“Trust cannot be partial. It is an all, or nothing at all, proposition. Christ’s lessons on faith were identical. There is no room for half-hearted commitment when we are called to walk on water.”PASTOR CHUCK SMITH, VIA THE WORD FOR TODAY

Beginnings

Chuck Smith was born and raised in Ventura, California, in a Christian home, under a praying mother and an outgoing, evangelistic salesman father. He was born on 25 June 1927.THE WORD FOR TODAY; BIRTH DATE FROM WIKIPEDIA AND PRESS REPORTS, NOT GIVEN ON THE TWFT PAGE

At fifteen, in 1942, he made a life commitment to Christian service at a church camp. He was the only teenager from his church there that year; the next year he was leading the youth group and brought a large group back with him.THE WORD FOR TODAY

He grew up in the Foursquare Church and trained at Life Bible College in Los Angeles. He met and married Kay, both of them twenty-one, and they moved to Prescott, Arizona just after the honeymoon. His first pastorate began there in June 1948 at fifteen dollars a week, against an apartment at forty-five dollars a month.THE WORD FOR TODAY

The pastorates

Tucson followed Prescott, then Corona, California, where the church shrank over two years from fifty-seven people to twenty-seven, seven of them his own family. Then Huntington Beach, where he set out to break his pattern of moving every two years because he had run out of sermons. He began teaching verse by verse through 1 John, learned expository teaching, and the church doubled in a year. He taught Romans next, and credited it with showing him the grace of God after growing up in a works-oriented relationship with Him.THE WORD FOR TODAY

After Huntington Beach came the Chino Valley area, and then Costa Mesa. This is his first Costa Mesa pastorate, and it is not the church he is remembered for.THE WORD FOR TODAY

While he was in Costa Mesa his mother died. She had been his strongest link to the denomination he was affiliated with, and he resigned within a month, with a wife and four young children to support. The Word For Today does not name that denomination at this point in the account. Foursquare is the only one they name anywhere, so it is the reasonable reading, but it is our inference and not their statement.THE WORD FOR TODAY, WITH THE DENOMINATION INFERRED

A home Bible study in Corona then began to flourish, supported by people who wanted his teaching. Cassettes of the studies became a radio programme and the study outgrew the house. He founded an independent church, Corona Christian Center, with a board of elders drawn from the home study. Within a year he left that growing congregation for a small, divided church in Costa Mesa. That is the second Costa Mesa, and it is the one that became Calvary Chapel.THE WORD FOR TODAY

Costa Mesa, 1966

The year was 1966 and he was thirty-eight. The church had twenty-five people and was in the middle of a split; about half of them did not come back the week after his first sermon. He taught the Word in depth and verse by verse, and within weeks attendance began to grow.THE WORD FOR TODAY. SOME ACCOUNTS DATE THE MOVE TO 1965; TWFT SAYS 1966 AND THIS PAGE FOLLOWS THEM

The governing principle he took from Acts 2:47 was that his job was to feed the Word to the people who came, and the Lord would send hungry people. The verse in the King James reads:

“Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”ACTS 2:47, KING JAMES VERSION

The Jesus Movement

From 1967 he and Kay began noticing the young people on the streets of Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach and their own Newport Beach. Their eldest daughter was dating a young man who had been a hippie himself and who witnessed to hitchhikers he picked up. Kay asked him to bring one to the house. He brought a man named Lonnie, who soon moved in with them.THE WORD FOR TODAY. TWFT GIVES NO SURNAMES HERE AND NEITHER DOES THIS PAGE

The church grew quickly as young converts arrived straight off the streets. They needed somewhere to live, and the church answered with houses overseen by elders where they could live, worship and study in a safe setting. Parents came to see what had happened to their children, and many of them stayed. Over the years more than 1,500 churches were established out of it, alongside schools, Bible colleges, radio, television and film.THE WORD FOR TODAY

He kept preaching three services on Sunday mornings, another on Sunday evening and a weeknight study until a few days before his death at eighty-six, on 3 October 2013.THE WORD FOR TODAY; DEATH DATE FROM CBS AND CHRISTIANITY TODAY REPORTS

The Word For Today was founded in 1978 by Chuck Smith and his brother Paul Smith to carry his teaching.THE WORD FOR TODAY

Listen

The teaching libraries at The Word For Today, linked directly. C2000 is the through-the-Bible series that our commentary follows; it drills down book by book, and each study covers a range of chapters rather than a single one.

Both complete series also play here, every recording, book by book: Sunday Nights, 1979 to 1985 (C2000) and Sunday Nights, 1985 to 1999 (C3000). So do Kay Smith's own Bible studies and conference messages: Kay Smith on Listen.

Permission granted by The Word For Today. Chapter-level cross-linking into our commentary is not built yet: the C2000 studies are titled by chapter range, so mapping them to single chapters is its own pass.

Books

24 of his books, booklets, printed messages and study guides can be read here in full, with every Scripture reference linked to the Bible.

• Why Grace Changes Everything
• The Gospel According to Grace
• What the World Is Coming To
• Living Water
• Answers for Today
• Charisma vs. Charismania
• Calvary Chapel Distinctives
• Effective Prayer Life
• The Final Curtain

All of Chuck Smith’s books

Permission granted by The Word For Today.