Calvary Chapel was a single church in Costa Mesa, California when it began in 1965, and has grown to more than a thousand Calvary Chapels throughout the world.
Still headquartered in Costa Mesa, churches that are affiliated with Calvary Chapel are authorized to use the name, but are not required to.
Calvary Chapels owns Calvary Chapel Bible College, based in Murrieta, California, which has about fifty affiliated campuses. The church fellowship also operates several radio stations in the United States.
The founder of Calvary Chapels was Chuck Smith, who headed the fellowship until his death in 2013. Before founding Calvary Chapel, Smith was a pastor with the Foursquare Gospel Church. Frustrated with the restrictions of a denomination, he began an independent campus ministry that was focused on the everyday needs of his audience. In two years, Calvary Chapel grew from a membership of 25 to more than 2,000. Before long, they built a new facility capable of accommodating 25,000 and they were filling it. Today, Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa is the headquarters for the Calvary Chapel network.
In the 1960s, Calvary Chapel was reaching out to the hippies and drug users who had become a large part of California culture. Smith became a leader in what became known as the Jesus Freak movement, founding more than a hundred community houses for recent converts who needed a supportive place to live.
Among his converts were musicians who began writing music for praise and worship. Smith was also a pioneer in the use of secular rock and roll music in Christian ministry, establishing the Maranatha Music and Calvary Chapel recording companies, which have gone on to have a large impact on contemporary Protestant praise music, using guitars and drums rather than traditional church instruments.
Besides Smith, other figures who were active in the early years of Calvary Chapels was Lonnie Frisbee, a charismatic evangelist who maintained a hippie appearance and was also instrumental in launching the Vineyard movement, despite the fact that he publicly struggled with homosexuality and died of AIDS in 1993. Both churches removed him from leadership positions and scrubbed him from their histories.
Another significant Calvary Chapel pastor was John Wimber, who later founded the Association of Vineyard Churches.
Despite an informal, contemporary style of worship, churches affiliated with Calvary Chapels adhere to the fundamental doctrines of evangelical Christianity, including the belief that the Bible is without error. They also accept the tradition Protestant concept of the Trinity.
Theologically, The Calvary Chapel position on salvation is somewhere between Calvinism and Arminianism. In respect to the five points of Calvinism, the Calvary Chapel's position o total depravity is that mankind has fallen and is lost in sin. No man can be saved apart from God's grace. Regarding unconditional election, the Church holds that God has predestined the believer based on His foreknowledge, but that man must also accept God's invitation to salvation in order to obtain it. As for limited atonement, the Church teaches that Jesus died for the whole world and that the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ was enough to save all of mankind. Regarding irresistible grace, Calvary Chapel accepts that God's grace can be either received or rejected on the basis of human free will. Members of Calvary Chapel believe in the perseverance of the saints, but are concerned about sinful lives being lived by some who call themselves Christians.
Calvary Chapels are Pentecostal in that they believe in the gift of tongues, however, the Church does not recognize uninterpreted tongues spoken in a congregational setting as necessarily inspired or directed by the Holy Spirit. The Church holds that the Bible affirms interpreted tongues. Within members of Calvary Chapels, speaking in tongues more often occurs privately than in a worship setting. The Church holds that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is available as a second experience, but does not take place during conversion.
Within Calvary Chapels, baptism is for believers, and conducted by immersion in water. The Church does not consider baptism to be necessary for salvation but views it as an outward sign of inward change. Communion is viewed as symbolic of the Last Supper of the Lord.
Calvary Chapels are pretribulationist and premillennialist in their eschatology.
Pastors in Calvary Chapels tend to deliver expositional sermons rather than topical ones, often delivering sermons sequentially from the Bible, beginning in Genesis and ending in Revelation.
Calvary Chapel does not have an established system of church membership. Those who regularly attend services and fellowship with other members of the church may consider themselves to be members, but no roll is kept.
Recommended Resources
Born June 25, 1927, Pastor Chuck Smith died on October 3, 2013. Beginning with a small church of twenty-five people, he grew his ministry into an international network of well over a thousand churches. Created by Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, the site includes a video tribute to the late Pastor Smith, along with several photographs of the man during various stages of his ministry in Costa Mesa.
http://www.pastorchucksmith.com/
Highlighting Calvary Chapel and the Calvary Chapel network, the site presents a history of the work that was begun by Chuck Smith in 1965. Articles on several topics related to the gospel are set forth, and the theology of the Calvary Chapels are outlined in a series of other articles. Other topics include evangelism, Christian apologetics, discipleship, and Christian living. Photographs, event video, and a database of affiliated churches are included.
https://calvarychapel.com/
Beginning as a small church in Costa Mesa, California, Calvary Chapel has grown into an association of well over a thousand churches worldwide. Member churches may be found online, through an interactive map or by city, state, or zip code. The leadership of the association may be found, by region, through another interactive map. Its Bible college and affiliate locations are posted, and a calendar of events is included.
http://calvarycca.org/
Calvary Chapel Christian School
Offering preschool, elementary, and secondary school programs, CCCS enrolls students from PK-12th grades. Located in Las Vegas, Nevada, the school is affiliated with Calvary Chapel Las Vegas. Its admissions requirements, admissions process, tuition, and scholarship opportunities are published to the site, along with information about its international program, athletics and academic program, and student life opportunities.
https://cccslions.org/
Founded by Chuck Smith, the Costa Mesa, California church was the first of the Calvary Chapel network. General information about the church is included, along with its beliefs, church staff and organizational structure, weekly service schedules, weekly bulletins, and a calendar of events. An overview of the ministries of the church is provided, along with educational video, recent sermons, and other resources.
https://www.cccm.com/
Produced by the Calvary Chapel Network, the website includes nearly six hundred Bible studies for teaching 3-12-year-olds, over sixty-five hours of audio on ministering to children, a collection of posters and other resources for the classroom, and resources for outreach programs to un-churched children. A history and vision of the program is set forth, along with a statement of faith, and scheduled for children’s ministry conferences.
https://calvarycurriculum.com/
Founded in 1978 by Pastor Chuck Smith and his brother, Pastor Paul Smith, the site offers access to Smith’s sermons, DVDs, books, and other resources, which may be downloaded through the Apple App Store, Google Play, or in Apple iBooks or Amazon Kindle format. The pastor’s teachings are included, along with his Wisdom for Today column, and an explanation on how to be born again.
http://www.pastorchuck.org/
