfies with Moses and writing about it."
Piggybacking on words of the speakers before him, Chan said Christians must "climb the mountain" for themselves and spend time in God's presence.
Reading from Isaiah 30, Chan says God is waiting for His people to turn to Him. "He says you guys are going to run and try all these different plans because what you don't realize is that all you need to do is rest in me."
Chan was the last of eight speakers who spoke on the final day of the SBC's two-day Pastors' Conference. The conference's theme was "Show Us Your Glory."
