His podcasts and books – Crazy Love in particular – have been a huge blessing to me.

You may or may not know that a few months ago he walked away from his church. No scandal, no controversy or drama – he just abruptly announced that he would be moving on with no specific plans about where.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, he has transplanted his whole family to an ‘undisclosed’ city in Asia, where nobody cares that Crazy Love just hit the NY Times best-seller list, and CNN wrote a pretty interesting article about the whole thing.

The clencher for me:

Before selling his house and packing up his wife and three children, Chan was becoming “Christian famous” in Evangelical circles.

“Even in my own church I heard the words, ‘Francis Chan’ more than I heard the words, ‘Holy Spirit’,” he said.

That was a big part of the reason he walked away at the peak of his professional career.

“I think there has been too much emphasis on me. I want to be used by God, but I think we have this desire to make heroes out of people rather than following God and the Holy Spirit.”

He quotes the apostle Paul, who told his followers “I didn’t die for you.”

Wow.

He may or may not have gone a little overboard, but either way: I think he’s on to something.

Check it out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_uwWPE6lQ

I heart Francis Chan.

Take 3 minutes and watch this.

(Courtesy of Mr. Vitamin Z)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ya12I036lg

*It won’t be totally new to you if you’ve seen Louie Giglio’s “Indescribable” or “How Great Is Our God” talk, but this short video has a sweet visualization of our whole known world.

Those who know me know that I have a couple of man-crushes.

It’s so stinking hard to find admirable men in this world that when I do, I usually watch them closely to learn from them. Besides family and personal friends, a couple of my man-crushes are Mark Driscoll, Louie Giglio, and Francis Chan.

I first encountered Francis at Passion ’07 (pics), and ever since then, I’ve been soaking up as much of his teaching as I can get my hands on (you can subscribe to the free podcast here).

Recently, Francis wrote a book called “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed By A Relentless God“. I put off buying it just because we didn’t have the extra cash to throw around, but the more I listened to what God is doing in Francis’ heart and life, the more I knew this is something that Steph and I should go through together, so that’s what we’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks.

A couple of nights ago I was talking to my friend Mike, and he asked how the book was coming so far. Up to that point, I had only made it through chapter 3, so I told him that it was good, but nothing new — kind of the same old book but in a new year with a new author…

But man, chapter 4 really changed direction and 5 was even better. So far, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It’s very, very challenging without being critical or legalistic or self-righteous.

Here are some quotables from chapter 4:

He quotes: “It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the Gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity.”

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My caution to you is this: Do not assume you are good soil. I think most American churchgoers are the soil that chokes the seed because of all the thorns. Thorns are anything that distracts us from God. When we want God and a bunch of other stuff, then that means we have thorns in our soil. A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled on top of it.

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I quickly found that the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity. The goals of American Christianity are often a nice marriage, children who don’t swear, and good church attendance. Taking the words of Christ literally and seriously is rarely considered. That’s for the ‘radicals’ who are ‘unbalanced’ and who go ‘overboard’