A Generation Led to Jesus: Remembering Pastor Chuck, Part 6
Learn more about how several leading Calvary Chapel pastors first came to faith in Jesus Christ and started their ministries in the early days of the Jesus Revolution. This installment continues our series honoring the legacy of Calvary Chapel founder Pastor Chuck Smith. It is reprinted from Issue 96 (Summer 2023) of the print magazine.
Raul Ries—From Fury to Freedom
Pastor Raul Ries
After ransacking his house on Easter Sunday, 1972, a crazed Raul Ries waited to kill his wife, Sharon, and children with a .22 rifle. Hitting the TV with his gun, it flickered onto the face of Pastor Chuck Smith beaming up at him. Chuck’s words cut through Raul’s red fog of pain and anger: “When these young folks accept Jesus Christ as their Savior, all the past is gone. They realize the slate is clean, and they begin a new life with Jesus.”
As the truth of God’s love began to sink in, Raul thought, God gave His Son for me. Putting down his rifle, Raul got on his knees and surrendered his life to Jesus Christ.
Weeping for the first time in his life, Raul prayed, “Forgive me, God, for everything I have done against You.” When he met Pastor Chuck and shared his testimony, Raul was immediately welcomed into the Calvary Chapel family.
Raul had been scarred from having a father who was alcoholic, abusive, and often absent. The young hoodlum had joined the Marines with a desire for bloodshed in Vietnam, making his already violent tendencies worse—until the night that God’s love arrested his path to destruction.
A zealous new believer, Raul shared his story at his former high school, Baldwin Park. Kids sat on the lawn to listen to his story, though some mocked and threw chocolate milk at him. The former killer prayed for patience, knowing that he couldn’t respond. At his kung-fu studio, Raul gathered people to listen to Chuck’s teaching tapes; finally, Chuck encouraged Raul himself to teach the Bible. Chuck invited Raul and a handful of other new converts to attend an intensive Shepherd’s School, ordaining Raul as a pastor in November 1975.
Raul’s small home Bible study grew and had to be moved to a local theater and then a grocery store. Eventually the church relocated to Diamond Bar, CA, in 1993, becoming Calvary Chapel Golden Springs with a flock that swelled to 15,000 people.
At a conference in 2017, Raul laughed with tears cascading down his face as he recounted how important the late pastor was to him: “Pastor Chuck gave me an opportunity. I never had opportunities; I was always on my own. … He taught me how to love because all of my life, I hated people.”
Greg Laurie—Lost Loner to Evangelist
Pastor Greg Laurie
Growing up with an alcoholic mother who went through seven divorces, a restless Greg Laurie turned to drugs while still in high school—like many of his generation in the 1960s. When smoking pot daily didn’t seem to be enough to fill the hunger inside, he turned to LSD. To his terror, Greg looked in the mirror and saw his youthful face melting until his skull began to show. Horrified and badly shaken, Greg realized, “I don’t want to do drugs anymore. I hate this. I hate this life I’ve chosen.”
Shortly after his traumatic experience, he switched to Harbor High School where he was captivated by a beautiful girl. When he saw her Bible, he thought, Oh, no. What a waste of a perfectly cute girl. Still, there was a light about her that drew him—a light that he later realized was “Jesus in her.” Though the cynical Greg wanted to dismiss the Jesus Freaks as crazy, “I used to party with them, and I’d seen the change that had happened in their life—so I couldn’t dismiss them.”
One day in 1970, Greg listened to one of their campus meetings. A hippie named Lonnie Frisbee shared: “Jesus said, ‘You’re for Me or against Me.’” Greg’s heart was pierced. Soon he found himself on stage, accepting Christ into his heart. He recalled, “That was the day that my life changed radically.”
Greg ended up coming to Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, growing in the Word, and serving Jesus. One of Pastor Chuck’s sermons about Jesus giving living water to all who thirst (from John Chapter 4) inspired Greg to make the first illustrated tract called “Living Water.” When he showed up on Chuck’s doorstep with the illustrated story, Chuck applauded the unique booklet which became so popular with the young people that he ended up printing over 500,000 copies. Greg took over a church in Riverside that became Harvest Christian Fellowship. Pastor Chuck encouraged Greg to step out in faith and begin the Harvest Crusades, which have led thousands to Christ around the world.
David Rosales—Changed by Grace
Pastor David Rosales
The blended crowd of young flower children, clean-cut men and women, and a few foreigners crowded in the room for the Maranatha! concert, offering an original blend of grass-roots folk music about following Jesus. As the music filled the room, David Rosales, 20, was taken aback by the welcoming love displayed by the people around him and the message of God’s grace.
“I was raised in a traditional church, but I had never heard the message of God’s welcoming love,” David explained. “Grace was something I got after I did something—confession, penance. I was amazed when I heard that Jesus would extend to me the favor of God if I would just confess my sin to Him and receive His grace. I didn’t need to clean myself up; I just needed to come to Him and ask Him to cleanse me.”
Saved at that concert in 1970 at age 20, David recalled how Pastor Chuck and his wife Kay reached out to the young hippies when many traditional churches were condemning them. “Pastor Chuck proclaimed a message filled with the grace of God. He saw the need for that because of the wretched lives we lived. We needed to know that we could never be good enough on our own, and that we needed help. So instead of preaching to us to cut our hair, take a bath, and get a job—the first thing Chuck wanted us to understand was how good God is, what He can do, how He changes you.”
Now pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Valley, CA, thousands strong, for more than 40 years, David remembered, “When I looked at Pastor Chuck, I saw him as a model that I wanted to be like one day. That was ‘dad’—and that was my spiritual father.” He added, “We are supposed to be loving, like a family. We love Jesus together—that’s what Chuck taught us to do. We’re called to love each other; that’s what Jesus said.” He cited John 13:35, which says, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The Movement Expands
The multiplication of Calvary Chapel churches wasn’t limited to California. Traveling eastward, Bil Gallatin went to Rochester, NY. Malcolm Wild went to Florida, and Joe Focht went back to his hometown of Philadelphia, PA. Joe began a Bible study with 20 people in November 1981, in the basement of a catering hall. Within a few years, over 100 people were coming. Outgrowing the catering hall when attendance reached 350, a strip mall location was renovated, and growth continued into the thousands. Today’s CC Philadelphia meets in a purchased factory with thousands attending weekly. Some 20 additional CC fellowships have been born out of CC Philly throughout the greater Delaware Valley area.
As the men Pastor Chuck mentored grew in their faith, many others also sensed a calling to take expositional Bible teaching into areas where the Calvary Chapel name was unknown. Church plants on the West Coast grew quickly, but the ground was harder as the movement spread eastward across the nation into areas untouched by the revival that had engulfed California.
Look for our next installment, where we share more stories of well-known Calvary Chapel pastors coming to faith in Jesus and beginning their individual ministries. Read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, here.
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