Chuck Smith, the longtime Orange County pastor who reached out to hippies and created a Christian movement, died Thursday after battling lung cancer. He was 86.
Smith was senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, a congregation of about 50 when he was hired in 1965. Under his stewardship, it grew to have a flock of more than 10,000 and was prominent not just for its size, but for its role in the creation of Calvary Chapels worldwide and its influence on generations of the faithful, as well as Christian pastors mentored by Smith.
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“My ambition was to have a church of 250 people,” Smith said in a 1999 interview. “But it just kept growing. It’s amazing. I feel like a spectator. It’s the Lord doing it.”
Smith helped give rise to the worldwide Jesus movement in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Pastor Rick Warren, founder of Saddleback Church, called Smith “a spiritual giant.” Warren said he first became aware of Smith as he was growing his church and Warren was a youth pastor in Los Angeles.
“We’ll all miss his preaching, but I’ll personally miss his laughter,” he said.
Known to many as “Papa Chuck,” Smith mentored thousands, helping fuel an evangelical movement that gave rise to some 2,000 churches like Calvary Chapel.
“Rarely does a man come along who impacts a generation of people,” said pastor Greg Laurie, founder of Harvest Christian Fellowship and the Harvest Crusade. “Chuck Smith was that man.”
Smith, he said, was a “father figure to many who were disenfranchised during the counterculture movement.”
Pastor Jay Grant of The Little Church by the Sea in Laguna Beach said Smith was the reason he became a Christian in 1971.
“He projected the love of God more than any man I’ve ever known,” said Grant, a longtime friend. “I wanted to affect people like he did.”
Cecil Robeck, professor of church history and ecumenics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, said: “Chuck was in a sense ahead of his time. He seemed to reflect the kind of thoughts that Pope Francis reflects today – that the church needs to loosen up.”
Smith announced his illness during a service on New Year’s Day 2012, prompting a nationwide outpouring of support. The cancer was found during Smith’s physical checkup when a blood test came back abnormal. Smith had been receiving treatment at Hoag Hospital Newport Beach, said Grant, who learned via text messages that Smith died at home.
Smith preached at Calvary’s three Sunday services last weekend, members said.
“He preached the word of God as long as he could speak,” said Joni McCollum, 59, a parishioner at Calvary Chapel for 30 years. She choked up as she talked about Smith.
“In heaven,” she said, “I’m sure he heard the words he wanted to hear: ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’”
‘PASTOR-TEACHER’
With such leaders as the Rev. Robert H. Schuller of Crystal Cathedral and Kenton Beshore of Mariners Church in Irvine, Smith was among the longest- serving Christian pastors in Orange County.
Smith was 17 and planning a medical career when he attended a summer church retreat in the San Bernardino Mountains. A speaker spurred him to do some heavy-duty introspection.
“I sat under a pine tree all afternoon and came to the conclusion that being a doctor would help people in the here and now, but becoming a pastor could help people in this life and afterward,” he said in a 1997 interview.
He went on to attend Life Bible College and then served as a Pentecostal pastor in various communities.
Smith was a pastor in Corona when he was hired to lead Calvary Chapel, then housed on Church Street in Costa Mesa.
Sharon Fischer, who was on Calvary’s board at the time with her husband, Hal, said the congregation, which started in a Costa Mesa trailer court, was about four years old.
Floyd Nelson, the founding pastor, recommended that the church consider Smith as his replacement, Fischer said.
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Smith, she said, had an affinity for the New Testament’s Romans. She recalled that he had gone to high school in Santa Ana, had been a surfer and had been ordained a Foursquare minister before serving in the non-denominational Corona church. He and his wife, Kay, were already parents to their four children when he started at Calvary.
“When he came, we knew, hands down, that he was the pastor we wanted,” Fischer said. “He taught the Bible from cover to cover. … He was not just a preacher or pastor, he was a pastor-teacher. He was exactly what we were looking for.”
It was that Bible passion, she said, that helped spawn the Calvary Chapel movement. “It is what a lot of us who were raised in churches had never experienced before,” Fischer said.
Two years after his hiring, the congregation moved to a building on Greenville Street at Sunflower Avenue in Santa Ana.
LIFE-CHANGING MOMENT
The year 1967 saw the Summer of Love in San Francisco, when thousands of young people descended on the Haight-Ashbury district. The “Jesus Freak” movement was born, amid drug use and discussions of peace, love and the Gospel.
As winter approached, many of the young people moved to Orange County, especially Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach. Most were rejecting the materialist world and middle-class ideals of their parents.
“I remember us being shocked that it had reached our own front doors,” Smith said in a 1997 interview.
Kay Smith had to see it for herself. She made Chuck Smith drive to Huntington Beach, and she cried when she saw lonely-looking ragtag kids staggering around in a stupor. “Chuck, we’ve got to do something about this,” she said.
Soon, the Smiths were allowing young people to stay in their home. He rented a house in Costa Mesa as a Christian communal house.
And Calvary Chapel’s Wednesday night Bible classes became a spiritual sanctuary for thousands of “Jesus Freaks.”
“One Saturday they asked to play some of their music. I was fearful, but when I heard it, I broke down crying,” he said. “Eventually, their thirst for drugs was replaced with a thirst for God.”
NEW HARVESTS
Beginning in the late 1960s, Smith conducted baptisms at Pirates Cove in Corona del Mar, dunking the faithful into the Pacific, in some cases, 500 at a time. “In one, two-year period, we did 8,000 baptisms,” he said.
With his casual style, “Papa Chuck” might have been the right pastor at the right time.
“There’s a genuine love for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the bottom line,” said Will Lynn, a pastor at Calvary. “He’s genuine in his belief in Jesus Christ and the resurrection.”
By the late 1980s, many in Smith’s congregation were approaching middle age, and his “little country church” had become a popular place of worship for families. Again, he saw a need to reach out to a new generation of young, lost souls. He envisioned a stadium-size crusade and tapped Laurie, one of his own former “Jesus Freaks,” for the mission.
With Laurie, who by then had founded Harvest Christian Fellowship, Smith launched the Harvest Crusade in 1990, a series of sermons at Pacific Amphitheater. Harvest Crusade, which had been backed by Smith’s church for its first couple of years, moved to Angel Stadium and became a national and international movement.
“I didn’t have any idea it would go this far,” Smith said in a 2002 interview. “We planned only one. It was so successful that we tried it again and again.”
Scholars credit the “Jesus Freaks” whom Smith mentored with spearheading a casual style of worship that is the norm among many congregations worldwide.
TRADITIONAL STYLE
But Calvary Chapel held onto its fundamentalist, Bible-based teachings.
“We are conservative and fundamental in our beliefs,” Smith said in 1993. “We really don’t have any place for liberal theology here.”
Smith’s congregation has come to encompass a multicultural community that attends weekly services, attends Bible classes, participates in a variety of ministries, supports missions and operates a K-12 school. The red-tiled sanctuary is simply decorated, with a pulpit onstage and a U.S. flag to the side.
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Smith’s followers say his humility was among his most endearing qualities.
In a 1990 interview, Smith said he was already preparing for the day when he would no longer be around to lead his ministry by training a cadre of young ministers who could step in.
“If you’re building your foundation on the word of God and Jesus Christ,” he said, “there shouldn’t be any shaking of the building when the builder’s gone.”
Smith’s survivors, friends said, include his wife, Kay, and children Chuck Jr., Jeff, Cheryl Brodersen and Janette Manderson.
Staff writer Jaimee Lynn Fletcher contributed to this report.
Pastor Chuck Smith, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, died Thursday morning after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 86.
Head of that church for more than 40 years, Smith is regarded as one of the most influential Christian pastors, a man who gave rise to the worldwide Jesus movement in the late ‘60s and early ’70s.
“Rarely does a man come along who impacts a generation of people,” said Harvest Crusade Pastor Greg Laurie. “Chuck Smith was that man.”
Known to many as “Papa Chuck,” Smith was a “father figure to many who were disenfranchised during the counter-culture movement.” Laurie said. “Chuck welcomed them with open arms.”
Pastor Jay Grant, a longtime friend, said he got a text at 7 a.m. Thursday from several of Smith’s close friends with the news that Smith had died at home.
“There have been people weeping for weeks because we knew it was close,” said Grant, who heads The Little Church by the Sea in Laguna Beach. Smith had been receiving treatment at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, he said.
Cheryl Brodersen, Smith’s daughter and wife of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa pastor Brian Brodersen, said on Twitter Thursday morning: “My precious father is beholding the face of Jesus right now.”
Over his lifetime, Smith’s open-armed style of ministry fueled the spread of thousands churches like Calvary Chapel, said Cecil Robeck, professor of Church History and Ecumenics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.
“Chuck was in a sense ahead of his time,” Robeck said. “He seemed to reflect the kind of thoughts that Pope Francis reflects today. That the church needs to loosen up.”
“As these young people became “discipled,” he appointed many of them to become leaders in new congregations.”
Smith’s chapel was also the birthplace of the Harvest Crusade, an event that draws thousands and fills Angel Stadium every year.
“It grew out of a Bible study that I did at his church Monday nights in 1990,” Laurie said. “Since then we’ve seen some 4 million attend them around the world, but it all started there.”
Smith announced he had cancer during a service on New Year’s Day 2012, prompting a nationwide outpouring of support. He continued to work and do interviews even after his diagnosis, saying he’s not “feeling it at all,” according to reports.
“He preached the word of God as long as he could speak,” said Joni McCollum, 59, a parishioner at Calvary Chapel for 30 years. She choked up as she talked about Smith. “In heaven, I’m sure he heard the words he wanted to hear: ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’”
The cancer was found during Smith’s bi-annual physical checkup when a blood test came back abnormal.
At the time, Smith told friend and journalist Dan Wooding: “It seems like it’s pretty much localized in the area of my middle lobe of the right lung, and so it looks like it’s treatable and so we know it’s in the hands of the Lord so I have no fears.”
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Contact the writer: – Staff writer Jaimee Lynn Fletcher and Ron Gonzales contributed to this report.
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