A Generation Led to Jesus: Remembering Pastor Chuck, Part 7
In the wake of the Jesus Revolution, the new work begun at Calvary Chapel expanded into the 1980s—a revival fed by God’s Word, led by the Holy Spirit, and nurtured by God’s love. Read more in this installment of our continuing series honoring the life of CC founder Pastor Chuck Smith. This installment is reprinted from Issue 97 (Fall 2023) of the print magazine.
In 1965 Pastor Chuck Smith took over a small non-denominational church in Costa Mesa, CA, called Calvary Chapel, which had 25 members. As he began to teach expositionally through God’s Word, the church began to grow.
One morning in 1968, Pastor Chuck Smith arrived early for Sunday service at Calvary Chapel, where he had made headlines working alongside young hippies to renovate the old Greenville School in Santa Ana, CA. This morning, to Chuck’s disbelief, someone had posted a sign on the church door: “NO BARE FEET ALLOWED”.
He knew some were concerned about the barefoot hippies ruining the church’s new shag carpet, but Chuck had dismissed it. Deeply saddened, Chuck took down the sign and called a meeting, urging leaders and members to rethink their priorities. He declared, “If, because of our plush carpeting, we have to close the door to one young person who has bare feet, then I’m personally in favor of ripping out all the carpeting and having bare concrete floors.” That was a turning point for the fellowship; there was never again any doubt of Chuck’s love and dedication to the youth the Lord had given him to shepherd. Within two years, they grew from 300 to more than 1,000 on Sunday morning; soon, it was 2,000 in a circus tent. Within a decade, Calvary Chapel was spreading across the globe.
In the wake of the Jesus Revolution—after tens of thousands had accepted Christ as their Savior—a new work began at Calvary Chapel of training, discipling, and church planting in the 1980s. Yet it was not a work of human effort, planning, or manipulation. Calvary Chapel founder, the late Pastor Chuck Smith, often cited Zechariah when asked about the radical way in which the work expanded. “ ‘Not by [human] might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6b). Eyewitness testimonies and historical accounts indicate that the work begun in the Spirit truly was continued by the Spirit, with the Word of God as its foundation.
The young crowd streams into the circus tent that housed the church for nearly two years in the early 1970s while the church’s new facility was being built at Sunflower and Fairview streets.
Pastor Chuck’s simple verse-by-verse teaching was devoured by seeking souls all around the world via cassette, radio, TV, and books. The Word was sown like seed, watered by the Spirit, and Calvary Chapel churches blossomed across the country. By 1989, there were an estimated 600 fellowships and ministries around the world. In 2013, when Pastor Chuck passed, there were 1,300. Today, there are about 2,000 CC churches worldwide, noted Don McClure, a leader in the movement since 1971.
“If the Lord had not raised up Chuck Smith to equip pastors to teach through the Bible, there would not be the Calvary Chapel we have today,” said Don. “Calvary Chapel was not a hippie movement; it was a teaching movement.” He recounted, “You could look down the rows [at Calvary] and see every person with a Bible in their laps, underlining and taking notes.” In fact, he said, “During the Jesus Movement, there were many ministries all across the country affected by the revival. It was gigantic; it was everywhere. But when that revival passed, many of those churches went back to what they had been at their core—their denominational traditions. But Calvary continued to grow because of Chuck’s teaching from the Word. In fact, the ministries that continued were the ones that taught the Word of God.”
Open Bibles & Hearts
On a mild evening in Santa Ana, British Bible scholar Alan Redpath stood in the back of a circus tent, mesmerized. Jam-packed into the huge green tent were hundreds of young people in a sea of all ages and cultures. The old saint had been deeply moved by their heartfelt choruses, sung with eyes closed and faces beaming. But he was astonished to see almost everyone with Bibles open on their laps—intently listening, underlining passages, murmuring amen’s. In all his years as a Bible teacher in England and as senior pastor of Moody Bible Church in Chicago, he had never seen anything like it.
Thousands of folks, young and old, came to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ in the green big-top tent.
He turned to the couple who had brought him, his former Bible college students Don and Jean McClure, and whispered, “I have waited my whole life to see that. Did you see them, Don? Everybody has Bibles, huge Bibles! All these young people studying the Word of God.”
The old scholar never forgot it, Jean McClure recalled: “He would go on to give talks, and he would say, ‘I’ve been to this place where they love the Word.’ He was talking about Calvary Chapel.”
Jean added, “You just felt the Holy Spirit’s presence. There are no words for it. When we would sing, you would just wrap your arms around the people next to you that you never met before. You just loved them. It was revival; there is no other explanation.”
Simply a Work of God
Media outlets were in a frenzy to explain what was happening at the new Calvary Chapel churches that were drawing thousands of people. Time Magazine, The LA Times, Good Morning America, and other media groups would interview Pastor Chuck and Calvary pastors. Reflecting on how the ministry had grown, Pastor Chuck once cited Ephesians 2:10, which says, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. He noted, “God knew from the beginning the work that He wanted to do through Calvary Chapel. It was always a part of His plan. God prepares and uses human instruments in order that His plan might be accomplished.”
Pastor Bill Stonebraker dedicates a baby at CC Honolulu, HI.
How did the Lord prepare those human instruments—many of whom were new Christians, college dropouts, former junkies, or ex-cult members? Not by human design.
Chuck Tapes
Instead of holy relics or growth programs, Calvary Chapel had “Chuck Tapes”—plain cassette recordings of Pastor Chuck’s verse-by-verse sermons through the Bible. And even those tapes were something that God prompted supernaturally yet naturally, related Terry Reynolds, who has served with Word for Today for nearly 50 years.
“There was never a board meeting about it [church growth]; it was never planned. It was exciting because it was a fresh work of the Holy Spirit,” said Terry. In the late 1960s, someone asked for a recording of Chuck to send to a friend, so the sound techs recorded a tape. Then they decided to record every sermon. Soon the church had a lending library out of a little trailer outside the big circus tent. Leaders recounted that almost every car and hippie van was full of Chuck tapes. Believers passed the tapes on to their friends, like little sparks fed by the Holy Spirit, which the Lord ignited to plant churches in Hawaii, Los Angeles, and around the world.
In our next installment, we’ll continue our coverage of the growth of the CC movement across America as the radio program, Word for Today, began and fellowships spread across the country.
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