Calvary Chapel is an association of evangelical, moderately charismatic congregations that grew from Chuck Smith's Costa Mesa ministry during the Jesus People movement of the late 1960s. Calvary Chapel's distinctives are verse-by-verse expositional preaching, informal worship, believer's baptism by immersion, and a moderate charismatic practice that Smith often described as "middle of the road." Congregations are autonomous and associated rather than denominationally governed. AskCredo places Calvary Chapel in the B-tier as a broadly orthodox evangelical movement, with the usual Reformed reservations about its continuationist pneumatology, its dispensational-leaning eschatology in the Smith tradition, and the absence of a binding confession.
None formal
pastor-led
arminian
Global · Founded 1965
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