I was enjoying the archives of a particular blogger when I came across this assessment he had written about CC.
He is currently a pastor of a CC today I believe.
I wonder if his brand of CC fits what he has written on Saturday, April 08, 2006 on his blog.
Here is what he typed:
Quote:
"...I can say that in its early years, the first half of the 1970s, CC was much more open to the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and His empowering with charismatic gifts.
But since then, steadily over time, this aspect of the ministry has diminished greatly—so much so that nowadays it has been reduced mostly to a "hypothetical" that no longer has any practical impact in the life of the church as a whole.
I have my theories as to why this has happened, but as I said I am very reluctant to be seen as criticizing CC churches, especially since I consider my former pastor, Greg Laurie, to be a very powerfully gifted evangelist and communicator.
But I must admit that this diminishment is probably the primary reason why my wife and I eventually had to move on from there to where we are now."
Unquote.
Since I myself came to the Lord in 1967 and immediately attended CC, when it did allow the gifts and manifestation of the Holy Spirit in their meetings, that was all I knew and expected.
Back in those days we would hit the beaches witnessing and invite everyone to come with us to Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa on Monday nights.
Chuck Smith would share from the Word of God and at the end of the service he would give an 'alter call.'
He would say something about salvation while all of us young Christians were quietly praying for those present who needed to be saved among us.
Then "While every eye closed and every head bowed" he would give an invitation to accept Christ by lifting their hands up until he acknowledged them.
After this he would say, "you can lift your heads now. And then he would give the scripture about:
Matthew 10:32
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
Then he would invite anyone who had raised their hand to come forward and confess Christ before man.
For those of us who were there it was such a great time to be able to have the freedom to participate in the reproductive process of the Body of Christ!
We were encouraged to get out there and share our faith in witnessing
It was a major priority for Calvary Chapel to reach the lost. And it is a major priority for Jesus Christ to reach the lost:
Matthew 18:11
"The Son of Man has come to save that which was lost."
It was a major priority for all of us kids also! Reaching out to the lost is one thing that we can't do in heaven that we can do here on earth.
You can worship God in heaven.
You can sing songs to God in heaven.
You can learn God's Word in heaven.
But one thing you can not do in heaven is share your faith with a nonbeliever.
Why?
Because everyone in heaven is a believer. Once you take your last breath of air you will never again be able to talk to a lost person.
Since this is true, shouldn't it be a priority of your life to reach out to all the lost people on earth while you can?
Then one day, without any kind of warning or explanation, Calvary Chapel shifted gears midstream and stumbled a lot of us.
They became a Bible teaching church, almost exclusively without telling me or any of my other Christian friends.
We got alienated.
Chuck's Monday night fish~net was put away to dry behind "The Block Wall."
The emphasis on salvation and the moving of the Holy Spirit took a back seat to Bible teaching.
In one of Pastor Chuck Smith's addresses to the Calvary Chapel's Minister's conference he mentions his shift from Evangelism to teaching.
I didn't get to read the transcript of this address until just last year (2009).
A light went on in my head. "So that is what had happened to us so many years ago!"
He truly stumbled myself and a lot of my generation of the Jesus People by his sudden shift with no explanation whatsoever to any of us.
We were left to drift by his midstream change of course.
He just took hold of the helm as captain of the ship and changed course while we were not looking.
Gone was those incredible moments at church that Chuck would evangelize with the express purpose of catching the fish.
Slowly the trickle down effect hit us.
The handing out of tracts and the sharing our faith on the streets was deemphasized and evangelism was no longer a priority.
The evangelical zeal of the church waxed cold.
When the moving of the Holy Spirit and the miraculous healings stopped the pastor proclaimed, "We have love."
When I tried my best for years to share the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit with others there, the pastor's son spoke with me.
He told me, "My dad is over the hump. He brought the hippie's in and is now coasting down the otherside. If you don't like it, perhaps you should leave and start your own church."
Well that was in the early 90's.
I left and never returned.
How sad that I could not share what I had originally been taught by CC in CC.
They had officially become just another denomination with denomination rules and regulations.
When John ,who at the time was at Marantha Music, asked the Pastor Chuck Smith, "When do we do the stuff, you know, like in the book of Acts?"
He was also invited to leave and go start his own church.
He did In 1977, John re-entered pastoral ministry to plant Calvary Chapel of Yorba Linda.
Throughout this time, John's conservative evangelical paradigm for understanding the ministry of the church began to grow. George Eldon Ladd's theological writings on the kingdom of God convinced John intellectually that all the biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit should be active in the church.
As he became more convinced of God's desire to be active in the world through all the biblical gifts of the Spirit, John began to teach and train his church to imitate Jesus' full-orbed kingdom ministry.
He began to "do the stuff" of the Bible, about which he had formerly only read.
As John and his congregation, mostly made up of former Quakers, sought God in intimate worship, they experienced empowerment by the Holy Spirit, significant renewal in the gifts and conversion growth.
It soon became clear that the church's emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit was not shared by some leaders in the Calvary Chapel movement.
In 1982, John's church left Calvary Chapel and joined the Vineyard churches.
The first Vineyards were planted in 1975.
By 1982, there were at least seven “Vineyards” in a loose-knit fellowship of churches. Kenn Gulliksen, a soft-spoken, non-assuming leader who had a passion to know and walk with God, started a church in Hollywood in 1974.
In 1975 he, believing that God had instructed him to do so, gave the name “Vineyard” to this association of churches and provided leadership for these churches for about five years.
Kenn felt led to ask John Wimber to assume leadership for the emerging movement.
The official recognition of this transition took place in 1982, and thus, the emergence of what was to be called, “The Association of Vineyard Churches.”
I used to attend Ken Gulliksen's home Bible study in Newport Beach when i first came to the Lord.
Ken always emphasized love in his Bible studies.
He was a very soft spoken gentile man.
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