Pastor Praises Drunken Decisions As Cure For Finding God’s Will
July 30th, 2007 by David Dansker
Francis Chan – Viewpoints gleaned by pastors through celebrity globetrotting grow stranger and stranger. Addressing a crowd of concert goers at the Verizon Amphitheater in Irvine California on Saturday, Francis Chan, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, told the story of a talented marathon runner who began his career one night on his birthday while inebriated. After sharing many highlights of the man’s running career, Chan used the inspirational story as an incentive for Christians who might be struggling too long to find God’s will.
According to Chan, they are too worried about making mistakes, and God rewards his people based on the just-do-it scale of good intentions: it doesn’t matter if whether it was God’s will or not, the fact that you acted is what counts. Chan recounted an earlier time in his own life when he boldly proclaimed to some students that God was going to use them all to start a church in a specific area, and that in fact it didn’t turn out that way. Obviously drawing great comfort from the runner’s story for assuaging his conscious, Chan rationalized that it was acting that counted, and that false pronouncements of God’s will were thus mitigated and excused.
The marathon runner in Chan’s example for getting Christians out of the starting blocks and into service did not run the race to obtain Christ, as far as we know. The service Chan pitched was social service in terms of aid to Africa, where Chan has visited. It is a very sad day to see Christian leaders dissuade people from seeking to do God’s will, and encouraging them to run another race.
