Francis Chan bared some of his struggles with doubt and being a model disciple of Jesus Christ Tuesday during the opening session of the 2013 Exponential Conference attended by thousands in Orlando, Fla.
Chan spoke before 5,300 in-person attendees at First Baptist Church of Orlando, the chosen conference venue, and another 20,000 viewing the event live via the Internet. Chan was the second minister to take the stage to address the need for Christian discipleship, or "discipleshift," the theme chosen for this year's Exponential gathering.
However, instead of delving into his prepared remarks on discipleship, a subject he has been on a mission to revive in churches and faith communities since leaving his California church, the evangelical Christian minister confessed that he felt convicted by the message of the previous speaker, Pastor Jim Putman, on the issue of ministers letting the opinion of others sway their messages and define their work.
Veering back and forth between his apparent intended message and confessing his own struggles, Chan began by sharing with Exponential 2013 attendees how he was recently invited to speak at an Easter service and decided to look through his portfolio of sermons for inspiration.
"I go and look at these old messages and I start going, 'This is good...'" said Chan of his reaction to reviewing his old sermons. He added, though, that while he could notice that he has grown in certain areas of his life, he could also see areas where he has "slipped" by compromising his messages to avoid conflict or criticism.
"I noticed that there were areas in my life that started to slip," said Chan, identifying some of those things as a loss of boldness, confidence and some of his faith that the Holy Spirit could enter people's lives and change them.
"I'm still struggling with some of my doubt, still struggling with some of my joy," the married father of five confessed before sharing an anecdote about speaking "20ish years ago" at John MacArthur's The Master's College, his alma mater.
Chan shared how after delivering his remarks, he was commended by MacArthur for being able to have fun and exude so much joy while giving the message. "'Francis, don't lose that,'" Chan said he was told.
"But here I am 20 years later and I feel myself losing it," he declared with an impassioned pitch to his voice. "When was the last time I was so excited with the same passion to do what I do?"
"Where did that go?" he wondered, asking of himself at another point during his Exponential 2013 remarks, "Are you even a prophet anymore? Are you saying what God Almighty wants you to say?"
The Multiply: Disciples Making Disciplesauthor referenced the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church community in which he writes in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5: "When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power."
"He chose to sound dumber than he was," Chan said of Paul's preaching of the Gospel at Corinth. "When was the last time that you did that?"
He added that Paul kept it simple because the apostle believed that simply preaching the unadulterated Gospel would change people.
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