陈恩藩

陈恩藩（Francis Chan，1967年8月31日—)是一名美籍华裔牧师。曾担任加州圣米谷(SimiValley)基石教会(Cornerstone Community Church)的主任牧师 ，也是加州永恒圣经学院(Eternity Bible College)的创办人。陈恩藩牧师在2013年由英国的沃特金斯书店(Watkins Books)出版的《沃特金斯评论》(Watkins Review)所公布一百位在世最具精神影响力人物的榜单名列第16名。

Francis Chan (Chinese: 陳恩藩; born August 31, 1967) is an American author, teacher, and preacher. He is the former teaching pastor of the nondenominational Cornerstone Community Church, an Evangelical church in Simi Valley, California founded by Chan in 1994. He also founded Eternity Bible College in 2004, and served as its early chancellor until 2010.

Chan has been a board member of several Christian and social justice organizations, including Children's Hunger Fund and Gospel for Asia. He has authored and co-authored numerous books including Crazy Love, a New York Times bestseller. Chan has also served as an ambassador for Care for Children.

Biography

Early life and education

Chan was born in San Francisco to immigrants Pak-sum Chan [陳柏森], a former minister at the Leighton Road Baptist Church in Hong Kong, and Wan-bing Mui [梅韻冰], a “Bible woman of the Hong Kong Baptist Church, Caine Road.” He was their third child; his mother died during his childbirth, of “excessive bleeding”, leaving his father with sister Grace, brother Paul, and newborn Francis, who was named for the city of his birth and of the tragedy.

Chan was sent to Hong Kong to be raised by a grandmother, a Buddhist for several years. During this time, his father married Amy Law (羅笑容) and gave Francis a half-sister, Gloria. In 1976, when Chan was eight years old, his stepmother Amy Chan died in an automobile accident.

His father then remarried again, to Josephine Leung [梁克閱], who raised the four children. In raising the four, his father and new stepmother had family support from his father's younger sister and her husband, Marion and William Wong, along with a large extended family and church family. He did not get along well with his father growing up but says that his fear of his father has helped him understand a level of fear of God. He also stated he didn't understand the love of God well until he became a father himself. In 1979, when Francis was twelve years old, he lost his father to cancer. As a high-school and then junior-college student, Chan was active in Christian youth groups, which helped develop his faith in Christ and his interest in ministry.

Chan graduated from high school and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from Master's College, and a master of divinity degree from The Master's Seminary.

Career

After earning his seminary degree, Chan "landed a youth pastor position" in Chatsworth, California, at the Church at Rocky Peak. Christianity Today, reporting in 2009, has Chan characterizing this as a period where his personal life was not lived consistently with his religious ideals, stating "Those were the worst years of my life... a sinful, hypocritical time." For reasons not explained further, Chan left that pastoral position for a job at a restaurant, waiting tables.

Cornerstone Community Church

Chan, his wife Lisa, and 30 others founded Cornerstone Community Church in 1994; within two months, the church had grown to have 100 attending. The church continued to see increases in attendance, and by the year 2000, it had received approval from local officials for building expansion to double its capacity, in support of a 1,600-member congregation. As of January 2008, Cornerstone was one of the largest churches in Ventura County, California.

After a three-month leave from Cornerstone, circa 2008, Chan said he felt convicted to sacrifice more for God. Chan had been giving away about 50% of his income, didn't take a salary from his church, and donated most of his book royalties, which totaled about $2,000,000, to various charities. All of it goes to organizations which rescue sex slaves in foreign countries. Furthermore, in 2008 it was reported that Cornerstone would give away 55% of its income to charitable causes.

Chan started Eternity Bible College in 2004 as a ministry of Cornerstone Community Church, with 100 students. In 2008, Eternity launched an abroad program in Ecuador. As of 2009, the college had 47 graduates serving in various parts of the world.