Calvary Chapel

This may be a touchy subject for some, but I think it is very important to talk about because Calvary Chapel may well be the largest non-denominational denomination in Christendom. I am going to be reading through Chuck Smith's book, Calvary Chapel Distinctives, and posting chapter-by-chapter some of my concerns about the content. The subtitle to this book is 'the foundational principles of the Calvary Chapel movement'. In other words, it's the functional Calvary Chapel confession of faith written by the functional Calvary Chapel pope (more on that later).

To give some background, I was a part of this movement for five years (the first being kind of off-and-on) and was converted while attending Calvary Chapel St. Joseph, MO (where my wife attended for ten years). I grew up in the middle of the out-breaking of the movement in Southern California, living five minutes from the Calvary Chapel Bible College in Murrieta (where my wife attended for a short while). To put it plainly, I was in the bubble.

So, in the next couple of weeks I will be picking on Calvary Chapel as a whole and on Chuck Smith as a man who has been elevated to a teaching and preaching role in the movement.