“Speaking at the Chinese Missions Convention in Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, Chan lamented the fact that churches do not understand the power that God has given each believer, and instead keep them in “cages” where the only way they can survive is if someone feeds them.These cages include the children’s ministry cage, youth ministry cage, singles cage, and married couples cage, he noted. “Let’s just put everyone in their cages and let’s just feed them every week and our whole job is to just keep feeding you, feeding you, and feeding you when the reality is you were made for something more,” Chan emphasized.”

Francis Chan has identified the very essence and elemental weakness of what we call our church system. Perhaps it is why he felt the need to leave his own well established church that had thousands in the pews every week and was successful in every measurable way, at least by the way our system of church is measured. Yet surely he was dying spiritually while most pastors are striving for what he had and what he has now given up? It is like the illusion of wealth and the American dream. No matter how many voices speak out about the fact that money does not bring you happiness and contentment, still the vast majority seek it out. Suicides, for the most part, are undertaken by the wealthy not the poor. The poor has the illusion to work towards yet the rich man now knows how empty his life was and still is, for no amount of money can fill a whole in your spirit. And so pastors all over the world strive to have what Chan had, not understanding the fundamental truth of their calling. Their calling is not to contain the Body of Christ in cages as alluded to by Chan, but their calling is to enable them and to empower them and edify them so as they may operate to the fullness in their own gifting.

Now how can we open those cages and let the Christian loose? We have to allow the gifts of the Spirit to operate in our midst just as they did in 1st Cor 14. Read that chapter and ask yourself why your church does not operate in such a way? What has changed? Does not the Word of God remain unchanged in an ever-changing world? Will not all the world pass away and the heavens above but still the Word of God shall remain. Did not Jesus Himself say that the Word is never broken? If it is never broken then why do we not worship as they did in 1 Cor 14? Why is there not two or three tongues? Why is there not two or three songs and spiritual songs? Why no interpretation of those tongues? Why is there not two or three prophecies or words of exhortation? You see saints, this is the cage that we have put most of the Royal priests in. You can clean the toilets and volunteer to look after the children but God forbid that He should speak through you from the front or, horror of horrors, from the platform.

Will God be contained? Will He continue forever to allow His Word to be chained and caged by the power structures of men? The power structures of men take solace in the fact that their system has been in place for centuries. We Protestants scoff at Catholic tradition and say how dare they put as much emphasis on tradition as they do on Scripture? They cry “Sola Scriptura,” while all the while worshiping their own traditions as much as any Catholic ever did. How do we remove the chains from a people who cannot see their chains? How can we speak of true freedom while most of our brothers and sisters are caged and fed and have grown to like it that way? How can we restore the preeminence of Jesus in our gatherings?

Jesus wept over Jerusalem because He could see that in just a few short decades everything they knew, all of their traditions and means of worship would be torn down, stone by stone and nothing would be left. Nothing but Jesus. We will never know how much Jesus means to us until Jesus is all that we have, then we will know. The times are at hand brothers and sisters when God will allow every stone to be torn down of the structures we call the Church. The Church will remain for not even the gates of Hell can destroy us, but our system of worship shall be swept away by the storms of persecution. A tsunami of enormous proportions is headed towards us. When the waters begin to recede, know that destruction is at the door. This persecution will not destroy us, it shall refine us. And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness (Mal 3:3)