Hippie Voices to God’s Heart: Calvary Chapel Encounters God

Here is a phenomenological inquiry into the fruitful ministry of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa’s Sunday Morning Worship Service. The purpose was to uncover and explicate the quintessential elements of worship leading from the life experiences of those worship leaders who shared the platform with Pastor Chuck Smith, known as the father of the Jesus Movement. The book examines Calvary Chapel’s inauspicious beginnings in a senior citizen trailer park recreation center as it explores key elements of Kay and Chuck Smith’s ministry. The church and the couple combined in 1965. By 1968, the church and the Smiths became a spiritual home replete with a spiritual mama and papa, ministering to hippies seeking everlasting love and eternal peace.The fruitfulness of Calvary Chapel’s ministry is its ability to reproduce maturing Christians that reproduce maturing Christians. This replication occurred thousands of times as the movement blossomed and spread to new churches and new ministries across the United States and globally. The phenomenon spawned a megachurch movement and birthed the modern Christian worship music industry. The hippies were alternately loathed and loved in their era. Perhaps the hippies’ most enduring and endearing contributions to twenty-first-century culture are traced to the Jesus movement. Read more