A Generation Led to Jesus: Remembering Pastor Chuck, Part 10
The Calvary Chapel movement continued to grow in the 1980s as more men were trained in God’s Word. Some stayed in California and others moved eastward to plant fellowships. Read their testimonies in this installment of our series honoring the legacy of CC founder Chuck Smith. This story is reprinted from Issue 97 (Fall 2023) of the print magazine.
Bil and Rosemary Gallatin (pictured before she passed away). Rosemary shared the Gospel with John Wayne—she later heard he had become a Christian. A former carpenter, he later planted Calvary Chapel Finger Lakes, NY.
From Ten to a Multitude
A former occultist and drug dealer, Jeff Johnson also planted one of the earliest Calvary fellowships which weekly drew thousands in less than eight years. Feeling a burden for his hometown of Downey, CA, Jeff left Calvary Chapel to serve at a church there. Though the church was a traditional denomination, Jeff taught verse by verse at his midweek Bible study. When his study outgrew Sunday attendance, Jeff was ousted.
Yet God led him to continue teaching—this time, under the trees in Furman Park. CC Downey was born in 1973. Within two and a half years, the group of 10 grew to 200 people in an old store; in less than five years, they reached 1,500 at the Downey Civic Center; by 1980, The LA Times noted that there were 5,000 in a massive former department store. Pastor Jeff gives all glory to God: “Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, entered me one day, forgave my untold sins, and then changed me forever.” Chuck responded in the book Harvest: “Only God’s Messiah can do that.”
At a recent pastor’s conference, Pastor Jeff Johnson shared that the believer’s victory is rooted in relationship to Christ: “Our commission is to follow Jesus and be about our Father’s business. … Jesus is our rest, our place of overcoming the flesh. Many Christians fall short; it’s a struggle. When we receive Jesus, we receive all spiritual blessings, everything we need, with not one thing lacking. In following Jesus [we] get spiritually stronger and stronger.”
A little further south, Ray Bentley started Maranatha Chapel in San Diego, CA, in 1984; by 1986, more than 1,100 people were attending. That church has grown to nearly 7,000. Steve Mays, who once oversaw Calvary’s communal ministry houses for new believers in the 1970s, went on to plant the thriving CC South Bay in Torrance, CA. Both Ray and Steve have gone on to their eternal reward.
Jon Courson, a promising athlete on scholarship at a Christian university, felt as if something were missing. When he stepped inside Calvary Chapel in the fall of 1972, Jon recalled, “All of a sudden, I was gripped with this incredible certainty that all that I had been studying in the classroom about the Book of Acts was happening before my very eyes. ... It revolutionized my life. The spiritual dryness inside of me suddenly flooded with restored hope and vitality.”
After planting a thriving church in San Jose, CA, Jon felt led to start a new work in the middle of nowhere: Applegate Christian Fellowship in Oregon in the late 1970s. Some of his neighbors included a nudist colony of pot-growing hippies. Though Jon had never been a hippie, he had fellowshiped alongside many in Costa Mesa. Not only did he reach several communes with the Gospel, but thousands came from the surrounding areas to grow in the Word. More than 35 other Calvary Chapel-style churches have been planted from this single seed in Applegate.
From Coast to Coast
Calvary Chapel and the harvest of souls spread from the West Coast to the East Coast in the 1980s. Some men came to California, were called into ministry, and then went back to their home states. In the 1980s, Calvary fellowships popped up in Maine, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and elsewhere. Several of the men had been disillusioned in other ministries or abused in spiritual cults, but sensed they had “come home” when they walked into a Calvary Chapel.
Decades earlier, “Gentle Giant” Bil Gallatin carries a disabled young man into the water to be baptized.
Mistaken for a Cult
Before Christ changed his life, the gun-toting, burly Bil Gallatin was an imposing figure, especially under the demonic influences that often incited him to violence. But this woodworker met the Master Carpenter, Jesus, who rebuilt him into a gentle giant. Bil was reading the Bible on the beach one day when he came across a passage he didn’t understand. “I had heard of this hippie church, but I didn’t know where it was. So I drove up and down the coast at Corona Del Mar picking up hitchhikers and asking where it was.” At the time, it was in the little chapel on Sunflower Avenue.
A long-haired, bearded Bob Chappell baptizes a young woman. He planted Calvary Chapel Greece, NY.
He stepped inside and told the man who greeted him, “I just need to talk to someone about Jesus; I know mankind doesn’t have the answer.” Little did he realize he was talking to Pastor Chuck. “He took me into his office, and we spent the whole day together,” Bil recalled. Bil told him about a frightening vision he’d had of seeing “the whole coastline go up in flames, like a nuclear holocaust.” Chuck agreed that these were the End Times as predicted in the Book of Revelation. Bil listened intently, knowing that Chuck was speaking the truth. Soon after, he was hired on as a carpenter at Costa Mesa.
Believers had a boldness about sharing the Gospel. Bil, then age 31, remembers when he and his wife Rosemary ran into actor John Wayne at a grocery store. “Rosemary had this pin that said, ‘Jesus is Lord’. She shared the Gospel with him in the grocery line at the market. He thanked us for the invitation to Calvary Chapel but said he couldn’t come. Later I heard that he had become a Christian.”
Decades later, Pastor Bob Chappell leads worship while on a mission trip to Africa.
Bil admired Chuck for his genuineness and meekness while also being a manly figure. “I remember laying beams with Pastor Chuck for the sanctuary [still standing] at Costa Mesa,” Bil recalled. When God called him to plant a church in Finger Lakes, NY, Bil was hesitant. Yet God confirmed the calling through other believers and a picture of a farm silo in National Geographic. Their good friends Bob and Sandi Chappell went with them to a land rolling in grain—yet starving for the Word. The spiritual ground was hard at first.
Bil said, “When we first got here—me with my beard and long hair—people thought we were a cult from California. Then Jim Jones poisoned 900 people in Guyana [in November 1978].” Still, bit by bit, the Lord brought many young people eager to hear the Word of God.
Several years before passing away, Pastor Bob shares the Gospel during an outdoor event. From many overseas outreaches and mission trips, Bob eventually developed health complications. He passed away in 2010, and his son Micah now pastors CC Greece, NY.
“As people got to know us, they began to trust us,” remembered Sandi Chappell, whose late husband Bob later planted a Calvary in Greece, NY. They grew mostly through word of mouth in the community. Sandi shared, “At women’s Bible studies, I had these older Italian ladies who grew up in [a traditional religion]. They would say, ‘We’ve never heard this before!’ As people came to the church and met the real Jesus, He would transform them.” She fondly remembers the early days as a joyous time—for a season the church met in a train depot and the children’s ministry was held in the caboose.
Eventually the ministry grew to thousands, and other churches were planted from the work God began through Bil. Having turned the senior pastor role over to his son Scott, Pastor Bil now teaches at the church’s School of Ministry and at conferences worldwide.
Look for our next installment, where you can read about more men who planted strong CCs on the East Coast.
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