In a sermon called 'Unleashed as a Family-Raising and Releasing the Next Gen of Kingdom Builders' at the Chinese Missions Convention, the Christian author said: "A few weeks ago I was in Brazil and I was having lunch with a pastor out there.
"He's a Korean guy but his church in Brazil is not just Koreans, they had Brazilians, Portuguese speaking, mixed services."
Chan expressed how he had been impressed with the Brazilian pastor's mixed services of all nationalities.
But the Korean pastor said: "It still feels kinda like a zoo".
He compared his church to the film Madagascar where a zebra wants to be in the jungle rather than a cage where people bring him food.
In Chan's sermon he agreed with this analogy and said: "This pastor was saying our church is so much like that - it feels like a big zoo.
"We've got these animals and the only way they survive is if someone feeds them.
"It's a great picture of the church where you have these people that have so much power inside of them but all we want to do is keep them in these cages."
He explained that churches often have a "children's ministry cage, a youth min cage, a singles cage and a married couples cage".
"The reality is you were made for something more," he added.
"I felt like I was that lion inside the Chinese cage sometimes growing up."
