Francis Chan: Biography, Books, Family & Where He Is Now
Francis Chan (born August 31, 1967) is an American pastor, author, and church planter best known for his New York Times bestseller Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God. Chan co-founded Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, California, in 1994 and grew it into a congregation of 4,000 before walking away from it at the height of its success in 2010. Since then, he has spent more than a decade planting small, simple house churches across the United States and Asia, work that has made him one of contemporary evangelicalism’s more unpredictable and closely watched voices.
[IMAGE: Francis Chan teaching at a house church gathering]
Francis Chan at a Glance
| Personal | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Francis Chan (Chinese: 陳恩藩) |
| Born | August 31, 1967, San Francisco, California, USA |
| Age | 58 (as of 2026) |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Lisa Chan, née Lundgren (m. 1994) |
| Children | Seven, six biological and one adopted daughter, Dellal |
| Education | |
| University | The Master’s University (B.A.) |
| Seminary | The Master’s Seminary (M.Div.) |
| Ministry | |
| Church founded | Cornerstone Community Church, Simi Valley, California (1994 to 2010) |
| Bible college founded | Eternity Bible College (2004, chancellor until 2010) |
| Current ministry | We Are Church, a house church network based in Northern California |
| Denomination | Non-denominational evangelical |
| Career | |
| Books | Crazy Love, Forgotten God, Erasing Hell, Letters to the Church, You and Me Forever, Until Unity, Beloved |
| Net worth | Estimated around $500,000 (unverified); gives away the majority of his book royalties |
Early Life and Background
Francis Chan was born on August 31, 1967, in San Francisco, California, to immigrant parents Pak-sum Chan, a former minister at Leighton Road Baptist Church in Hong Kong, and Wan-bing Mui, described in church records as a “Bible woman” at Hong Kong Baptist Church. Chan’s mother died during his birth from excessive bleeding, leaving his father to raise three children alone. He was named Francis after the city where he was born and where his mother died.
Chan spent his early childhood in Hong Kong, raised by a Buddhist grandmother while his father remarried in the United States. His father’s second wife, Amy Law, gave Chan a half-sister, Gloria, but she died in a car accident in 1976 when Chan was eight. His father remarried a third time, to Josephine Leung, who raised the family’s four children with what Chan has described as genuine spiritual devotion. In 1979, when Chan was 12, his father died of cancer, leaving him without either biological parent by his teenage years.
Despite that string of losses, Chan has said he never doubted God’s love, crediting the consistent Christian influence around him growing up. He came to a personal faith commitment as a teenager in Stockton, California, and became active in youth ministry through high school.
Education
Chan earned a Bachelor of Arts in youth ministry from The Master’s University, followed by a Master of Divinity from The Master’s Seminary. After graduating, he worked briefly as a youth pastor at the Church at Rocky Peak in Chatsworth, California, a period he later described bluntly as “the worst years of my life… a sinful, hypocritical time,” referring to a disconnect he felt between his public ministry role and his private spiritual life. He eventually left that position to wait tables at a restaurant while he worked through that disillusionment.
Ministry Career: Founding Cornerstone Community Church
While waiting tables, Chan met Lisa Lundgren, who sang on the worship team at a local church. The two married in 1993, and two months later, Chan gathered ten disillusioned families and launched what became Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley in 1994, starting with just 30 people. Within two months, attendance had grown to 100.
Cornerstone grew steadily under Chan’s leadership, reaching 1,600 members by 2000 and eventually 4,000 regular attendees by the time he stepped away a decade later, making it one of the larger churches in Ventura County. Chan kept his own salary fixed at $36,000 a year from the church’s founding until his departure, regardless of how large the congregation grew.
A Turn Toward Radical Generosity
Around 1999, a missionary from Papua New Guinea challenged Chan directly about Cornerstone’s inward focus. After a trip to Uganda, Chan and Lisa moved their own family into a smaller home, and in 2007, Cornerstone’s leadership voted to give away 50 percent of the church’s total budget to other ministries and nonprofits, an unusually aggressive generosity commitment for a church of its size.
Rise to Prominence and Leaving Cornerstone
Chan’s first book, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God, was published in 2008 and became a runaway bestseller, selling more than 300,000 copies in its first year and eventually surpassing one million copies sold. Chan gave away all the royalties from the book to the Isaiah 58 Fund, a nonprofit supporting the poor and victims of human trafficking, a pattern of financial generosity he maintained across his later books as well.
In April 2010, at the peak of Cornerstone’s size and Chan’s growing national profile, he announced his resignation as pastor to pursue what he described as a new step of faith. The decision confused several prominent evangelical peers at the time, including Mark Driscoll, who publicly questioned whether Chan’s move reflected genuine calling or a restlessness that would resurface again, and wondered aloud whether Chan was drifting toward what Driscoll called a “poverty theology,” treating financial simplicity itself as a marker of holiness.
Books and Publications
Chan has written or co-written more than a dozen books, most centered on radical discipleship, generosity, and church unity. Notable titles include:
- Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God (2008)
- Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit (2009)
- Erasing Hell (2011), co-written with Preston Sprinkle
- Multiply: Disciples Making Disciples (2012)
- You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity (2014), co-written with Lisa Chan
- Letters to the Church (2018)
- Until Unity (2021)
- Beloved (2025), co-written with his daughter Mercy Gordon
Chan has also written several children’s books, including The Big Red Tractor, Halfway Herbert, and Ronnie Wilson’s Gift.
Personal Life
Marriage and Family
Francis and Lisa Chan have been married since 1993 and have raised seven children together, six biological and one adopted daughter, Dellal, whom the family welcomed at age 16 while Lisa was pregnant with their sixth biological child. Dellal had lived on the streets and struggled with drug addiction before coming to faith at a church camp and being placed for adoption; Chan has spoken publicly about the experience as one of the more meaningful decisions of his family’s life. Their eldest daughter, Rachel Chan, followed her mother into music as a singer-songwriter, and their daughter Mercy Gordon co-wrote Chan’s 2025 book Beloved and now serves alongside her parents in ministry in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Where Is Francis Chan Now
After leaving Cornerstone in 2010, Chan moved his family to San Francisco to focus on church planting, eventually founding We Are Church, a network of small, simple house churches built around 10 to 20 people per group rather than a traditional large-congregation model. In 2019, Chan relocated his family to Hong Kong, the country of his birth family’s origin and where his mother had once done ministry work in the impoverished Sham Shui Po district. When his visa renewal was denied, Chan and his family returned to the United States in January 2021, and he has said publicly he intends to return to Hong Kong when circumstances allow. As of his most recent public statements, Chan splits his time between church planting and discipleship work in Northern California and continued ministry connections in Asia.
Theology and Ministry Philosophy
Chan’s ministry philosophy centers on a consistent core conviction: that American church culture has grown too comfortable, too program-driven, and too focused on a single charismatic preacher rather than genuine, sacrificial discipleship. That conviction has shaped every major turn in his career, from Cornerstone’s 50 percent giving commitment to his decision to abandon a 4,000-member church for small house gatherings.
In more recent years, Chan has drawn attention for a deepening interest in the historical, sacramental understanding of Communion found in the early church and in Catholic and Orthodox tradition, arguing in widely shared sermons that modern Protestant churches have reduced the Eucharist to “just a symbol” compared to how the early church and its writers, including Ignatius of Antioch, described it. That teaching has not signaled a formal denominational shift. Chan remains within evangelical, non-denominational ministry through We Are Church, and has said his exploration of church history is meant to deepen, not abandon, his existing convictions.
Influence and Legacy
Chan’s 2010 departure from Cornerstone became one of the more widely discussed pastoral career decisions in recent evangelical history, a case study frequently cited in conversations about megachurch burnout, calling, and what genuine gospel simplicity should look like in practice. Crazy Love alone has sold more than a million copies and continues to be assigned reading in youth groups and campus ministries more than 15 years after its release.
His more recent turn toward house churches and historically rooted sacramental teaching has also made him an unusually visible bridge figure between evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox audiences, with Catholic outlets and even the Fellowship of Catholic University Students inviting him to speak on shared conviction about the Eucharist’s importance, without Chan himself converting or endorsing Catholic doctrine wholesale.
Criticism and Controversies
Chan’s 2010 resignation from Cornerstone drew sustained scrutiny from fellow pastors who questioned both the decision itself and his explanation for it, with critics like Mark Driscoll suggesting the move reflected unresolved restlessness rather than clear calling. Chan has continued serving in various church-planting and discipleship roles in the years since, a track record supporters point to as evidence the decision reflected genuine conviction rather than instability.
His teaching on Communion and the Eucharist beginning around 2019 and 2020 drew a different kind of controversy, with some Reformed and evangelical commentators expressing concern that Chan appeared to be drifting toward Catholic or Orthodox sacramental theology, while Catholic observers speculated openly, and inaccurately, that Chan was preparing to convert to Catholicism. Chan has not converted to Catholicism or Orthodoxy and has continued leading evangelical, non-denominational house churches through We Are Church.
Net Worth and Financial Information
No independently verified net worth figure exists for Francis Chan. Some aggregator sites estimate his net worth at roughly $500,000, a modest figure by megachurch-pastor standards, consistent with Chan’s well-documented practice of donating the majority of his book royalties to charitable causes rather than retaining that income personally. Flicxa treats any specific figure as an estimate rather than a confirmed number.
Awards and Recognition
- Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God, a New York Times bestseller with more than one million copies sold
- Founder and early Chancellor of Eternity Bible College (2004 to 2010)
- Board member, Children’s Hunger Fund and World Impact
- Invited speaker at the Fellowship of Catholic University Students’ SEEK21 conference, reflecting his cross-tradition influence on Christian audiences beyond his own evangelical base
Interesting Facts About Francis Chan
- He lost his biological mother, a stepmother, and his father all before he turned 13
- He kept his pastoral salary fixed at $36,000 a year for the entire 16 years he led Cornerstone Community Church
- He gave away all the royalties from his bestselling book Crazy Love to an anti-trafficking nonprofit
- He and Lisa adopted their seventh child, a formerly homeless 16-year-old named Dellal, while Lisa was pregnant with their sixth biological child
- His return to Hong Kong in 2019 placed him in the poor Sham Shui Po district, the same neighborhood where his own mother once did ministry work decades earlier
Timeline of Key Events
- August 31, 1967: Born in San Francisco, California
- 1979: His father dies of cancer when Chan is 12, leaving him without either biological parent
- 1993: Marries Lisa Lundgren
- 1994: Co-founds Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, California, with 30 people
- 2004: Founds Eternity Bible College
- 2007: Cornerstone’s leadership votes to give away 50 percent of the church’s budget
- 2008: Publishes Crazy Love, which becomes a New York Times bestseller
- April 2010: Resigns as pastor of Cornerstone Community Church
- 2013: Founds We Are Church, a house church network, in San Francisco
- 2019: Preaches a widely shared sermon on the historical understanding of Communion, drawing both evangelical criticism and Catholic praise
- 2019 to 2020: Relocates his family to Hong Kong for ministry work
- January 2021: Returns to the United States after his Hong Kong visa renewal is denied
- 2025: Publishes Beloved, co-written with his daughter Mercy Gordon
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Francis Chan leave his church?
Chan resigned as pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in April 2010, at the height of its size and success, describing it as a step of faith toward a new, less institutional kind of ministry. He went on to found We Are Church, a network of small house churches, rather than lead another large congregation.
How many biological kids does Francis Chan have?
Francis and Lisa Chan have six biological children and one adopted daughter, Dellal, for a total of seven children.
How long has Francis Chan been married?
Francis and Lisa Chan have been married since 1993, more than three decades as of 2026.
Where is Francis Chan now?
Chan currently splits his time between church planting and discipleship work in Northern California through We Are Church, with continued ministry ties to Asia following his family’s 2019 to 2021 stay in Hong Kong.
What has happened to Francis Chan?
Nothing alarming. Chan continues active ministry through We Are Church and remains a working author, most recently publishing Beloved in 2025 with his daughter Mercy Gordon.
What is Francis Chan doing today?
He leads and trains leaders within We Are Church, a house church network, while continuing to write books and speak at conferences across evangelical, and occasionally Catholic, audiences.
Francis Chan books: what should I read first?
Crazy Love remains his best-known and most widely read book. Readers interested in his more recent thinking on identity and insecurity in ministry may prefer his 2025 release, Beloved.
Final Word
Francis Chan walked away from a 4,000-member church at the exact moment most pastors would consider themselves to have made it, and he has spent the fifteen years since chasing something smaller and, by his own account, harder to fake. Between the losses of his childhood, the fixed salary, and the giveaways of his own book royalties, Chan’s story keeps circling back to the same question he’s spent his career asking other people: what would you actually give up if you believed this was real?
Read Also
No other biography in our archive shares a close enough ministry, denominational, or professional connection with Francis Chan, beyond Mark Driscoll, already linked above, to recommend here.
