Francis Chan makes number 22 on our False Teacher of the Day series for a multitude of reasons. Francis Chan is a graduate of both John MacArthur’s Master’s University and Seminary, an unusually solid school that teaches rightly on such important doctrines as the sovereignty of God, the inerrancy of Scripture, and the cessation of the apostolic sign gifts.

In 1994, Chan founded Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, California where he pastored until he abandoned his congregation in 2011 to begin a “house church” planting network. While Chan has always had a problem holding onto sound doctrine tightly and defending it fervently, it was around this time that his theology really began to take a dive.

While Chan would have been considered to be of the “Reformed-ish” movement–meaning that he held to the doctrines of grace but did not necessarily hold to any Reformed confession–one of his first eye-brow raising moments was when he rebuked a gospel preacher, Mike Gendron, who is known for Evangelizing Roman Catholics. Several years later, Gendron went on a podcast to tell his story of what happened–Chan invited Gendron to speak at his church in 2003. After Gendron spoke the truth about the damning errors of Roman Catholicism, Chan shut down his Question & Answer time and then apologized to his church for inviting him to speak.

Since then, Chan’s trajectory has only gotten worse.

At an ecumenical gathering of charismatics and Catholics, Chan removed his shoes on stage while several Catholic priests pray over him. At the same event, Chan declined to share the gospel with a Catholic, stating “I don’t believe the Holy Spirit wants me to.”

Chan also has embraced the Roman Catholic heresy of transubstantiation which teaches that the bread and wine of communion is the literal flesh and blood of Jesus and blames the “error” of viewing communion as symbolic on the Protestant Reformation stating that “it wasn’t until 500 years ago that someone popularized the thought that it’s [communion] just a symbol and nothing more.”

When Chan decided to leave his church several years ago to begin his charismatic crusade, he announced to his congregation “God was leading him elsewhere.” Then, two years ago, while speaking at a gathering, speaking of his former church, he told the audience that they were all a “bunch of losers” who didn’t exercise their spiritual gifts.

Francis Chan, for several years, has been on the speaker circuit for several heretical crusades. On of the most popular crusades he’s frequented has been IHOPKC’s annual One Thing conference alongside such heretics as Todd White, Michael Brown, Joyce Meyer, and Seventh Day Adventist, Ben Carson. This conference is not only heretical due to it’s theological grounding steeped in New Apostolic Reformation ideology, it’s also ecumenical, and holds a Catholic track.

At Lou Engle’s 2019 Send Conference, Chan was noted praising arch-heretics, Todd White and Daniel Kolenda. Todd White is a fraudulent “faith-healer” who claims to have healed hundreds of people of various ailments without a shred of evidence. Todd White holds to the Word of Faith heresy, “little God” theology, and is largely into the heretical New Apostolic Reformation movement that teaches that the office of Apostle — like the original 12 — has been reinstated and Apostles and Prophets exist today. Besides the fact that every single “Apostle” and “Prophet” in this movement is morally compromised in some way, not a single one has ever prophesied the way the biblical prophets have done. You can see Chan praising these men in the video below, toward the end.

Francis Chan’s recent alignment with the charismatic movement also has him, according to his own testimony, speaking in tongues and healing people by touching them.

Not only is Chan’s theology of God and the Holy Spirit highly compromised, but his doctrine on morality is also awful as well. He says that homosexuality is not worse than divorce.

All should heed this warning: this is why the Scriptures tell us not to associate with false teachers, rather we mark and avoid them like the plague. Don’t be deceived, folks, bad company ruins good morals (1 Corinthians 15:33). And, we’ve been warning folks for a long time that Francis Chan has turned away from sound teaching and accumulated for himself teachers to suit his own passions.