CP's Most Popular, Trending Stories of 2017
1. Francis Chan Goes Into Detail With Facebook Employees on Why He Left His Megachurch
CP's most popular story of 2017 involved best-selling author and popular pastor Francis Chan, who detailed why he left the successful megachurch he founded.
Though Chan left Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, California, seven years ago and had provided some brief explanations for his move (here and here), he went into greater detail in June in a talk with Facebook employees.
He said he felt the megachurch he founded was not as God intended it to be and felt like an orphanage — "a bunch of kids with one leader."
"I got frustrated at a point, just biblically," Chan said during the talk at the Facebook headquarters in California. "I'm going wait a second. According to the Bible, every single one of these people has a supernatural gift that's meant to be used for the body. And I'm like 5,000 people show up every week to hear my gift, see my gift. That's a lot of waste. Then I started thinking how much does it cost to run this thing? Millions of dollars!"
"So I'm wasting the human resource of these people that according to Scripture have a miraculous gift that they could contribute to the body but they're just sitting there quietly. … [T]hey just sit there and listen to me."
He also said that he felt he was losing his soul as he felt more prideful as a sought-after speaker and wanted to hide from "that weird celebrity thing."
Chan now leads a house church movement in San Francisco called We Are Church. As of June, there were 14 to 15 house churches and 30 pastors. "And it costs nothing," Chan said.
