As we remember the 10th anniversary of Pastor Chuck Smith’s passing, we continue the story of the Calvary Chapel movement and the Jesus Revolution. As more and more hippies were saved by Jesus Christ, ministry expanded well beyond church attendance to strong discipleship through house ministries and later a Bible college. This series is reprinted from Issue 96 (Summer 2023) of the print magazine.  

The Little Chapel

By 1970, the little chapel on Sunflower Avenue was bursting at the seams. Young people filled any available space—every single chair, shoulder to shoulder on the floor, even the edge of the stage. Paul Sansevieri remembered those days: “People would begin to sing and worship the Lord even before the worship team or Chuck would come out. That’s how excited we were. It was like a fire in all of our hearts. We would talk about the Scriptures, lay hands on each other, and pray for each other—it was the way church should be.” Their passion was contagious. “Nobody put their light under a bushel. There was no compromise. … Our faith was real, and we were going to let everyone know about it.”

One night in 1971, Love Song drummer John Mehler quietly walked over to the drum kit emblazoned with the words ‘Jesus is coming soon’ and played a three-minute drum solo. Then a beaming Pastor Chuck led the energetic group in a folksy praise song: “Happy, happy, happy, happy; Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.” At the name of Jesus, hundreds of hands shot into the air, pointing with the One-Way sign, an affirmation of Jesus’ words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6b). Chuck opened the newspaper and began to point out how many of the headlines were fulfillments of biblical prophecy. People of all ages sat entranced, eager to hear.

Media outlets reported on the Jesus Movement. News photographers captured Pastor Chuck and the young hippies working side by side to build a new sanctuary for 300-plus at the Greenville/Sunflower location. Yet, by 1971, more services needed to be added, the walls were shifted out, and 500 chairs were set up outside. Clearly, they would need more space; Chuck purchased the property for a sprawling campus at Sunflower and Fairview, and erected a large green circus tent to continue church services. To his astonishment, their first night in the tent was completely packed out. The Calvary Chapel family had grown from 800 to 2,000 people by the end of 1971. Work began on the Fairview campus that still serves as Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa today.

Life with the flower children could be quite humorous. Driving up Brookhurst Street in a heavy fog, Chuck, Lonnie Frisbee, and a couple other men came upon an accident—a Porsche had rear-ended a truck. The others ran with flares to warn oncoming traffic while Lonnie went to help the driver who was unconscious in the Porsche. Lonnie bent over the man, saying, “You’re going to be all right, wake up.” Seeing this bearded young man who looked like Jesus, the disoriented man panicked, thinking he had died and was looking into the face of Christ. The next night, Lonnie visited the man at his home and led him and his wife to accept Jesus as their Savior.

“That’s just the way Lonnie was,” Pastor Chuck fondly recounted at Lonnie’s memorial service in 1993, citing 1 Corinthians 2:4, KJV, which says: And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. “That could truly be said for Lonnie’s ministry; it wasn’t the enticing words of man’s wisdom. In fact, I used to sit and sort of cringe at the way he twisted some of the Bible stories,” Chuck gently joked. “However, when he would give the invitation and everybody would come forward, what can you say? It was the power of the Spirit so strong in his life and his ministry.” 

The House Ministries 

“Our house turned into sort of a commune, until our kids started complaining about their sweaters and shoes going missing,” Chuck happily recounted of that first year, “so we felt we should open up a Christian communal home.”

Pastor Steve Carr noted, “In May of 1968, the first house—at the Blue Top Motel—was started, and Lonnie and Connie moved in there [to oversee it]. So many hippies got saved there. In 1970, Mansion Messiah was started and filled up quickly; so a friend and I started the Philadelphia House in Huntington Beach later that year.”

Word of mouth spread about the houses, and hippies came in off the street to attend Bible studies or ask for help. “One hippie guy walked in and told us that he had tried to kill himself but failed,” Steve recalled. When Steve and another brother in the Lord mentioned Jesus Christ, the guy spoke in a different, ominous voice and said, “You have no control over me.” Steve looked at his friend and muttered, “This guy is demon possessed.” They laid hands on the young man and commanded the demons to come out of him. “Then he sat up, in his right mind, and asked us what just happened. We told him. Then we asked him if he wanted to receive Christ, and he said, ‘Yes.’” Steve and the other house leaders were “overflowing” with work—leading Bible studies, counseling new believers who came forward after concerts, evangelizing on the streets.

As soon as a new house ministry opened, it was quickly filled. Steve noted, “The Lord’s House started in 1972, and then Harvest House—for unwed mothers and their children.” Other houses included the House of Miracles, the Green House, the Land of Love and Miracles, and the House of Psalms under the late Steve Mays, who later planted a thriving church in California. His future wife, Gail, was saved in a ministry house named Bariah House. “It was like our Bible college,” recalled Gail Mays. “We were truly a family of brothers and sisters. The blood of Jesus restored our innocence, which was so healing.”

Steve Carr explained, “Steve Mays and I came up with a curriculum so that the houses weren’t just a crash pad—a place to stay until people got jobs—but somewhere where people really got discipled. We brought the idea to Chuck, who said, ‘Go for it. We encourage you to do that.’” The two men assigned books for the house dwellers to read and write reports. Steve Carr noted, “They had to go through Chuck’s tapes [of Bible teaching]. We had Bible studies several nights a week. We did evangelism at the Huntington and Newport piers. I think that’s why so many pastors and missionaries came out of the house ministries.”

Pastor Chuck took it a step further, purchasing a beautiful mountaintop conference center in Twin Peaks, CA, and opening in 1975 Calvary Chapel Bible School for young people who wanted to get away from the world, study God’s Word, and go on to serve Jesus. “Once the Bible college opened, the house ministries dissolved. They weren’t needed any more,” Steve Carrnoted.

L.E. Romaine, Chuck’s assistant pastor and former Marine, would check on the house leaders and talk over any issues. “Romaine was there to make sure things didn’t get weird,” recalled Paul Sansevieri; Paul and his wife oversaw Harvest House. “We had 10 moms and 18 children,” Paul shared. “Each had their own unique challenges. Having that fellowship with other sisters in Christ totally transformed them. The houses were a tool that God used to change people’s lives.”

In the next installment, we share more testimonies from the houses of ministry as the newly saved hippies grew in love and fellowship. Read Part 1 here

This series is reprinted in portion from Issue 96 (Summer 2023) of the print magazine. Stay tuned for additional installments this month or get your copy of all installments at calvarychapelmagazine.org/individual

© 2023 Calvary Chapel Magazine (CCM). All rights reserved. Articles or photographs may not be reproduced without the written permission of CCM. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.® Used by permission.