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THE HISTORY OF CALVARY CHAPEL

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When Zerubbabel came back with the children of Israel from their Babylonian captivity, the city of Jerusalem was in rubble. They had the awesome task of rebuilding the city. With a handful of people and the task so monumental, it was extremely discouraging. When you've got a million rocks to move, where do you start? After moving rocks all day long, it doesn't look like you've done anything. It's so discouraging that the tendency is to say that it can't be done. There's no way. So, the word of the Lord came to Zerubbabel, the leader." 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the LORD." (Zech. 4:6).

I wish I had learned that a long time ago. I wish I had learned that earlier in my ministry. I tried so long and hard by might, by power, by program, by human devices and methods to build the church of Jesus Christ-until I was so sick and tired and worn out that I was ready to quit.

When I went into the ministry, serving in a series of denominational churches, I thought I knew what I was doing. I had always been athletic- captain of the football and baseball teams, played tennis, loved to surf. I thought I had a lot to offer. I was strong, athletic, full of ideas, and had all kinds of energy. I was certain I would go out and turn the world upside down for our Lord. But the Lord let me labor and struggle for fifteen years, until I used up all my ideas, energy, talents, and abilities.

I had nothing to show for it. I became so discouraged. I was defeated. I had passed the prime of my youth, losing a lot of my energy and giving up on most of my ideas. I had tried every program that I could think of to get people into church. Name the contest and I'd tried it. I'd used every trick in the books to make my churches grow, and it just wasn't happening. I was ready to give up on the ministry.

In the middle of this discouragement, the Lord ministered to me from two Scriptures. The first one was in Acts 2:47, which said, "And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." The other Scripture was Zechariah 4:6." 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the LORD." I decided that if I was going to be successful in ministry, it wasn't going to be because of my efforts. It would have to be a work of the Lord.

The Spirit of God began to lead me to make a break from serving the denomination to serving the Lord. So we started in Corona at Corona Christian Center, trusting the Lord to add to the church and to build the church. We had been there about a year, God had been blessing in a beautiful way,and the church had grown phenomenally. We had to move from one building to another to accommodate the increasing attendance, because the Holy Spirit was adding daily to the church those who were being saved.

About this time, we received a call from some people in Costa Mesa. They told us of their church and how they were very discouraged and thinking about closing. They thought they would try one more time to ask if we wanted to come and pastor. They had twenty-five members, and they were equally divided.

I suggested to my wife that I thought maybe the Lord was leading me to Calvary Chapel. She said, "Honey, don't be foolish! Look what the Lord is doing for us here. God is blessing us, and these people love us so much. It's so beautiful here. You couldn't think of leaving these people." She was so insistent that I thought she must be right, but the Lord was really speaking to my heart.

The idea of moving to Calvary Chapel became quite a touchy family issue. In fact, my wife thought that I had been working too hard. While starting the church in Corona, I was also working construction on the side and was putting in a lot of hours. Although God's call was really burning inside of me, I couldn't share it with my wife because we weren't in agreement about it.

One night I came home from a Bible study, and my wife met me at the door. She had been crying. She said, "Honey, I've been in prayer, and God has really spoken to my heart. The Lord has made it clear that I'm to submit to you. You're the pastor; you're my husband. Wherever you feel God wants you to minister, I must submit to you ... though I think you're crazy to even think about it. Surely you've forgotten about it by now. But even if you decided to go, I would submit to you."

I said, "Honey, that really touches me, because I got a call this afternoon from the board down there. They want a decision tomorrow, and I was getting ready ..."

She said, "Don't tell me! Don't talk to me about it. I'm not ready to move; I'm only to submit at this point."

That was all I needed to hear, and we accepted the pastorate of Calvary Chapel and left Corona. When we came to Calvary Chapel, we began to redecorate the facility and to teach the people the Word of God. The Lord brought immediate growth and we soon outgrew our facility there in Costa Mesa. We moved to a church in Newport Beach, which was on a bluff overlooking the bay. This was an exciting move for us because, before I came, there had been a prophecy that I would come and that the church would move to a new location on a bluff overlooking the bay. The prophecy also said that Calvary Chapel would grow into a ministry of huge proportions, having an international impact. This was hard to imagine for a struggling church with twenty-five people, but the move to the bluffs really caused the people to realize that something significant was happening.

We soon outgrew that facility, as well, and began to look for other options. We had heard that Greenville School, which was on the corner of Greenville and Sunflower, on the border of Santa Ana and Costa Mesa, was going to be auctioned off. We knew that the bidding would go much higher than we could afford, but we put in the minimum bid and basically forgot about it. We didn't even go to the meeting where they opened the bids. But the next day I received a call that we had purchased a school. There were no other bids. So we purchased the school and began to build our church there.

Around this time, God began to expand our ministry with young people. Actually, at the time of the hippie movement, these longhaired, bearded, dirty kids going around the streets repulsed me. They stood for everything I stood against. We were miles apart in our thinking, philosophies, everything.

But as the hippie movement grew, God began to lay a burden upon my wife's heart to reach these kids for Jesus. My wife and I used to go over to Huntington Beach and park downtown to watch the kids and pray for them. We wanted somehow to reach them, but we didn't know how.

About this time, our daughter was in her first year of college. She started going with a young man and we got acquainted with him. This young fellow, John, had been a hippie, taken acid, and participated in the whole Haight-Ashbury scene. He had accepted Christ and was now attending the same college as my daughter. John was really turned on for the Lord. He would come over to pick her up and tell me, "Chuck, last night I had the most glorious experience. I was over in Huntington Beach and met a couple of guys that were high on acid. I started witnessing to them about Jesus Christ, and they started crying. So we knelt right there in the street, and they accepted the Lord as their Savior. The Lord brought them down off their highs. Boy, when I left them they were really right on, sober and straight. God just did a beautiful work!" My wife and I said, "John, we've got to meet a hippie!" One night I opened the door and here was John with a longhaired, bearded kid with bells on his feet and flowers in his hair. An honest to goodness hippie! John said, "Chuck, I want you to meet Lonnie."

I said, "Hi, Lonnie." I put out my hand and welcomed him into the house. As he began to share, I wasn't prepared for the love that came forth from this kid. His love for Jesus Christ was infectious. The anointing of the Spirit was upon his life, so we invited Lonnie Frisbee to stay with us for a few days. Lonnie moved in with us. In a couple of days, he brought a couple of friends to stay with us. Pretty soon the house was getting pretty full. I said, "Honey, this isn't going to work. We're not ready for a hippie pad." But the Lord caused us to realize that one of the big needs was a place for these kids to live. Having accepted Christ, they really had no place to go. The only ones who would have them were the hippie pads where the drugs were so prevalent that they were soon back into it. So, in May of 1968, we rented a little two-bedroom house on 19th Street. John Higgins and his wife moved in with Lonnie and started our House of Miracles. By the end of the first week, twenty-one young fellows had accepted Jesus Christ and moved into the house. By the end of the second week, thirty-five had accepted the Lord and moved into the house. We had built bunks out in the garage, and they were sleeping wall to wall through the house. One kid was even sleeping in the bathtub.

John Higgins, the elder of the house, called a meeting after the second week. He said, "All right, you guys! We've got to have a house meeting. Some of you guys have been Christians now for two whole weeks. You're sitting around here getting fat in the Word. Go out and evangelize! Everyone that's been a Christian more than a week, split! Get out because we need room to bring in the new Christians."

The ministry just began to explode! We opened houses in Riverside, Fontana, Corona, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Buena Park, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, and Huntington Beach, as well as a ranch in Oregon. Many of the hippies who were getting saved were musicians, and they began to write music about their experiences with the Lord, in the rock 'n' roll style they knew. Although the style of music wasn't in line with my musical tastes, the lyrics were beautiful and anointed, and I couldn't help but love this fresh artistic expression that God was bringing forth. We ultimately started a record company to allow this music to reach the world, and God used it in amazing ways.

The church very quickly outgrew the Greenville location, despite going to triple services and doubling the seating capacity. We learned about eleven acres of land that was for sale just a block away, at the corner of Fairview and Sunflower. The Lord miraculously made it possible for us to acquire that property; and as we began to build there, we pitched a circus tent on the property and began to hold services in it. The tent held 1,600 chairs, and we planned on having two services. But the first Sunday the place was packed, and we had to go to three services and put up chairs outside.

We opened our new sanctuary in 1974. We could now seat 2,300 people. The very first service was packed. People had to sit on the floor again. After five weeks, we had to go to triple services again. We were still having problems, so we built our Fellowship Hall to seat seven hundred people. We put in closed-circuit television. When our auditorium was full, we sent the people to the Fellowship Hall. And the growth has continued through the years. We now have several overflow rooms and hundreds of people sitting outside each service.

As the Lord began to draw people to Calvary Chapel from all over Southern California, those who were driving many miles to the services here began to request that Calvary Chapels be opened in their own communities. As a result, we began to start Bible studies in many of the communities in Southern California. These Bible studies have subsequently developed into regular churches. Now there are many Calvary Chapels in the Southern California area with memberships of several thousand people.

People would move from Calvary Chapel to other areas of the United States. As they would look for a fellowship similar to Calvary in these other areas, they were oftentimes discouraged in their endeavor to find a church. It seemed that their experiences at Calvary Chapel-receiving the warm, loving fellowship and the study of the Word-had spoiled them for any other kind of a church. They would start sending for tapes and many times begin to invite their friends to come over and listen to the tapes. Soon a group would be meeting together listening to tapes. Their fellowship would grow, and they would write and ask if we could send someone to pastor. So, gradually, the Calvary Chapels have been extended and expanded throughout the entire United States. Many strong fellowships have been formed throughout the entire United States, and now throughout the world, as the Lord continues to add to the church those who are saved.

As we look at the phenomenal work of God, we're reminded of the time after the Resurrection of Jesus when the disciples had gone fishing without success. In the morning, when Jesus stood on the shore. He called to them and said, "Do you have any fish?" They answered, "No." He suggested that they cast the net on the other side. Immediately the net was full of fish, so much so that they could not draw the net into the boat. When John saw that they could not draw the net into the boat because of the multitude of fish, he said to Peter, "It is the Lord!"

As we have seen the nets so full that we cannot draw them in-with the hundreds of people who are coming to Jesus Christ here at Calvary Chapel week in and week out-we realize that there is only one explanation for it: It is the Lord. And we rejoice greatly in this marvelous work of the Lord.

Calvary Chapel isn't an ambition fulfilled. It isn't something where I thought, I'd like to have a huge church. I was so worn out, tired, over-the-hill that I thought 250 people would be all I could ever handle. What happened has happened through the power of the Holy Spirit. It's not by my might, nor by my power, but by the Spirit of the Lord.

Since we didn't have to strive to gain it, we don't have to strive to maintain it. That's beautiful, because I can still be relaxed and still be Chuck. I don't have to worry about anything, because it's His church. Jesus said, "On this rock I will build My church." After realizing that it's His church and His work, I just sit back, enjoy it, and watch Him do the work. What a thrill to see God do what we couldn't do at all!

( from "The Word For Today Bible" by Chuck Smith)