The Lighthouse Christian
Fellowship
Calvary Chapel
Zanesville
Calvary Chapel began in the late 1960's as a small non-denominational church of 25 members with Chuck Smith as the pastor. Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California, is now home to some 30,000 to 40,000 believers. The Word for Today publishes Bible study books and tapes all over the world, KWVE broadcasts God's Word to all of Southern California, and Calvary Chapel's Bible College provides Bible education to thousands at its home campus in Murrieta, California and at over 20 extension campuses world wide.
As Christians, there are certain beliefs that set us aside from other religions. These beliefs are what unifies the body of Christ and it is our hope to focus on these essential doctrines of the bible.
After all, what really matters is what we have in common as Christians: the "essential" doctrines of the infallibility of God's Word, the virgin birth of Christ, His sinless life, death for our sins, bodily resurrection, ascension to glory, and personal return to rule the earth. These are the essence of Christianity.
In a broad general sense, Calvary Chapel is the middle ground between fundamentalism and Pentecostalism in modern Protestant theology. In fact, we believe that this is at least part of the reason why God has raised up this ministry.
Fundamentalism is that portion of Protestantism which holds to the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, believing that they are divinely inspired and inerrant. Hence, the "fundamentals" of the faith are emphasized. Although the modern news media and the liberal church scorn fundamentalists as backwards and stupid, the truth is that fundamentalism has preserved the integrity of God's Word and held on to the essential doctrines of the orthodox faith.
Pentecostalism as a modern movement grew out of the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th century, and spawned denominations that emphasize the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the exercise of spiritual and Scriptural gifts of the Spirit which had fallen dormant in the main line churches. Also criticized by the liberal church and news media as being emotionally driven, Pentecostalism restored to the church the importance of gifts of the Spirit and the power of God for the believer today.
Over the years, however, fundamentalism, while it clung to the integrity of God's Word, tended to become rigid, legalistic, and un-accepting of spiritual gifts. Similarly, Pentecostalism became enthusiastic and emotional at the expense of the teaching of God's Word.
Calvary Chapel is the balance between the two. At Calvary Chapel we believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in the Bible, and we encourage their exercise, but always decently and in order as instructed by the Apostle Paul in 1Corinthians 14:40, “Let all things be done decently and in order.”
The emphasis at Calvary Chapel is on the Word of God which we look to as our primary rule of faith. To quote Pastor Chuck Smith: "We believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in the Scriptures, and that they are valid for today if they are exercised within the Scriptural guidelines. We as believers are to covet the best gifts, seeking to exercise them in love that the whole Body of Christ might be edified. We believe that love is more important than the most spectacular gifts, and without this love all exercise of spiritual gifts is worthless." (see 1 Corinthians 13)
Because of this balance, Calvary Chapel services are designed to be centered around the verse by verse teaching of God's Word. Services usually begin by singing to the Lord with songs of praise and of worship. This is done to focus the believer on God, and not on man.
At Calvary Chapel we believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, that the Bible, Old and New Testaments, is the inspired, infallible Word of God.
We believe that God is eternally existent in three separate persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, that He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, provided for the atonement of our sins by His vicarious death on the Cross, was bodily resurrected by the power of the Holy Spirit, ascended back to the right hand of God the father, and ever lives to make intercession for us.
After He ascended to Heaven, Jesus poured out His Holy Spirit on the believers in Jerusalem, enabling them to fulfill His command to preach the Gospel to the entire world, an obligation shared by all believers today.
We believe that all people are by nature separated from God and responsible for their own sin, but that salvation, redemption, and forgiveness of sin are freely offered to all by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. When a person repents of sin and accepts Jesus Christ as personal Savior and Lord, trusting Him to save, that person is immediately born again and sealed by the Holy Spirit, all his/her sins are forgiven, and that person becomes a child of God, destined to spend eternity with the Lord.
At Calvary Chapel, we await the pre-tribulation rapture of the church. Calvary Chapel is strongly committed to a belief that the church will be raptured before the seven year tribulation period described in Revelation chapters 6 through 18.
Many people are under the impression that a particular style of worship is insisted upon at Calvary Chapel, that style being the soft contemporary Sound made popular by Maranatha! Music and by Asaph Records (which both originated at Calvary Chapel). Although most Calvary Chapels do utilize a form of contemporary worship, there is actually a great variety of styles of music found in our churches. Some are very traditional and conservative, with organs or pianos and hymns, while others prefer electric guitars and drums. There is no set style of worship makes a Calvary Chapel unique; instead there is wide latitude in expression. All of us desire, of course, that whatever the style of worship, it come from our hearts.
Similarly, some of the worship services at Calvary Chapels are quite traditional, while others are more contemporary. Some of our churches are filled with elderly people in suits and ties, some are filled with young people in jeans and tee shirts, and many are a combination of all different ages, styles, and races of folks who come together with one common focus: love for Jesus Christ and the desire to know Him more intimately.
The above statements are not meant to segregate Calvary Chapel from others in the body of Christ. They are simply meant to inform visitors of what they can expect in a service at Calvary Chapel. We realize that the number of churches in the body of Christ is an indication of the number of different ways Christians can worship God. Simply by attending one service, it would be impossible to receive all of this information. Therefore, these statements were created to give a believer a more full picture of the style of ministry at Calvary Chapel in the hope that we may worship the Lord together.
