ABHE has started the Student Leaders Network, which is the first time we have invited students to be part of our annual meeting. About 40 are in attendance from twelve different institutions.
Growth Awards were given by Evangelical Training Association.
0-199: Carolina Christian College, which grew by 48%. This school is reaching adult learners in urban and metropolitan learning communities.
200-399: Somerset Christian College, located in Zarephath, NJ, grew by over 50%
400-599: Beulah Heights University (Atlanta, GA), grew by 43%
600+: Ohio Christian University, grew by 33%, doing lots of construction. They are a 5 time winner of the growth award in this decade.
Francis Chan is the founder of Eternity Bible College (www.eternitybiblecollege.com) and Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA. His book Crazy Love is a Christian bestseller. He is a man of God, a Spirit-emboldened, Scripture-filled man of God. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Chan). He is a graduate of the Master’s College and Master’s Seminary, where John MacArthur is the president.
There are moments when you are so close to God and then you know yourself and how easily pride can jump in there.
When you know how the Bible is going to end, you can go through life and say, “It’s ok.” Is the type of student coming out of our college someone people would want to hang around and be like?
His testimony:
His mom died giving birth to him. His step-mom died in a car accident when he was 9. His dad died when he was 12. In high school, he fell in love with Jesus. When he saw the reality of Hell in Scripture, it terrified him for his friends. He would cut class to invite people to youthgroup. One night he brought 50 visitors to church. He started a Bible club on his high school campus. His junior year, he looked at the yearbook of all the seniors he would never see again and he started calling every one he knew to tell them the gospel because he was worried about them going to hell.
He was a youth ministry intern while a junior college student. And he was sharing with friends at junior college. He wasn’t perfect, but was fired up.
Then he went to Bible college. Then he went to seminary. And those are the five years of his life that he would redo, if he could. Not blaming the college or the seminary, because it was his sin. “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.”
The Bible college environment is a very difficult one to live out biblical Christianity. It was the first time in life he was surrounded by just believers that you eat, drink, play, go to chapel, class, and live with. At that point, he lost his concern for the Lost, because they weren’t there.
In Romans 9, Paul talks about his great sorrow and unceasing anguish for the lost Jews. That was Francis until he got into Bible College. The worst day of his life was when his grandma died, who wasn’t a believer. He was hurting for her, but he lost it when he was living with people who are saved.
Spending time with professors and administrators didn’t help, because they were no longer living with the world, either.
He was mentored by a youth pastor who gave him lots of help studying the Bible and asking questions of accountability. In Bible College, you learn to study the Word without obeying it.
The President warned them that if they weren’t careful, they would study the Bible just to study it and not obey it. One day in seminary class, two policemen came in and handcuffed a student and took him out of class. That student, who worked in the seminary bookstore, was stealing money to pay his tuition and become a pastor.
Those years were the height of his hypocrisy. Studying and memorizing commands without doing them is hypocrisy. It’s like playing Simon Says. Jesus Says go make disciples and we just memorize it. We just study it. In our houses, we wouldn’t let our children get away with just memorizing what we say, even in Greek! We wouldn’t let them study what it would look like if they were to clean our rooms.
How many disciples are we making? How many people are we telling, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”
It wasn’t until he became a total hypocrite that the elders of a church made him step down from his position as a youth pastor, that he figured this out. At age 23, he was humiliated by this. He started waiting tables and fell in love with the waiters and waitresses he was working with. That was the first time he had cried since high school. Then the fire started coming back.
When his church started their own Bible college, then he knew what mistakes to avoid. Several habits to get people to break.
Indebtedness – His Chinese mind says that you should never owe anyone and have things tie you down.
Extravagance – Instead of building an extravagant church for millions of dollars, he was thinking about the people who were hungry around the world and the need to fill the room with people to pay the bills.
Comfort – Once you’re used to being comfortable, it’s hard to take risks. Once you have been in the environment where everyone has made you feel good, are you going to the ends of the earth to risk your life? Comfort isn’t good for us. Does the Holy Spirit lead us into a comfortable life on earth? Who are the popular prophets? Why would we need a comforter if we are already comfortable?
In Korea, he met with a group of people that were taken hostage by the Taliban. They had one Bible and split it into 23 pieces for everyone to have. They were arguing over who would be killed first if the Taliban came after them.
After they were released, everyone who had once been captive came to the pastor privately and said “We wish we were back there, because we were so close to Jesus.” They felt so close because they were in danger.
Some circumstances make you feel like you are with Jesus, in a place of danger, where you have to truly be a disciple. When Stephen saw Jesus, he had no fear of being stoned.
There’s an intimacy we get with Jesus in the middle of the fight that we don’t get when we’re in the middle of comfort. We aren’t at peace when we are comfortable.
When Christians start talking with one another in Christian circles, we get weird. Many Bible college graduates are socially challenged, because they haven’t been in the world enough to understand how to interact with their next door neighbor. They couldn’t go to a party like Jesus could and hang out with them and talk to them. So they get job in Christian organizations and institutions, further separating themselves from the world. There are very few people I want to hire out of a Bible college because of their lack of experience in life and how they have been pulled out of and separated from the world.
I don’t want our students weird. They need to be in the world, and 4 years is a long time for them to be out of the world.
If we’re going to reach the lost with a generation that’s radical and is going to follow us, what will they see?
Once he went back to Hong Kong to visit family. Even though he was 5-9, they said he was so big. But the truth is that they are all so small. When we are lifted up as spiritual leaders, is it because we are spiritual giants or because we live in one of the most spiritually desolate places on earth. When you look elsewhere in the world, they are the giants. If you live in Laodicea, how do you know that you are lukewarm?
Watching video of persecuted Christians being beaten to death makes him think, “Would I endure that?”
Would your students say, “The day I spent with you is the closest thing I have experienced to walking with Jesus.” It’s so much easier to lift up leaders, speakers, and authors, because they all have flaws we can surpass. But when we lift up Jesus, we see how much more we need to live up to. They persecuted and hated Jesus. They will do that to us and our students, too.
So what am I trying to be? A popular author, teacher, or speaker? Or the closest thing our students have experienced to walking with Jesus.
0 Responses to “ABHE Session 2 – Francis Chan”