Foreword
Preface
1. In the Beginning
2. Drought Before the Harvest
3. As Far As the Eye Can See
4. Greg Laurie: Opening the Wrong Door
5. Steve Mays: A Heartbeat from Hell
6. Jon Courson: Fire & Rain
7. Raul Ries: From Fury to Freedom
8. Jeff Johnson: Drug Dealer to Shepherd
9. Skip Heitzig: A Quest for Psychic Powers
10. "Bil" Gallatin: Vision of Destruction
11. Joe Focht: Meditating Undercover
12. Mike MacIntosh: Neither Dead nor Alive
13. Principles of Growth
One of the constant frustrations that we as Christians face is that of seeking to know the unknowable. We would like to figure out God's ways. Yet God Himself has said, "My ways are not your ways; My ways are beyond your finding out."
When God desired to bring the nation Israel to the apex of its power, He chose an unlikely person to lead them to this place of glory. From the house of Jesse, in the city of Bethlehem, He anointed the youngest son, a boy named David, whose only qualifications were that he was a shepherd who loved God and reflected on His greatness as it was revealed in nature.
When God wanted to raise up a mighty army for David, He gathered those who were distressed, in debt, and discontented. These unlikely soldiers became David's mighty men and through them, God achieved remarkable victories.
When Jesus wanted to turn the world upside-down by bringing the message of God's love to all mankind, He chose unlikely candidates. Of the twelve, most were fishermen and one was a hated publican. These are certainly not the choices the average person would have made for the task. When God wanted to make an impact on our society, He again chose the foolish things (as far as the world is concerned) to confound the wise; He chose the weak things to confound the mighty.
For instance, in raising up pastors to shepherd Calvary Chapel churches with thousands of members, God did not necessarily look for Phi Beta Kappas from Yale or Harvard. He did not look for magna cum laude graduates with impressive resumes. Instead, God chose people like a Mexican street fighter who had dropped out of high school, a hippie who had gone insane on drugs, a drug dealer who was into sorcery, and a motorcycle gang member to build His churches in the Calvary Chapel movement. God has used many such unlikely leaders to turn worn traditions upside down.
In these pages, you are going to read the incredible, indeed, almost unbelievable accounts of men with varied, wild, and even Satanic backgrounds, with one thing in common. They were touched by the grace of God and now are being used to touch thousands of other lives. As you read, you will no doubt wonder how these men, who for the most part had no formal education for the ministry, were able to go out and build churches ranging in size from several thousand to ten thousand members.
What are the common factors? What are the things they learned that enabled them to experience such phenomenal success in their ministries? The stories you will read are only a sampling of the scores of others that we have watched come into our church over the years, but are uniquely representative of the transforming work of the Spirit of God.
We are convinced that the concepts that the Lord has taught us in forty years of ministry are transferable to others. If followed, these principles can help build strong churches all over the country.
In the book of Acts, we read that at the birth of the Church 3,000 souls came to Christ the very first day. Then the Lord continued to add daily such as should be saved. We are convinced that when the Church becomes what God intended it to be, God will do through the Church what He has always desired to do. Through the power of His grace He will bring in a harvest of souls that can only humble our loftiest plans. Indeed, His ways are not always our ways. He desires to bless us if we will only but hear His voice.
Chuck Smith
Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa
I blotted my forehead and opened recent copies of Look, Time, and Newsweek magazines. Full-page photographs held me spellbound.
Sweat dripped down my arms as I stood holding the magazines in a hot crowded South Indian bazaar. I was at a roadside stand near the Bangalore bus station in Mysore State. I was returning to the headquarters of Sai Baba, the most influential guru in India. At that time, I was a member of his inner circle.
A human form almost jumped out of one picture: a glistening body was plunging up from the Pacific Ocean, his arms outstretched toward the blue heavens above. It was a microsecond frozen in time. Particles of ocean spray hung crystallized in space. Water, frozen like glass, cascaded down his torso. A million droplets beaded his skin like jewels. His face seemed to hold an ocean of joyous ecstasy. Blissful relief had turned his countenance into a smiling cathedral of hope.
Here was a vintage California hippie, tanned with long golden hair that clung to a lean, muscular chest. The road map of this fellow's past could still be seen in his veins and face. He had experienced everything from shooting drugs in Haight Ashbury to eating sun-ripened fruit and thumbing along Route I between San Francisco and LA But the face coming out of the ocean indicated that the journey had come to a joyous and unexpected end. No more striving. No more hell. Infinite peace rested on this fortunate soul.
The young man in the picture had just been baptized in a cove at Corona Del Mar Beach. He had made an incredible journey from Golden Gate to eternity. He was one of nine hundred people baptized that day by Calvary Chapel. The Jesus Movement was going full-gear on the California coast.
The main figure performing the baptisms in the other pictures was Chuck Smith, the man behind the Calvary Chapel phenomenon that was sweeping the West Coast and other parts of America. For months, this fellowship had been baptizing an average of nine hundred people a month. It was a phenomenon that was bewildering the secular pundits, from Marcuse to Leary.
The pictures indicated that the crowd standing in the Pacific and along the rock bluff had abandoned the dreams of the counterculture to become Christians, casting their lives and burdens on Jesus Christ. They had abandoned the whole parcel of wild pleasures and freedoms - drugs, communal living, rejection of social norms, free sex, and all of the Eastern spiritualities that tagged along with this radical life experiment - in order to adopt Christianity, of all things. From my point of view in India, the pictures suggested a serious setback. The old world biblical view, with its black and white paradigms, was getting a new foothold. Why? Sooner than I dared think I would know the answer to that question,
For two years, I had been in India following the "consciousness expansion" regimen of a self-proclaimed God-man, who told me that I was destined for enlightenment. I was riding the crest of a mystical wave that would help bring the New Age movement to America in the coming ten years. It was a real-life drama that had all the intrigue of an adventure movie. But the magazine picture before me was an affront to all that I believed. It signaled opposition to the gathering momentum of our "new consciousness."
As I focused on the picture, I reflected on the enormous difficulty of my own spiritual path toward "godhood." At that time I had been feeling the road-weariness and discouragement that can come from the Eastern spiritual path. To make matters worse some spiritual "tests" impeded my path - in the form of two Christian missionaries. Their love was disquieting. They literally radiated a wholesome goodness. To my surprise even in the most adverse of circumstances, they rejoiced. They had a hidden spring of love and hope that never seemed to yield to personal difficulty. But as for me, even in my "advanced state of consciousness", I often found myself cursing all the things that sullied my trail to eternal perfection.
The Look magazine February 1971 cover story that had caught my eye, captured a surprising social phenomenon. The '60s era was dividing up into a number of diverse social highways as it was coming to a close. The counterculture was being portrayed in the picture - but there was a surprise fork in the road. California's radical hippie culture, embodied by the rejoicing nomad in the picture, was suddenly caught in a strange juxtaposition. A photograph of a flower child dripping in the Pacific surf was no surprise. But the reason for his being there was!
Within a year of that quiet moment at the Indian roadside stand, I (like the fellow pictured in the magazine) would be submerged in a lake near Charlottesville, Virginia, and come out with the same smile of relief and joy. For the first time in my life I would know real hope.
Little did I know at the time that, not only would I abandon my guru, but I would become a Christian. And in time I would even end up working with the same central figure in the photographs, Chuck Smith. The article was like God's quiet signal to my soul saying, "You think you are on the path to truth but you have been seduced into believing the most subtle lie in the world. Do you see that figure standing in the waves? That is My servant Chuck Smith. Someday, by My timetable, you will link up with him in the fellowship of ministry."
But that was in the future. At the time I only knew that, along with most of my generation, I had rejected the Christian alternative.
How did it happen? How did we get off the track in the first place? In some ways I was a model case.
A GENERATION IN CHAOS
I grew up in an atheistic home. But that spiritual vacuum would soon be filled by the occult. While my father was a diplomat in London - I was ten years old - he took me up on a dare one evening and brought home a Ouija board with which to experiment. As a convinced materialist he was convinced that all I was doing was engaging in a harmless superstition.
By the time I was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I was deeply into mysticism. The door blew open for me when I took a massive dose of Sandoz LSD in the Virginia countryside. It was one of those warm spring evenings when the meadows seemed like a vast armchair. After communicating with what I thought were higher celestial powers, I was certain that I had been given a glimpse of eternity. No one could keep me away from the Upanishads and other Indian holy books. I had a gut-directed sense that one day I would go to India in search of an enlightened master.
But the mystical experience wasn't my sole motivation for turning to Eastern spirituality. One of the key reasons for rejecting Christianity was what I saw in the churches I tried attending. The love that is so enthrallingly reported in the New Testament Church wasn't very evident in those modern churches. In fact its absence was louder than thunder. A small-minded judgmentalism accompanied a chilly aloofness. I felt that even the more conservative churches were not willing to share what they had with anyone who did not meet their particular standards.
To an outsider, there is nothing more sordid than when the grace and beauty of God have departed from a church. What remains is the outward display of religion without the inner heart and soul. Thus, Christianity became irrelevant in my eyes.
But this rejection of the truth was not simply the fault of closed-minded churches. My generation fell into its own trap. The wild permissiveness of the counterculture thought itself more honest in its own eyes than the "judgmental hypocrisy" it saw in the church. We wrote off the church prematurely. So, like my counterparts, I looked upon the overtures of Christianity with acute suspicion. For instance, I submitted the two missionaries I met in India to ruthless scrutiny. Yet what shone out of these two faithful souls was the unhindered grace of God. I reached the end of my road when I encountered the genuine article of God's grace. The caricature of the Church could no longer be an excuse for me. Indeed, during some of my drier years as a professing Christian, I too could be accused of the very things I hated most in the Church. I too was often intolerant, judgmental, and unloving.
To say the least, it takes a powerful ministry to reach a group as alienated and hostile to Christianity as the youth of the '60s and '70s. Amazingly, when these people encountered the ministry of Calvary Chapel, what they saw was enough to disarm them and turn them around.
When I finally strolled into the airy sanctuary of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa ten years after my conversion, what I felt was like a refreshing breeze. An abundant flow of love was present everywhere. There was not even a fleeting hint of judgmentalism. Rather, I felt a terrific sense of belonging. I noticed something else about the man in the pulpit. I had long wondered about God's promise that out of His people would flow rivers of living water. Without any question, I saw this happen as Chuck Smith spoke. I saw this as God's seal on the work. Chuck Smith was abundantly blessed as he pointed to God and never to himself.
When I met Chuck Smith after the service, it was like meeting an old friend. Many people thronged in line to meet him (attendance of the three Sunday morning services numbered in the thousands each). When my turn came to meet him, I am not sure I have ever encountered anyone more gracious, open, and loving. I could see why God used this humble soul to reach an entire generation. I also knew that his ministry was not just limited to reaching just one particular age group.
Calvary Chapel started from a humble base. But its strength was its willingness to reach out in a relevant way to a dying generation. The result is perhaps the greatest harvest of souls by a single church in American history. There are some exciting lessons in this for all of us. These are the lessons this book hopes to pursue.
Tal Brooke
As I describe to you the explosion of church growth that happened in the Calvary Chapel movement, I speak as a spectator. If there is any credit to be given, it belongs to God alone. If you understand this perspective, then when I describe to you my difficult years, my desert years, you will know why I stand in awe at what God has done. And you will celebrate with me the awesome symmetry of God's design. It leaves us all stunned and amazed.
Those pictures in Look, Life, Time, and Newsweek magazines of our massive Calvary Chapel baptisms in the Pacific Ocean resemble a human harvest field. Literally thousands of people can be seen crowding the shores waiting to be baptized. Images like these illustrate that this is a colossal phenomenon as far as churches go. Professors such as Peter Wagner at Fuller Seminary and Ron Enroth at Westmont College state in their books that there may be nothing like it in American history.
It has been estimated that in a two-year period in the mid '70s, Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa had performed well over eight thousand baptisms. During that same period, we were instrumental in 20,000 conversions to the Christian faith. Our decadal growth rate had been calculated by church growth experts to be near the ten thousand percent level.
Perhaps more staggering still is that when we first came to Calvary Chapel church in Costa Mesa in 1965, we had twenty-five people our first Sunday morning.
Now put this in perspective. Not only has that church of twenty-five members established more than five hundred affiliate Calvary Chapels across the world, but that one fellowship in Costa Mesa has grown until the number of people who consider it their home church is more than thirty-five thousand! It is currently listed as number three, according to Sunday attendance, among the ten largest churches in the United States; and is number one of the ten largest Protestant churches in California.
I have heard critics try to dismiss the impact of Calvary Chapel by calling it "production-line religion." They have accused us of catering to what people want to hear by diluting the message of Christ to appeal to the masses. Some critics, apparently, have decided what God can and cannot do - and He cannot do "the impossible."
Other critics, who belong to churches that have not grown in years (which was exactly my situation for well over a decade) often adopt a stance of spiritual elitism. To them, smallness proves spirituality, faithfulness, or an unwillingness to compromise. Perhaps they feel that "quantity" diminishes the "quality" of spirituality.
Christ talked about the man who buried his talents and wound up with nothing, because even he had was taken away. But He also spoke positively about the servant who magnified his talents a thousand fold. So to say that Christ purposefully limits the size and impact of a ministry is unfounded. The explosive force of a ministry can equally be taken as a sign that God is genuinely at work. Who can forget the day of Pentecost when three thousand turned to Christ on the streets of Jerusalem? "And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved" (Acts 2:47).
Just as the Jews soon discovered that they were not to keep the Good News among themselves, but were to include the "despised" Gentiles, so there was an interesting shifting of gears at Calvary Chapel. Our fellowship began with twenty five members who represented mainline, traditional America. Yet God called us to share with the youth from the counterculture. This outreach took a miracle of love and acceptance. But as each group accepted the other, both sides grew in number. There was a vital sense of God stepping into the picture and as lives changed before our eyes. The sense of being in the middle of a miracle kept feeding itself like a bonfire. When some hopeless heroin addict throws away the needle and goes to the beach to convert three people to Christ in an afternoon, it's a pretty strong boost to the faith of everyone involved!
Another remarkable pattern kept repeating itself. As soon as we moved into a new building, our fellowship would already be too big for the facilities. We seemed to grow like a Chinese checker jumping across the board. In two years we moved from our original building (one of the first church buildings in Costa Mesa) to a rented Lutheran church overlooking the Pacific. Soon thereafter we decided to do something unprecedented at the time and move the church to a school that we had bought. The building did not match up to code so we tore it down and built another, hippies and straights working and smiling side by side. It was such a sight that cars on the highway would slow down and gawk at us.
I had always felt that the ideal church size was about 275 and so we built accordingly. But by the time the sanctuary of 330 seats was completed in 1969, we were already forced to go to two services, and eventually had to use the outside courtyard for 500 more seats. This was all fine in good weather.
But by 1971 the large crowds and the winter rains forced us to move again. We bought a ten-acre tract of land on the Costa Mesa/Santa Ana border. Orange County was quickly changing and the once-famous orange orchards were making way for the exploding population of Los Angeles. Soon after buying the land, we again did the unprecedented and erected a giant circus tent that could seat 1,600 at a stretch. This was soon enlarged to hold 2,000 seats. Meanwhile we began building an enormous sanctuary adjacent to this site.
This was all amazing to me and a bit frightening. I would sit at the signal across the street looking at the bare lot that we had obligated ourselves to purchase, and start to panic. It would take a tremendous amount of money to develop the property. Was I being foolish to obligate these people to that kind of a project? Why not be satisfied where you are? The bills are all paid. You've got money in the bank. This is going to take such a great outlay. But then, as I sat there, the Lord spoke to my heart: Whose church is it? I replied out loud, "It's Your church, Lord." Then why are you worried about bankruptcy?
What an incredible relief. A sense of frantic worry just rolled off my shoulders. The finances were not my responsibility. They were His, This was an extremely important lesson for me to learn. It is not my church. It's His church. And God was the one who had created the problem! He was the one who brought so many people in that we couldn't house them.
God continued to bring people in. By the time Calvary Chapel fellowship had celebrated opening day in 1973 moving into the vast new sanctuary of 2,200 seats, the building was already too small to contain the numbers turning out. We held three Sunday morning services and had more than 4,000 people at each one. Many had to sit on the carpeted floor. A large portion of floor space was left without pews so as to provide that option.
I have always felt it important to maintain a sense of intimate fellowship. For this reason, the building was designed with pillars and beams that break up the sanctuary into segments of two hundred to five hundred seats so that each person has the feeling of being in a congregation rather than in a large crowded auditorium. Even the seating available on the carpeted floor near the front gives a sense of relaxation not unlike sitting in a meadow. The front platform is simple and unornamented. The seats form a semi-circle, communicating that no one is more important than anyone else. It gives an air of fresh openness. Though vast, it avoids pretension.
I keep abreast of all of the details of daily work at Calvary Chapel. I have also instructed my pastoral staff to tell me of any members who wish to see me personally. I make myself readily available and can be called through my secretary. I also make myself accessible to anyone who wants to see me after any of the Sunday morning services. I stand out front shaking hands, greeting people, and discussing anything they have on their hearts.
Calvary Chapel also ministers over the airwaves, and this must account for many of those who travel long distances to fellowship here. A Nielsen survey indicated that our Sunday morning Calvary Chapel service is the most listened-to program in the area during the entire week. As of 1987, Calvary's outreach has included numerous radio programs, television broadcasts, and the production and distribution of tapes and records. The missions outreach is considerable. Calvary Chapel not only supports Wycliffe Bible Translators, Campus Crusade, Missionary Aviation Fellowship, and other groups, but we donate to Third World needs. At what I felt was a leading from the Lord, we built a radio station in San Salvador and gave it to the local pastors there. We also gave money to Open Doors to purchase the ship that, in tandem with a barge, delivered one million Bibles to mainland China. Our financial commitment to missions exceeds the local expense budget by over 50%.
Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa often averages two hundred conversions a week. For years new believers were put into the highly respected Navigators' fourteen week home Bible study program. Since then, Calvary Chapel has developed its own course. As part of the course new believers can attend numerous evening Bible studies and classes taught during the week. Along with the Sunday morning and evening services, I also teach an in-depth midweek evening Bible study. On other nights of the week, thousands attend the wide variety of Bible studies and fellowship groups.
Calvary Chapel never asks for money. We avoid pressuring our members for "faith pledges" and no appeal for funds is ever made over our radio or television outreaches. Our feeling is that begging for money brings discredit to God. Financial integrity is central to this ministry. So much so that all of the staff salaries are considered low by usual standards. I limit myself and my family to a simple lifestyle while my ministry has enabled me to oversee millions of dollars, I want to be responsible to God for this money, for it is His money, not mine. I am merely a steward. This is important to me because I know that nonbelievers will be watching, and we are responsible for the way we witness to them.
I have always had problems with flashy Christian media celebrities who somehow wind up in palatial manor houses and maintain an affluent lifestyle from God's money - funds sent in by innocent, trusting, and vulnerable followers in response to high-pressure sales tactics. A personality cult is dangerous, but fiscal extravagance and dishonesty is even more dangerous. The tragedy is that all that the public sees, and in the end believes, is this image of Christians. A friend of mine calls this "Operation Caricature." These inflated public images of Christians create a cynical distrust in the non-believers, and the assumption of insincerity, naivete, or gullibility is applied to all of us en masse. Our faith is discredited.
I believe God has blessed us at Calvary Chapel with an exceptionally loving and open fellowship. Christ told us that the world will know we are His by our love for one another. This is our predominant emphasis. And how I pray that we can consistently show the world this standard. Certainly our Lord told us that our identification marks as Christians should not only involve love, but also purity and integrity of character of the highest order. Unfortunately, the image the world most often sees of believers is that presented by those self-elected representatives who parade themselves before the public at large as holy and spiritual, while the scandals of their private lives belie this image. Their lives are as risque as TV soap operas, which brings mocking sneers of discredit from secular observers.
We have to show the world something better than that. Yet, sadly, that numberless host of unseen Christians across the centuries who have subsisted and denied themselves on and off the mission field, living in scrupulous integrity - the George Muellers, Hudson Taylors, and C. T. Studds - doesn't even gain the slightest flicker from the media spotlight. These great lives pass by in quiet anonymity. God must help us correct these imbalances of our day and equip us to be the ambassadors of Christ we were called to be.
Let me say that in the Calvary Chapel phenomenon, I did not just walk into a church the size of an aircraft carrier and become an admiral. The church was not handed over to me, like an industrial magnate bequeathing an unworthy son some multinational enterprise. Instead, as I will share with you, I had to work from scratch and obey every new call that came from God, even when those calls seemed irrational. Behind it was blood, sweat, and tears, as well as a number of unforgettable lessons.
One of the secrets of my preparation for this work, I am convinced was my desert years, those years of struggle. It was in this crucible that God prepared my character for the coming work. God so often makes a mockery of outward circumstances. He repudiates the impossible if we will only but believe. And believe me, my situation looked absolutely impossible at times!
"I am not your hireling. God has called me to be a shepherd of His Church. You had better find a replacement for me."
These thoughts marked the major turning point in my life. I felt God clearly speaking to my heart. And after more than seventeen years of personal drought, seventeen years of failure in the traditional forms of Christian ministry, I knew that this era of confinement was coming to an end. I had come to a place where I could no longer digest the stifling restrictive role I was required to play. Where was the room for the Holy Spirit to work creatively among us? In my heart, I resigned, then and there, though I held my silence for the moment as I sat before the board of elders of the church.
That very night the Sunday evening church service had been unusually joyous and positive. I stepped out and took a chance. I departed from traditional procedure and tried something that involved everyone.
We decided to change the format from the traditional song service, announcements, prayer, and sermon to a more informal kind of a gathering. We were holding services in the local American Legion Hall. So having arrived early, my wife and I arranged the chairs in a circle rather than in a row. Rather than using the hymnal, we worshipped the Lord in singing choruses. Then we went into a time of prayer. And many people who had been bound were able to open up and pray. It was a very special experience for them. And then of course I shared in a more informal way from the Word of God, sitting there and teaching, more as I would within an intimate home fellowship rather than the traditional church setting.
It was electric. A lot of people got excited. But the board members had difficulty with the change of format. They were so upset they called a board meeting immediately after the service. The irony was that I had started this church. Yet the incorporating officers had not even made me an officer on the board. I was put more in the role of a hireling. Since they all had strong denominational backgrounds, they made sure that the church constitution and rules of order were virtually the same as those of a denominational church. So after seeing God move in this exciting service, they informed me that they did not want this to continue.
It seemed that our church, like so many churches, was artificially bound by extra-biblical rules and formalities, and run by men who acted as employers rather than brethren bonded together in the love of Christ. Elders were often voted into their positions because they were successful in the secular world. They had prestige or money. And so the leadership of the church was chosen by worldly standards. If they had succeeded pragmatically in business then why couldn't they help the church? It was a worldly formulation of success and had little to do with the standards of eternity. In fact, these very people can be the most inept when it comes to spiritual values and commitment because they have rooted their lives in outward success. If asked to sacrifice some of their affluence for the sake of Christ, I imagine that, like the rich young ruler, many of them would shake their heads and walk away. In our day, the Madison Avenue approach to church procedure has been sanctified.
Thus, the elders on the board used their rules of procedure to shape and confine the church to their own image. Little wonder it lacked the explosive dynamism, relevance, and love of the early Church as reported in the New Testament. It seemed that we had lost something on the way as these past twenty centuries went by. This, unfortunately, even applies to doctrinally conservative and "safe" churches. They so often follow a codified form of godliness but do not evidence the true power thereof.
As I sat before the church board that evening I kept my composure and, rather than stir up dissent, acquiesced to their request, not even seeking to defend what I had done. But in my heart burned a quiet certainty that God had called me to be a shepherd, not a hireling, or a ministerial employee on the payroll of businessmen.
I realized at that moment that this was not going to be my permanent place of ministry. It was the final move that solidified my decision to leave that rapidly growing fellowship and start all over again with the Bible study class I had in the Newport area. And the tiny fellowship at Calvary Chapel was already pressing me to come down and start my ministry with them. What was attractive in this was the opportunity to establish bylaws and articles allowing me freedom to be the shepherd responsible before God that I was called to be. I vowed in my heart that I would never again be a hireling of men.
Still, I faced uncertainty. If leaving this church was my decision alone, this costly choice would not have been nearly so nerve wracking. But naturally it involved my wife as well. I knew my decision would jolt her like an earthquake. Seventeen times she had to follow me and move to a different location. For seventeen years she had seen me work to supplement my ministry income. I had anything but a track record that would bring confidence and hope into the heart of a wife. Finally, I had worked up to a respectably sized church that was growing monthly. Only recently had we been able to purchase a beautiful new home that she loved. Now, after seventeen years of wilderness wandering, this brief oasis would once again be snatched away from her and replaced with an uncertain future. It was almost cruel. But the critical factor for me was that I was certain that God had ordained my decision to move. I had no choice but to tell her.
As usual in the churches I pastored, including the most recent, Kay formed deep emotional bonds with the people. She could not understand how I could consider leaving this blossoming fellowship that we had started, that loved us so deeply, in order to go to a small struggling church that was floundering and considering closing up shop. Not only that but officially I would be the associate pastor. I wouldn't even be the senior pastor.
"Are you sure this is the will of the Lord?" she asked me in emotional disbelief. Finally after a great deal of prayer, Kay looked me in the face. Her eyes shone like Abraham's Sarah, for she was willing to follow me anywhere. God used her to break my heart before him. This had to work. I pleaded before God with passion, though I knew God's leading was too strong for something not to be in the wind. By outward standards my move was insanity. How true that is when faith is required.
Many years before that board meeting took place, I had gone through seventeen years in the desert, a period that seemed to be one of spiritual and financial drought. And had I entertained even the most remote inkling that God might have ahead for me the scope of ministerial harvest that exists today, I would have thought it presumption, a dreamer's fantasy and nothing more. I might have laughed if you told me what lay ahead, but in derision, not in faith.
Real faith involves giving glory to God before we see any sure evidence. The Lord, I'm afraid, nailed me on this one. Years before I had pastored a church in Corona. After two years of hard work (I prayed, and I visited door to door, I printed all kinds of fliers, and tried every program in the church growth manual) our membership of twenty-five dropped to seventeen, five of whom were members of my own family! So it was necessary for me to work in a secular job in order to support our needs. God graciously opened up a job for me with Alpha Beta Market. It was a great position. Since I managed the produce department, I could go in at four in the morning and get off at two in the afternoon. That left the afternoon and evening for my ministry.
When we received word that my wife's mother died in Phoenix, we got someone to fill in at the church for us and notified the manager of the store in Corona that we were going to be gone for a couple of weeks to take care of the funeral and other family business. By the time I got back, I went in to report for work and my name wasn't on the board. I found the manager and said, "Well, I'm back now and ready to go to work." And he said, "There is a problem. You're going to have to go over and check with the union. You are behind on your dues. They said you cannot go back to work until you are all paid up."
I went over to the union to pay my back dues. They told me, "Well, you've been late so there's an assessment of a fifty dollar fine." I explained about the death in the family. They said that was too bad, but I still owed the money. Then I said that unless I was working I wouldn't even have the money to pay the fine. They replied that I could not work until I had paid the fine. And so it went, back and forth. It was a standoff, and they won.
And so without the extra income coming in we soon started to get notices that our payments were overdue. Meanwhile, the Alpha Beta Market had been wanting me to go into management. You don't have to belong to the union if you are in management. They had made an attractive and lucrative offer to me to go into market management. But their one requirement was that I no longer try to pastor a church. The president, Claude Edwards, was a former minister. They liked my work, and they liked ministers, but I would have to give up the ministry and make marketing a career.
And I thought... "Well, I am getting behind in my debts, and I really haven't had much success pastoring. The church was going down. Maybe God has called me to be a businessman. Maybe I ought to forget the ministry and go into marketing." It sounded like a fine career. And with the bills mounting up and all of the things we needed for our small children, this offer looked like a new door opening for us.
One morning I was so worried about the bills and what we were going to do that I couldn't go back to sleep. I was tossing around and worrying. I didn't want to wake up Kay, so I rolled out of bed quietly and went on out into the living room and sat there. Then I opened up the desk drawer and I got out the bills and totaled them all up. It came to four hundred and sixteen dollars. And I thought, "Well, that's it. I can't go on any longer in the ministry. I'll just have to forget it. I'll go in today and talk to them about a marketing career."
When the rest of the family got up, Kay fixed breakfast. Then, as I was watching our beautiful children, the phone rang. I answered the phone and when the caller asked how I was doing, I responded in a robust voice, "Oh, great! How are you doing?"
Now I made a covenant with the Lord when I went into the ministry. I told Him I would never let anybody know my financial problems. I would never ask people for money. I would never ask them to give money to the church. I would never take a second offering. I vowed at the time, "Lord, I'll never make money an issue; I will never let people know my personal needs. And I won't poor-mouth God's providence saying, 'Oh, boy, we're having such a terrible trial this month. The kids need tennis shoes...'" and so on. I wasn't going to insult my Boss by complaining about the wages.
After I told the caller that I was doing great he replied, "The Lord has been laying you on our hearts, and so we sent you a check yesterday special delivery. It should get there probably sometime today. We just thought we would let you know so you would be watching out for it." And I said, "Oh, praise the Lord! That's really wonderful of you to do that. Thank you so much." He said, "It's for four hundred and twenty-six dollars." I hung up the phone, went into the kitchen, grabbed hold of my wife, and waltzed her around the kitchen, praising God. "It's all right, honey! We'll be able to pay every bill we have! And we'll even have enough money to go out to dinner! Lord, You're so great! Thank You, Lord! Thank You! How good You are! What a blessing."
After about an hour or so, when I finally began to settle down a bit, the Lord began to speak to my heart. He said, What are you so excited about? And I kept burbling thank-you's to Him. He said, How do you know they are going to send that money? I said, "Come on, Lord, You've got to be kidding. These people have been our friends for a long time. They are good people. I trust them. They wouldn't call me up and tell me something like that unless they had sent it. Their word is good, Lord."
Then He got me. He said, This morning when you got up, you couldn't sleep. You were moping around. Now you had My Word that I would supply your needs. And I didn't see you waltzing your wife around the kitchen. I didn't see you exuberant and praising Me. Now that you have gotten the word of man, you are all excited. Whose word do you really trust more?
What a lesson! "Lord," I said, "I'm sorry that I didn't trust Your Word more than the word of man." If I had really trusted God at four A.M. I would have announced to Kay, "Look here at Philippians 4:19: God's going to supply all of our needs according to His riches in glory. Praise the Lord."
God was not being harsh at all, but in profound love He was teaching me a life-changing lesson. For if He is not there for us always our lives are sheer futility, and it is only a matter of time before the fantasy of our self sufficiency melts and we are utterly alone in the universe. Trust cannot be partial. It is all or none. Christ's lessons on faith were identical. Peter walking on water. Having the faith of a child. Simple, direct belief. Period. This lesson also prepared me for what God had ahead for me, though I would never have guessed it then. I had to learn to be faithful in the little things. I had to learn, as Abraham did, that what God has promised He is also able to perform.
My eyes had been off of God and on my problem and so it had grown bigger and bigger. But if I had gotten my eyes back on God, then the problem would have grown smaller and smaller. Abraham's faith enabled him to give glory to God before he saw any sure evidence. This was an important lesson.
During the era when I was still a member of a denominational church, a group of us would meet for prayer together. One of us would sit in the chair and the group would lay hands on him and pray. As I was sitting in the chair with the group praying for me, there came a word of prophecy in which the Lord said that He was changing my name. The new name He was giving me meant "Shepherd," because He was going to make me the shepherd of many flocks and the church would not be large enough to hold all of the people who would be flocking to hear the Word of God.
Then there was another prophecy that followed some years later. The discouraged group down at Calvary Chapel had met to determine whether to call me to minister or to disband. As they were praying, a word of prophecy came to them that I was going to come, that I would seek to remodel the church immediately, that I would be remodeling the platform area especially, that the church was going to be crowded to where it could not contain all of the people. The congregation would then have to move to the bluff overlooking the bay, and would eventually develop a national radio ministry, and become known around the world. A more unlikely prophecy could not have been uttered to sixteen discouraged people ready to quit and throw in the towel.
Through these experiences I have learned that God is working out a foreordained, prearranged plan. He is directing every turn and facet of my life, if I will only look to Him for guidance. Sometimes, because I do not understand the difficulty I am facing, I must look through the eyes of faith. And through faith I must realize that all things are working together for good But then as I look back I can see that the hand of God was leading me and directing me into various things. It is so beautiful to trace His hand in my life even though sometimes He was directing me into a move that was not an easy or comfortable situation. He simply needed to teach me some lessons.
Sometimes when I moved, God was teaching me not to move without being directed. And so He let me make that move to show me the danger of going ahead without His direction. But even then I can see the hand of God as He was working out His perfect plan in my life. He knew what it would take to bring me to a complete commitment of myself to Him. And then He knew what it would take to bring me to the end of myself, where I would give up totally and completely, reckoning my old self to be dead. God knew exactly what it would take, circumstantially, to bring this transition about in my life.
God also knew the work He planned to do through me to touch the lives of others. He knew and foreordained that the work I was to accomplish for His glory would have a rippling effect until it reached around the world. Before He could work through me, He had to work in me, conforming me by His Spirit into His image, bringing me into the measure of the stature of fullness of Christ. Once He had accomplished His work in me, He could then do all of those things He was desiring to do through me.
I do not believe that I have fully apprehended that for which He appointed me, nor do I feel His work in my own character is complete. I still have a long way to go before I fully reflect the image of Christ! But thank God His work continues as He is changing me from glory to glory.
The Bible speaks of those who despise the days of small things. I know I was often upset in the days of preparation. Indeed I still get impatient with God. But God is preparing me for the work He has up ahead for me. God was, and still is, working in my life to condition me for that next step, whatever it might be. For Ephesians 2:10 tells us we are His "poema", His workmanship or work of art. God desires to express Himself in the lives of his people. We become the expression of God to the world, for it is through what they observe in us that they get some idea about the nature and character of the One who fashioned us, the Artist. Thus God seeks to reveal Himself through me and through all genuine believers.
As I submit to God's touch, He is able to express His poetry in and through me. This is a staggering thought, and an immense responsibility. And without His grace, it is impossible.
In the wilderness of Galilee, where the plains meet the mountains folding in upon them, there is a beautiful but brief phenomenon. For just a few days every year, beginning one early spring morning, you can look out on what had been a plain, and see a meadow covered with a canopy of wildflowers extending as far as the eye can see - poppies, lilacs, buttercups, all radiating color and dancing in the wind. It literally happens overnight.
One morning Kay and I looked out into the California streets and on the beaches, and we beheld another radiantly colorful sight: human forms, extending as far as the eye could see. The countercultural revolution of the '60s had begun, and the new citizens were the hippies, "heads," and trippers. Their colorful outfits belied the deeper problem that they represented. God was trying to tell us something, as we looked out on that field. We faced the problem of a gap of culture and thought that stood between our generations. I was brought up in old-world piety compared to the fast-track rebellion of the hippies. How could my wife and I cross this gulf?
The Lord clearly impressed on our hearts, Reach out in love. Now we knew that love could never be contrived with a group as sensitive and perceptive as that one. So, to quote my wife, we saturated the air with prayers. She organized late-night prayer groups and morning prayer groups. It seemed that Kay and her friends were praying all the time. Meanwhile I prayed with elders and some church members. Before too long, we both felt a quiet change in the air, an excitement just beneath the surface.
Kay and I could feel growing inside our hearts, almost independent of our own efforts a growing burden of love and concern from God for these young people. With love would come the necessary understanding. Then we would be equipped to minister to the real needs of these estranged youths. Could this be what God had been preparing us for all these years? Were we looking at fields rich with harvest, dislocated souls ripe for almost anything from Buddha to Christ, and only waiting for the chance to commit their lives? The cultural shift had happened quickly between our generation and theirs, like the wildflowers suddenly appearing on the Galilean plains. How could we penetrate it?
Kay and I would often drive to a coffee shop in Huntington Beach and park our car. We would sit and look at those kids and pray for them. Where others seemed to be repulsed by these dirty, long-haired "freaks," we could only see the great emptiness of their hearts that caused them to turn to drugs for the answers to life that we knew only Jesus could supply. But how to reach them?
Then one day it happened. We met several youths who were hippies, yet they had a different glow on their faces. They were Christians, converted in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district through a communal ministry called The House of Acts. They were perfect representatives of their generation, having been to all the "Human Be-Ins" in Golden Gate Park, Grateful Dead Concerts, "acid tests," Merry Pranksters events, Whole Earth Festivals, and communal experiments. They had done it all. Then one day they saw the bottom of the elevator shaft within their own souls. They glimpsed the ultimate emptiness of their pursuit, and finally called upon Christ to be the center and Lord of their lives.
We invited a couple of these youths to move into our home with us in Newport Beach. They soon moved some of their friends in as well, and it became sort of a communal house for a while. Our four kids accepted them and we began to understand their disillusionment with the church and the adult world that they called the Straight Society. They had lost all faith in any values that had preceded their generation. They took it upon themselves to find newer and higher spiritual truths and begin a revolution.
But in their rootlessness, they were supremely vulnerable. Without history they operated out of a vacuum. They were like medieval peasants going into the sophisticated center of London, naive people open to being conned by slick street sellers and card tricksters. They denied the powers of darkness while they trafficked in the occult. Yet, as C. S. Lewis observed, God is equally happy with an occultist who worships him, as he is with a rationalist who denies His existence.
As the numbers of new believers grew, we realized that we had to find a place for these converted hippies to live. For we could not send them back to the hippie communes, knowing that they were not yet strong enough to resist the temptations of free sex and drugs that abounded there.
We started establishing Christian communal houses to hold them. The initial house elders came from the group that Kay and I had put up for a while. Their own zeal was contagious as they shared the rich truths of their newfound faith. By their zealous sharing about Jesus to those on the beaches, in the parks, and on the streets, they filled the area with the reality and truth of Christ. As we will see in detail when I discuss the lives and ministries of Greg Laurie, Jeff Johnson, Steve Mays, Mike MacIntosh, and others, this urgent and timely ministry took off like a rocket. It was irrepressible. God decided to use people whose lives had been a social engineer's nightmare. And my wife and I witnessed this miracle time and again.
Ironically, the only resistance we encountered to this move of God came from the church itself, those from our midst who had grown up with church backgrounds, those from the "Straight Society." This sudden infusion of rebellious youths met predictable opposition.
Our challenge was to overcome what most churches had not, namely their insistence on respectability, conformity, and a judgmental attitude toward anything that departed from the norm. Many of our members rallied to the challenge, feeding off the zeal of the hippie converts. But there were still some who resisted and disdained these newest members of our church who showed up with long hair, bells on the hems of their jeans, bare feet, and who otherwise looked like wildflowers in their great diffusion of dress inspired by American Indian or Asian tribal styles. It was wildly creative. But it was also threatening, especially to those with young children who did not want them emulating the hippies.
The interesting thing is how we saw love prove itself as God's adhesive force time and again. Duane Hart, a man who today is one of our elders, is a good example of the resistance many felt. He was furiously suspicious of the hippie converts. He felt that they were insincere freeloaders and manipulators who were unable to change. Never would they be able to work and support themselves.
Then one afternoon as Duane was working side-by-side with a group of hippie converts at the time we were dismantling a school building that had not been up to code he saw something that pierced his heart. These lean, muscular young men worked tirelessly as they sweat away in the summer sun pulling off the old roof tiles. Long hours went by and they never slowed down. By the end of the day, as they were scrubbing down piles of old roof tiles for use on the new structure, Duane noticed that their hands were bleeding from working so hard. And with their hands bleeding, these young men worked on into the night, singing of their newfound love for Jesus. God so convicted Duane of his judgmentalism that by the end of the day, there was not a word he could utter about them except in their defense from then on.
On another occasion, a renowned surgeon came to Calvary Chapel at the invitation of his future son-in-law, Don McClure. As Dr. Anderson told us later, he had had utter contempt for the hippie movement, and the morning he came to Calvary Chapel he was very ill at ease in the packed crowd. As much as he may have tried selectively to ignore these zealous converts, they were everywhere.
Rigid as a board, the illustrious surgeon mouthed the hymns. When it came time to read a passage of Scripture corporately, this world-renowned man had no Bible. But sure enough, someone near him did, a tall, shaggy, straggle-haired hippie. Reluctantly, condescendingly, he accepted the Bible, perhaps the way a Pharisee might take something from someone ceremonially unclean. As he opened it, he noticed that it had apparently been read with avid devotion, as Scriptures were underlined, starred, colored with felt-tip markers, and notes were scrawled in the margins. Shame and conviction flooded him. By the end of the service something in him changed.
But it really came down to my having to make a statement to men like Duane and some of our older members from straight church backgrounds. It was an issue that could have destroyed our work if we did not head it off. I told them:
"I don't want it ever said that we preach an easy kind of Christian experience at Calvary Chapel. But I also do not want to make the same mistake that the Holiness Church made thirty years ago. Without knowing it, they drove out and lost a whole generation of young people with a negative no-movie, no-dance, no-smoke gospel. Let us at Calvary not be guilty of this same mistake. Instead, let us trust God and emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit within individual lives. It is exciting and much more real and natural to allow the Spirit to dictate change. Let us never be guilty of forcing our Western Christian subculture of clean-shaven, short-hair styles or dress on anyone. We want change to come from inside out. We simply declare that drugs, striving to become a millionaire, or making sports your whole life is not where true fulfillment or ultimate meaning lies. Because the end of all these goals is emptiness and disappointment."
Perhaps this involves interesting symbolism, but I think that the last barrier to go in our church was the "bare feet" barrier. When we got beyond that, we were home free, The pivotal incident centered on a wide expanse of brand-new carpet that we had just put in. Those who had been inwardly protesting the hippies finally found a target upon which to vent their discontent. Dirty feet soil carpets, and these carpets cost a lot of money. Besides, who wants to see dirt marks on a brand-new carpet? They took it upon themselves, early one Sunday morning, to hang up a sign reading, No bare feet allowed.
For some reason I happened to reach the church earlier than usual, and was in time to takedown the sign. It was sad to see division over things this trivial. It was also sad to see what really lay behind the outward demarcations of division: a we/they polarity instead of love. This time, I was the one to call the board meeting, and I would not be overwhelmed in the manner that I reported earlier. Now, not only was I on the board, but I was president of the corporation. This did not make me a dictator by any means, but it meant that I would be free to be God's man with a clear conscience, and I would not be in the position of a hireling.
Then I spoke from my heart to the board:
"In a sense it is we older established Christians who are on trial before the young people. We are the ones who told them about James 2 and I John 4:7. The kind of action we displayed today puts a question mark across our faith. When things like this happen we have to ask ourselves who or what it is that controls and guides our motives.
"If because of our plush carpeting we have to close the door to one young person who has bare feet, then I'm personally in favor of ripping out all the carpeting and having concrete floors.
"If because of dirty jeans we have to say to one young person, 'I am sorry, you can't come into church tonight, your jeans are too dirty,' then I am in favor of getting rid of the upholstered pews. Let's get benches or steel chairs or something we can wash off. But let's not ever, ever, close the door to anyone because of dress or the way he looks."
Calvary Chapel jumped over that last hurdle. We were ready to move ahead.
Before too long, I was sending people out to plant other Calvary Chapels in other parts of California as well as across the country. Many of the people we sent out were youth extracted from the very counterculture that our "no bare feet" barrier would have prohibited. What a tragedy that would have been if we had closed the doors on them! I am sure that the flow of God's grace would have gone from a gush to a trickle if we had been that shallow.
If after all my years of struggle in God's crucible, I had not learned the lesson of following God's desires instead of man's traditional ideas, and to offer Christ's love instead of respectability and conformity, I like the salt would have been worthy of being cast upon the road to be trodden under foot. For I believe in God's eyes that I as a servant would have lost my "saltiness."
Instead, I saw the Calvary Chapel explosion of grace rise beyond my wildest dreams. Costa Mesa planted numerous Calvary Chapels, many of which have attendance that numbers in the thousands. The great work of God's design that I see here is that He has chosen as His ministers men who at one time were absolutely hopeless by society's standards. Their backgrounds embody virtually every depravity of our culture. And with almost perfect irony, the buildings that they have moved their churches into also embody almost every focal point that our society as a whole has retreated to as it has abandoned the church.
My son, Chuck, Jr., upon moving his Capo Beach Fellowship into a sizable local bowling alley observed, "We have gone to where the people are, and we have taken over their hangouts. Now when they go to our beautifully refurbished church, they are going to where they used to spend Friday and Saturday nights bowling."
Other ministries have thrived in equally unlikely settings. Raul Ries took over a Safeway store in West Covina. Don McClure took over an orange-packing house in Redlands. Mike MacIntosh first invaded one of the largest movie theaters in San Diego, then moved into a public school facility. Jeff Johnson took over one of the largest chain store buildings in the country. Steve Mays took over a similar discount house. Only Greg Laurie proved to be the one big exception: He built a massive structure designed to hold close to four thousand a service. Indeed, these were the only structures available that could contain the numbers turning out. Now Calvary Chapel churches extend to Philadelphia and upstate New York. Even on the East Coast these fellowships have grown to more than a thousand in regular attendance.
God has opened the floodgates and shown us harvest field after harvest field. We have learned that if we do not erect any barriers, and if we surrender our lives to Christ's purpose, there seems to be almost no limit to His grace. I watch this, and I stand back amazed. A day does not pass that I do not rejoice in my heart and thank God from the very bottom of my heart. It makes every moment of my desert years worth it, and I can say with the apostle Paul, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." I have been very fortunate to see some of these fruits in my own lifetime, especially when much greater men such as Abraham believed far greater promises and yet saw almost no sign of their fulfillment during their time on the earth.
Now I can see, looking back, that all of these moments in the wilderness of my life that had seemed so hopeless, when I felt hard pressed against the rock of despair, were worth every moment of blind struggle. God was teaching me and preparing me for His harvest by His own timetable and logistics, not mine! I could never have seen it in a million years when I was at that church of seventeen wondering whether or not God wanted me to stay in the ministry, I am thankful that His ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts. He can do far more through us than we would ever allow ourselves to dream.
4. GREG LAURIE: OPENING THE WRONG DOOR
As I responded to the ringing doorbell of our home in Newport Beach, I looked at a sight that had become quite familiar to us. A young man with long hair, bare feet, shining smile, and clear eyes had his hand outstretched as he said, "Hi, I'm Greg." He had just come from Harbor High School, which was just around the corner from our house.
He handed me a set of drawings that he said he had done that day in his art class. There, in cartoon form, were twenty two illustrations of my message given the previous Sunday. I had spoken on the text from John 7:37 in which Jesus promised living water to the thirsty world if it would just come to Him and drink. I had shared how the thirst Jesus referred to was a spiritual thirst that everyone had for God, and pointed out the folly of trying to fill that thirst with physical things or emotional experiences. The sermon was concluded by showing that God not only fills the thirsty life, but that His Spirit will begin to gush forth out of the believer's heart and life like a river of living water.
The first picture in the series of cartoons was of a little hippie character in ecstatic joy with a fountain springing out from his heart. I was struck by Greg's perception and how he had so completely absorbed the message and so graphically portrayed its truth in the little cartoons. Greg saw my absorption in his work, and then asked in a hesitant voice, "Do you like it?" I cried back heartily, "I love it. We need to publish this."
We had been looking for a tract that would appeal to the kids on the street, one that they would not take politely, then wad up and toss away. Soon, we were off to the local quick print shop and had 10,000 copies run off. A large group of volunteers spent the afternoon cutting them into pages as others stapled them together. That night all 10,000 tracts were handed out on the streets by some of our eager kids. Demands for more came in immediately from areas where the tracts had found their way. We ultimately printed more than half a million of these tracts.
Today Greg Laurie pastors one of the largest churches in California. According to statistics gathered by the International Megachurch Research Center it is one of the ten largest churches in America. It is a conservative estimate to say that twelve thousand different people go through the doors of his church, Harvest Fellowship, every week.
As you glimpse the enormous facility approaching it along the outskirts of Riverside, California - it is reminiscent of some aeronautical assembly plant towering above the condominiums near the Kennedy Space Center - you might be surprised to hear Greg tell you that this entire ministry was a "hand-me-down" nobody else wanted. By God's grace alone it has grown into the ministry it is today Greg is careful to tell you that it is God's church and not his.
And in Greg himself, God has turned around a life that was once bent in half by one of the worst curses of our culture, divorce. God often confounds the religious pundits of our day by using broken lives in a mighty role.
Divorce is a national sin that has marred one family after another, literally tearing this God-ordained institution in half. Children who have lived through one divorce know well enough what haunting loneliness it can create. They also know the feeling of alienation from themselves, from parents, from stepparents, and from friends.
Imagine, if you will, someone who has endured several of these parental splits and remarriages, someone who has grown up with his mother and as many as five stepfathers. No one could accuse such a person of being naive about divorce, or inexperienced in the area of loneliness and pain. Surely, this person could stand up as a representative of his entire generation and say, "I know what being from a broken family is like. I have lived through it five times." To see the grace of God overcome this crippling stigma is to triumph over one of the most evil social plagues to hit our world. Greg Laurie knows, because he is that very man.
When Christ entered Samaria, he met a woman at the well. As a Jewish rabbi, he broke tradition and shocked her by initiating conversation. He stunned her even more by offering her eternal life. And then He completely revealed the vastness of His grace by acknowledging that He was well aware of the fact that she had been "married" to five other men and the man she was living with was not her husband. Apparently she had a need for love that compulsively drove her, but she never seemed to find fulfillment.
What does this mean for us today? For people like Greg who have suffered from broken homes it is incredibly relevant. If this woman had had a son, I imagine he could cross the twenty centuries of time between them and meet eyes with Greg Laurie, his modern counterpart. With the props of time and culture removed, their emotional experiences would be very much the same. Such are the timeless effects of sin. Neither time nor custom can change them. Only grace can remove them. This is what Greg Laurie learned. It was a hard but life-saving lesson, one that he now can share with others.
It seemed like any other school day for nine-year-old Greg. hi a few minutes the bell would ring and he planned to run outside and play in New Jersey's autumn air. He liked to chase leaves about in the wind on the way home. Leaves didn't fall off trees in sunny Southern California (where he was born in 1952) as they did here in New Jersey. In fact there were hardly any seasons at all in California.
The move East had meant a big change for Greg, but he had settled into a happy and contented lifestyle. He was basking in the stability and security that he had yearned for over the years. Greg liked his latest stepfather, Oscar Laurie, whom he had come to think of as his real father, the dad he always wanted. Oscar, an intelligent and successful New York lawyer, had always shown Greg genuine kindness and affection. And when Greg needed it, this man of consistency and integrity gave him appropriate discipline. After a string of three other stepfathers Greg finally felt secure.
The bell rang and Greg fired out the school door amidst a swarm of kids and led the charge toward the street. Suddenly his frenzied excitement came to a halt. Greg spotted their family car waiting for him in front of the school. He had an unsettling feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach as if he were watching a tragically sad movie of his life. He walked slowly toward the street. The dread nearly choked him when he saw his mother inside the car. Then he noticed the boxes. Was he about to reexperience a painfully familiar scene?
Greg approached the car. "What's going on?" His mom responded matter-of-factly, "We're leaving."
"Where are we going?"
"We're going to Hawaii."
Then, through waves of fear, the movie image flickering badly, he asked, "Well, where's Dad?"
"Dad's not coming." This pronouncement was abrupt and final. The pleasant movie that had once been his life was over. And he had no idea what the next movie script of his life would be.
En route to Kennedy Airport, Greg's mother couldn't ease his tears. And during the long, agonizing flight to Hawaii, Greg reviewed in his mind the parade of faces that had stood in as his dad.
The sense of hopelessness was magnified when Greg saw the next man to enter the role of stepfather. He didn't like this new one standing at the gate at Hawaii's airport, a big rough-cut fellow. This man's face didn't have the tender honesty of Oscar's. He seemed hard, and smooth. Greg's mom, a stunning Marilyn Monroe look-alike whom men had pursued as far back as Greg could remember, stepped into the picture like a seasoned actress. The Hawaiian setting, by all outward appearances, was idyllic, but Greg only saw ugliness. He wanted with all his heart to be back with Oscar Laurie.
They drove from the airport to an opulent house. Al, the new man in his mother's life, was rich. He even had a swimming pool. Soon, Al led them proudly down the hall to Greg's new room.
When Greg stepped into the room, he felt the mocking brunt of a bad joke. It was identical, right down to the last detail - toys, wall color, shelving, and position of the bed - to his room back in New Jersey at Oscar's house. Greg felt betrayed. Never again, he resolved in his heart, would he trust the adult world. It was a hard world of deceivers whose smiles always seemed to belie their motives.
Greg also decided at that moment that he would have to adapt to this world of hardball in order to survive. If life was just a ruthless game, he would need to be very cunning. At the doorway of his new room, Greg had passed a turning point. From then on rebellion became a way of life. He decided that the qualities of virtue, truth, and goodness, which he had once longed for, now seemed to be relegated to fairy tales, forever taunting him with false hope. Whenever they appeared, they vanished like wisps of clouds when he drew near. He had always believed in God in his heart, but God seemed to be too distant, and removed from the sad reality of day to day life.
Al let Greg do anything. He could spend the day running up and down Waikiki beach, while Al and his mom spent the day at his plush hotel bar. Alcohol was a big part of their life. Whereas Oscar had made Greg earn any money beyond his fixed allowance, permissive Al would hand out five dollar bills at the asking. On the outside, things couldn't have been better. On the inside, Greg was empty. He had everything money could buy. Unfortunately, it couldn't buy love.
It also became plain in time that the marriage between Al and Greg's mom was not made in heaven. Their fights became worse, at times loud and violent, as Greg lay awake in bed listening. It wasn't long before this marriage ended in divorce, and Greg and his mother found themselves on the plane again, headed back to Southern California.
After several problem years in school, Greg entered the tenth grade. By this time he had learned how to be "cool." His goal was to hang out with the seniors. He had a quick mind, good looks, maturity, and natural charm that made him popular with almost any peer group he set his sights on. At Corona Del Mar High School, an affluent school of rich kids, button-down collars, and collegiate haircuts, for an underclassman to be accepted by the seniors was quite a feat. Yet Greg's gift at cynical mockery kept him at the center of attention. Before long he was part of the most elite senior clique, gaining him the privilege of hanging out at Senior Square, the ultimate place to be. An advantage to having little supervision at home was that he could be out all night and nobody cared. Greg and his clique of seniors often drove out to the all-night parties in Palm Springs.
But soon enough, the challenge was over. Greg saw through the clique mentality. All his hard work for acceptance had left him empty and bored. He was also struck by an ever-present sense that it wasn't really friendship that bonded his group together. They really seemed more interested in using each other for selfish ends.
Greg began to feel the same mistrust toward this peer group game as he did about the adult world. Was this conformity-minded clique of seniors any different from the adult society they would soon enter? Greg was no longer interested in their recreational drinking either. Liquor held little mystery for him. After all it had ruined his whole childhood. He had spent countless hours going in and out of bars looking for his mother.
When he reached the eleventh grade, Greg's restlessness led him to try a new identity. He would drop his clean-cut look and become a part of the drug culture. A friend persuaded Greg to transfer to Newport Harbor High School. Newport Beach was a major drug center of California, and this particular high school was famous for spearheading the countercultural drive. On Greg's first day there, he abandoned his collegiate, button-down collar look for jeans and lengthening hair. He also began experimenting with marijuana which was readily available in varieties ranging from Mexican weed to Eukiah Sinsmilla.
In almost no time, Greg was heavily into smoking pot with his new group of friends. Soon, he and his friends were getting stoned three times a day. It was during this time that Kay and I had our first contact with Greg, though we didn't know him at the time. On school lunch breaks he and his friends would go to a house only a few blocks from where my family lived. Kay started to notice this motley crew as they would laugh and joke on their way back to school. Clearly they were on drugs. It was at this point that the burden we felt for the youth subculture became almost intolerable. And that was when Kay and I started to pray for God to open doors for us to reach this alienated generation.
One day while working with a group of laborers dismantling a carnival, Greg was offered LSD. Greg dropped the acid while he worked, and soon was entering a new "spiritual" world where everything seemed to have hidden meanings. Insights kept flashing into his mind. He even "transcended" the fact that he almost got killed by a crane. In his mind this was a mere cosmic love tap. Greg was beginning to see eternity beneath the most ordinary things.
Greg had found a new purpose in life. He would pursue truth through LSD. As an individualist he resisted blind conformity to the hippie movement. Though he looked like any other hippie, he insisted on having his own thoughts. For that reason he did not take part in Eastern religions, nature worship, "be-ins," or communes. But Greg fully embraced the wild freedom of the time. He continued to use LSD regularly on weekends at friends' houses or in the California countryside.
At this time, Greg also began to notice a rather "uncool" group on campus. They were secure enough in their views not to care about social approval. They refused to conform to the new social revolution around them. In fact they seemed bolder than their extreme counterparts, even more than the wildest rebels who defied all morality, standards, and institutions. The heat of conflict caused them to take a highly visible stand in this wildest of high schools. At lunch they often marched across the high school campus singing hymns and handing out tracts. Greg avoided them. They were Christians, the social lepers. The amazing thing about them was that a number had been in the dope scene much more deeply than Greg. Now they handed out tracts and smiled.
Every time Greg was handed a tract, he would look pointedly at the giver while sticking the tract into his back pocket. Greg had a drawer full of them. For some reason he never threw them away. And now and then he would get stoned, pull them out of a drawer, read them, and laugh. But his laughter got rather thin at one point as he found himself on a bad LSD trip. He found himself in an unknown world. Greg discovered that it is a little hard to mock the idea of Hell when you really don't know what lies at the heart of existence.
One day Greg and a friend decided to split a mega-dose of "orange sunshine" LSD. He laid down and waited to soar into some unknown realm. Greg felt like a person with a pocket full of skeleton keys that could open one unknown door after another. The quality of the experience was strictly luck of the draw. Greg waited.
Suddenly the air seemed to ripple like water. A wave of insanity swept through him. He felt distinctly that he was losing his grasp on reality. He also became conscious of a feeling of evil - a sort of presence, if you will. Previously LSD had seemed to have a safety switch. Greg felt he could always pull out and escape if things got out of control. It was like toying with a dangerous situation without suffering the consequences, like watching a movie at one of those massive cinemadome theaters. The illusion of being in the action is so great you begin to react to the images on the screen. In an action film, you experience the thrill of being close to death without having to suffer any potential consequences.
Greg began to wonder if there really was a safety valve on LSD. He had heard of people being killed by it or going insane. Could he be sure that he could bail out? What if the insanity did not go away? A new terror flooded him.
As he felt himself going berserk, he wanted to stand in front of a mirror, perhaps to recapture who he was and remember his identity. As he stared his face started to melt. It aged hideously, then it deformed with monstrous contortions. Then something jagged ripped through him, a hideous, pealing laughter. "You're gonna die! You're gonna die!"
Greg ran outside and tried to rip his clothes off. Neighbors stared out through shuttered windows. Greg's friends grabbed him and held him. He kept thinking, I'm in trouble, I need help. I may never get back to where I was.
For months after that Greg felt that his brain was slightly fried. He realized that he did not want to take any more LSD. The stakes were too high.
One day Greg felt drawn to a gathering crowd in the school cafeteria. The fellow speaking radiated joyous hope. He was in his twenties and had flaxen hair that went down to his shoulders. He looked like tic had stepped out of a Bay Area billboard advertising a concert like Big Brother and the Holding Company at Golden Gate Park. In fact, judging from his words, he had done it all. But this speaker shared that he had come to the end of his long search - he had found the Lord. He was at Newport Harbor High that day to tell the kids why Christ (and not rock or acid) was the answer to every question they were asking. This fellow was still in the honeymoon of his own conversion experience and was feeling the thrill of it. His joy was infectious. So was his ability to evangelize boldly. Then he said something that brought Greg up short.
Greg had slipped into the back of the crowd. The last thing he wanted to be was a member of the "Jesus People" and become a social outcast. In the back of his mind, he knew deep down that God existed. He remembered as a small child, quietly saying prayers to Him. It was also hard to ignore that often, when he got into tight situations, he would call out to God.
In fact it wasn't long before that Greg and his friends found themselves speeding down the Pacific Coast highway late one night in the rain. They had a kilo of pot in the trunk. Suddenly the car fishtailed wildly out of control. It looked certain that they would crash and die. Greg saw the headlines in his mind, "Drug Dealers Dead," after people found what was in the trunk. But he was never a drug dealer! What a terrible way to go. In a quick breath Greg spoke the prayer, "Oh, God, if You get me out of this I promise I will serve You." He had done this before with God and knew that God had come through every time. But Greg would later retreat on his promises or conveniently forget them.
Now the words of Christ, spoken by the young man, suddenly cut into Greg: "You are either for Me or you are against Me." Greg never realized that. He always knew Christ was real, but he never knew that a choice of this nature existed - to be "for Him or against Him." Which was he? By not being "for Him," Greg was, in fact, in that great crowd against Christ. He had never realized you could be unwittingly against Christ. Apparently something was demanded of him, some kind of positive response. The speaker's eyes, at first mellow and loving, had become flint-like as he echoed Christ's words.
The speaker now challenged the hushed group to be "for" Jesus. Greg also noticed that a girl that he had been interested in for more than a year was one of "them," a Christian. He then began to consider what it would cost him to become a Christian. He squirmed inside because he sensed he would lose his newest identity and his latest group of friends. And what about his freewheeling lifestyle? He lived for himself, for fun. And what if he was asked to make a fool of himself like these campus Christians?
But then there was another consideration eating away at Greg's mind. Because he had felt so betrayed as a child his highest allegiance had always been to find truth at any cost. Could God be the One he was really searching for? He remembered his dark and terrifying encounter with LSD. What if, one day, one of these close brushes with insanity, death, or destruction slammed the safety valve shut permanently? That would be it - the end of his life. What meaning would his life have had then? Nothing noble or good, nothing to be proud of.
Greg Laurie made an eternal decision right before the bell went off for fifth period. He came forward, bowed his head, and that was it. He invited Jesus Christ into his life to be his Lord and Savior, He cast his lot in to be with Christ. He was "for" Christ - finally. Greg also knew he had come to the end of his search. This was it, the truth he longed for all his life.
Before Greg knew it the pretty girl whom he liked threw her arms around him. People surrounded him and patted him on the back. It was wonderful. But now the peer wars would begin. He began to wonder how long could he hide what he had done? As it turned out, not too long. It was Friday and school was almost out. That meant it was time for his old group of friends to go off into the country for the weekend and get stoned.
As was their usual routine, Greg and his friends made their way out to the wilds of nature near a national park. Someone offered Greg an acid tablet. He said no. He left them and went off alone to sit on a rock. Just as he was lighting up a pipe of marijuana, he felt the inner voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to his soul. He knew he would never smoke again. Greg Laurie, that spring day of 1970, threw away his stash as well as his pipe. It was only a day after his conversion, but it seemed like a lifetime of change had already taken place.
Greg went to one of the houses where he and his friends had used drugs countless times. He wanted to break the news of his conversion to them gently. In fact, he left his Bible hidden in the hedge so that he could ward off their preconceptions. Then the mother of one of his drug buddies came through the front door with a smirk on her face and the Bible in her hand. "Whose is this?" When Greg explained to his pals what had happened to him they laughed and jeered. They also expressed disappointment. To their minds, a good drug buddy was becoming a Jesus freak.
Every time Greg was put down or rejected by a different group or a friend, he realized how shallow and unsatisfying those friendships had been. He became more and more convinced that he would not sway from his newfound faith. He became almost overcome by zeal for his faith, and was soon out on the streets witnessing to people. Greg realized that following Christ was an all-or-nothing commitment as far as he was concerned. It also began to dawn on him that, for the first time in his life, he had a purpose. He no longer desired to live for himself, but to be a servant, a witness of his Lord. The old life began to peel away quickly. Within about two weeks of his conversion, Greg lost the last of his friends. Also, within that time, Greg started to go to Calvary Chapel.
Greg's first church experience as a Christian was at one of our evening services. Calvary was growing rapidly and we would soon move from a smaller building into a tent to accommodate the overflow. Greg was momentarily overwhelmed by fear before going through the door. You see, part of the toll that having five stepfathers had extracted from his soul was a very real fear of intimacy, of the vulnerability that love requires. Greg visibly trembled before going in. Finally he squeezed into a front-row seat that a friend had been holding for him, and told me later that I was one of the first adults he was willing to trust. As I taught that night, Greg's heart was set free from mistrust and suspicion to trust. In no time he was attending every function we had, immersing himself in teaching and tapes. It seemed he couldn't get enough of it.
Greg had picked up many negative "hand-me-downs" as a non-Christian youth, primarily a deep sense of personal insecurity. But God had also given him a number of positive "hand-me-downs" once he was a Christian. Greg had a tremendous desire to serve and God would soon provide many opportunities. One night, Greg went to a Bible study, and the leader did not show up. No one else had much to say, so Greg started sharing what was on his heart. The host asked him to lead the Bible study the next week and from then on. By this time Greg had been attending Calvary Chapel for a few years.
Another situation helped point Greg toward the plans God had for his life. Greg showed up at Pirates Cove at Corona Del Mar Beach, to witness one of our Calvary Chapel baptisms. By 1972 we were baptizing around nine hundred a month. Greg arrived to find no one was there. He thought he had gotten there too late. Then he saw a group of about thirty Christians singing together on the beach. He joined them, and as he did at the Bible study, Greg started sharing what was on his heart.
Soon two girls arrived and asked Greg if he was a pastor and if he could baptize them. Greg jumped up and said, "Oh, no, I'm not a pastor! I couldn't do that." But they were desperate. They felt that they had to be baptized then and there, and they were crushed that they had missed the Calvary Chapel baptism. They asked him again, and Greg assured them, "I'm not a preacher." Then he felt the voice of the Lord prompting him to honor their request.
Greg turned to the others and said, "Well, these girls need to be baptized. So let's go down to the water and do it." He walked along the beach followed by thirty-two people and thought to himself, What have I gotten myself into? Greg wasn't sure he had all the words right, but he did it. After it was over, two more people showed up and asked to be baptized. And Greg baptized them as well.
Afterward Greg looked up at a rock bluff above him and saw a crowd of curious onlookers. He had already performed the sacrament of baptism, but now he felt God telling him to preach. Greg stood below them and called up, "You may wonder what we are doing down here." When he was finished, a number of them gave their lives to Christ. God had just showed Greg another facet of his ministry. He had been gifted as a preacher and evangelist. As it turned out, the Calvary Chapel baptism came hours after Greg was finished.
When Greg graduated from high school, he had a very strong sense that he was to remain around Calvary Chapel and not go on to college. During that time, he continued ministering and leading Bible studies and working on graphic arts. He was around the office all the time and did numerous things to help the staff as a self-described "gopher." When I was away, he would wait anxiously for the phone to ring, for the secretary would turn those calls over to him. I often wondered what some of those callers would have done if they had known that the person counseling them on the phone was a nineteen-year-old hippie.
The next "hand-me-down" that Greg received came when he was twenty years old, almost three years after he had become a Christian. There was a Bible study in Riverside that had once drawn three hundred people, but had dropped to eighty. The problem came in finding someone to drive all the way to Riverside from Costa Mesa to lead it. My son, Chuck, Jr., had helped start and nourish it, but he felt called to start another church. After him, a string of leaders took it short term. Then one day as the group searched desperately for a leader (and after everyone else had turned it down) they offered it to Greg.
Greg was eager to get any crumb that fell off the table, so he leaped at the opportunity. That dwindling Bible study would soon become the huge Harvest Fellowship of Riverside.
When Greg took the Bible study, attendance jumped back up to three hundred almost overnight. They shared the use of another church building, and young people flocked in. There were articles in the local papers about this phenomenon of counterculture youths turning to Christ and the dynamic and innovative leadership of Greg Laurie. He soon began traveling all over the country with evangelistic rallies.
As attendance grew, Greg felt the Lord directing them to move into their own building. About a year after joining the fellowship he found a church facility that was no longer in use, and before long I was with Greg in the realtor's office. After I wrote out the down payment, I felt the thrill of telling Greg, "You just got yourself a church."
The fellowship of three hundred jumped to five hundred at their very first service. In one year they doubled in size. That necessitated multiple services.
By 1974, Riverside Calvary Chapel (as ft was then called) met in the downtown Civic Center on Sunday evenings. It had 1,500 seats. Meanwhile they expanded their church building for the morning services. But by 1980, after five years of steady growth, Greg knew that they had to build a new building. The result was the colossal structure that towers over Riverside today with the big sign "Harvest Christian Fellowship." Today, with four packed services on Sunday, they have more than 12,000 attending.
In addition to pastoring, Greg also has a passion for evangelism. The Lord has opened many great opportunities for Greg to use his gifts in recent years, from radio rallies for his nationally syndicated radio program, A New Beginning, to full-fledged evangelistic crusades.
In 1990, after seeing the tremendous response Greg's messages received at our Monday night Bible study, I felt the Greg should try a larger outreach. Already, an average of 100 young people were accepting Christ weekly at these meetings. That summer, we decided to hold a five-night crusade at the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa. The crusade exceeded all expectations as record crowds filled the arena and hundreds committed their lives to Christ.
So began the opening chapter of what would become Harvest Crusades, Incorporated. Within weeks, Greg and his crusade organizers received requests for outreaches from churches in various other cities in the country. Since that very first Harvest Crusade almost three years ago, Greg has had the opportunity to preach the gospel message to nearly 540,000 people in Anaheim, California, Honolulu, Hawaii, San Diego, California, and several other cities on the West Coast. Of that number, close to 32,000 have committed their lives to Christ.
One of the greatest evangelistic opportunities Greg had, however, took place during a radio rally in New York. A special person from Greg's past was living in nearby New Jersey: one Oscar Laurie, the only man Greg ever considered to be his father. Greg went to see Oscar and introduced him to his pretty young wife, Cathe. He also got to do something else - and this is where we see God's incredible redemptive plan. Greg was also able to introduce his father to the One who had changed his life - Jesus Christ.
Since Oscar had suffered a serious heart attack, he was beginning to weigh eternal values against temporal ones. The next day he said, "Greg, I thought about what you said last night. And I want to know what I must do to be saved and accept Jesus Christ into my life."
Greg again shared with Oscar the essence of the Gospel. Oscar replied, "I am ready to do it right now." They both knelt down and prayed. Oscar began to weep and then asked Greg if God could heal is heart. Greg blurted out, "Yes."
Then Oscar, with child-like faith, prayed for healing. In minutes, they were both convinced that God had touched him. And indeed, something had happened to Oscar both physically and spiritually. Today, Oscar Laurie is in good health, and an elder in his church and his wife and two sons are all Christians. Greg looks at this - along with everything else he has seen the Lord do in his life - with pure awe and gratitude.
As we have looked at the life of Greg Laurie, we have seen the story of a man who has had five stepfathers come to discover that he had an eternal Father in heaven all along. Greg realized that God has taken his weaknesses and used even his flaws for His glory Greg has also learned not to seek the approval of men, but of God. The huge numbers that his life has touched testify to Christ's promise of multiplying the numbers of sisters, brothers, mothers, and fathers He would add to our true family in Him.
Of particular joy to him was meeting Cathe, his wife. Her appearing in Greg's life has shown God's promise that if you seek His will, He will give you the desires of your heart that are according to His will. As you recall, Greg had also been terrified of love. Now Cathe has provided him the love he always yearned for, a wholesome, loving, and stable family. And if you look at Greg and Cathe today, you learn that with God's help, it is even possible for someone from a radically unstable family background to be blessed in marriage.
When it is all said, I am not sure which is the greater gift to Greg: the harvest of his ministry, or his marriage to Cathe and their two sons. Either way, God has worked a miracle that keeps increasing, like the loaves and the fishes, from a few "hand-me-downs" to the feeding of thousands.
5. STEVE MAYS: A HEARTBEAT FROM HELL
One bleak day a hoodlum from Anaheim showed up at one of our Christian commune houses dressed in bib overalls and leathers, with a nine millimeter Baretta tucked in his back pocket. He had not bathed in six months and had literally slept in gutters while living as a fugitive from the law. He had not brushed his teeth in two years and, with his neo-barbarian hairstyle, he was a sight to behold.
His name was Steve Mays and he was alienated from everybody - from his parents, who had tossed him out of their house years before, to the tough group of outlaws bikers he had been living with. He had been wanted by the FBI for attempted murder and draft dodging. There was also a contract out on his life.
Steve's path to destruction seemed clearly written on the wall from the time he was a child. He had been so uncontrollable that his parents resorted to calling the police when things got out of band. This was happening almost constantly by the time they threw him out of the house.
After a long string of bizarre events, Steve's crowning act took place one evening when he was home alone. When his parents returned, they had to shove open the front door; it had been wedged shut with towels. They discovered that their house had been made into a gigantic indoor bathtub. Water came gushing out the front door. Their son was sitting in the middle of the living room completely oblivious to the damage being done to his parents' house. He was smoking a pencil and tried to tell them about a TV show he was watching. The TV was off. He had been stoned for twenty-seven hours on yet another chemical. This time he had swallowed too much Asthmadore. He had experimented with more concoctions than you can imagine.
By the time the police arrived, his parents had gotten Steve to his room. Before his eyes his window hinges turned into toads and were apparently telling him jokes, making him laugh. When the police found out that Stephen was a member of the Anaheim High School football team, they lectured him but did not arrest him.
By noon the next day, Steve's father returned home early to have a look at his less-than-model son. This time Steve was in the kitchen fixing two place settings of milk and sandwiches. When asked who the other sandwich was for, Steve motioned to the clock on the wall and said it was for "Brad" who lived in the clock.
Not long after this episode Steve, stoned as ever (this time on LSD, hashish, and other drugs) terrorized his parents with a machete, His mother looked on in horror as Steve grimaced and paced around swinging the blade. Once he fell asleep, his bewildered parents took away the machete. To say the least, there was a considerable generation gap in the Mays home. His father was a lab technician, a former military man and patriot. His '60s generation son had become impossible. In truth, the two had ceased communicating years before.
Looking back, Steve pinpoints one day in seventh grade when his life took a turn toward destruction. He came home from school a changed person. Everybody noticed the change, though they didn't know what had caused it. On that day, a respected authority figure, one of his teachers, had sexually molested him. It was such a terrible encounter that Steve blocked it completely from memory for years. His behavior went awry from then on. In little time, while still in seventh grade, he was smoking pot and stealing. His grades went from straight A's to D's and F's as his motivation went out the window. Life became one big game of hookey, pot, pills, speed, and beach parties. Steve was on a twisted path to destruction.
By the time Steve was in high school, his stealing had become a serious problem. He was booked four times in one week. Then by the time of the machete episode, Steve quit the high school football team (his drug antics had been getting more and more inappropriate on the football field) and became the school drug dealer. Steve and his former teammates would smoke entire "lids" in a single joint. They could get any drug they wanted and tried them all.
On one weekend mountain retreat - Steve had planned to go but for some reason couldn't - some of the football players got so high on barbiturates that they overdosed. Accidentally, their mountain cabin caught fire, but they were unconscious, too "out of it" to move. As a result, all of them were killed, and the tragedy shook the entire high school.
About this time Steve totally turned against his parents. He despised them. His hostile mood changes were further affected by changes in his body chemistry from taking "uppers" such as speed, Dexedrine, and Methamphetamine. These uppers were now keeping Steve awake three and four days straight. He was becoming increasingly paranoid because of the lack of sleep. To top it off, Steve had to find a way of releasing the fierce energy bursts that would come upon him. He would stay up all night whacking away with hammers and tools on his newest project - overhauling his sports car. When his dad came home from work he would find his son in the driveway, banging away on the car at all hours of the night. Steve was dropping out of the world fast.
Steve's new dream was to be a terrorist. His rage caused him to be in fights at school constantly He hit one fellow thirty-one times in the face. He cut off another guy's finger. By the time his orders to appear before the draft board came, Steve defiantly burned his draft card and went on the road. As far as Steve's parents were concerned, the only place left for him to go was out the front door. They had an incorrigible rebel on their hands who was beyond hope.
Steve's new place of residence was in a section of Orange County known as Garden Grove, in the hangout of a motorcycle gang. Steve was able to stay as long as he applied his mechanical talents to motorcycle body work. But he soon found out that his fellow tenants were fierce masters. If his parents had been unloving or alienating at times, these new housemates were positively demonic. Steve discovered a terror that he never would have dreamed existed back on the old homestead. He found himself trapped in a spiritual environment that most people don't know about, or would never want to know about.
The motorcycle gang members were in their mid-thirties, twice Steve's age. They also carried guns and were heavily involved in crime and drug-dealing. As bad as Steve was, he was innocent compared to them. Another thing that set Steve apart was his choice of drug. This might seem like a minor point, but it made all the difference in their social world. They were into reds or "downers," while Steve was maniacally on 66 uppers." His frenetic binges got on the nerves of a few of them. One of them especially had it in for Steve and he began searing him more and more with his guns. It seemed that the increasingly violent and terrifying incidents were rapidly becoming nothing more than a sadistic game.
I will let Steve Mays recount this era, as he has done often when giving his testimony:
"One night a motorcycle was tipped over. They woke up and said I did it. I would stay up all through the night and separate bolts and nuts and put them in absolute order. Then I would dump them all out on the floor and work through this same ritual again. That was how stoned I was. I would take twenty Dexedrine's at one time with ten cups of coffee. I would take the twenty Dexies and crush them, I would add an Excedrin, a vitamin, and put it all in a horse pill and swallow it with coffee. I would get so wired my mind would just fry.
"So they woke me up early one morning after my binge was over. They said that I had rolled the bike over. I told them I didn't touch it.
"The guy who had it in for me reached for something. Then I saw the blue barrels of a twelve-gauge double barreled shotgun. He told me to open my mouth while the others held me and helped shove it in my mouth. Then I said, 'That isn't loaded, is it?' They pulled it out, pointed at the pillow next to my ear, and pulled the trigger. It blew pillow feathers all over the place. Then they stuck the shotgun back in my mouth and smoke began to come out. I thought I was going to die. My paranoia really began to grow from then on. That's when another guy living there gave me his gun to protect myself. It was then that I started carrying a gun. I would have to stay awake all night to make sure that I wouldn't die, living in the same house with a guy who wanted to kill me.
"Soon after that I was out in the backyard working on my motorcycle. He came out in the yard with a thirty-eight pistol. I was sitting on a gasoline can as a chair, while I worked on the cycle. He shot three rounds into the bottom of the can. He missed me, and it was just by a miracle that the gas can did not blow up with me on it."
Still, Steve did not leave the house. He learned the lifestyle of his older mentors and became freewheeling with his new pistol. As the house began to sell more and more dope, Steve began to deal more. A girl who came by to get dope wanted to buy it from another guy and not Steve. This infuriated him, so when she walked away, he started firing his gun at her. But he was too stoned to hit her. The bullets flew over her head. Then the rage mounted. He now wanted to kill something, anything. The target became a cat.
"I shot this alley cat with a thirty-eight. It just smiled at me after I shot it. Then I took a pitchfork and ran that through the head. It still continued smiling at me. Then I took a sledgehammer to it. And it still smiled. Finally I took my thirty-eight, put it to the cat's head, and blew what remained away. It rolled into a ditch and still smiled at me. From that point on, every place I went there was a cat. I think that was the closest I came to being demon possessed."
A member of the gang told Steve that someone had taken a contract out on him. Steve had been working on three motorcycles that he used, a shovel-headed Harley Davidson 1200cc Hog, a '49 Indian, and a Trike. But where do you go when you don't even know who has the contract out on you? Instead of running, Steve got a shotgun with a twelve-inch barrel and a pistol handle, and began practicing with it in the garden.
But one evening, at a time when Steve wasn't suspecting anything, his old enemy who lived in the house pulled out a thirty-eight pistol and pointed it at Steve. "I hate you. There's a contract out on your head, and I may as well collect on it as anybody else." Steve heard an explosion and felt searing pain, like white-hot wrought iron, tearing the calf of his leg. He passed out.
A day or so later he woke up laying out in some field. He had been given a large dose of reds to knock him out. He discovered cloth rags in the hole in his leg. The muscles of his calf had been blown out. The blood had dried, and the pain was excruciating as he pulled the rags out. He knew that he could not go to a hospital because the FBI had a warrant out for him. Nor could he go home, because his parents (whom he had wanted to kill) would call the authorities. Besides, no less than the chief of the Anaheim police had told them to write him off.
Incredibly Steve had only one place to turn, the same house where he was shot. Several gang members took him to the home of a nurse he knew, a neighbor of his parents. To silence her, he threatened to kill her. She cleaned out the scabs and dried blood. By the third visit to her, she finally got the courage to call Steve's parents, Steve's mother called the. FBI while he was still getting his leg cleaned. When Steve and several members of the gang pulled away from the house in their car, they sensed something was up.
Steve describes what looked like a hopeless predicament:
"They used my parents' house as a stakeout. I hadn't been home in years. As we headed out of the nurse's house, I noticed this red Mustang making a U-turn. For once we weren't armed and we had no dope. Three guys were in the front seat. The pursuit began.
"As I slowed down for a red light, the Mustang ran into my rear, sending us careening into the middle of the intersection where three other cop cars suddenly wedged into us. They surrounded us with rifles and shotguns and said that if we moved, they would kill us. They pulled me out and they kicked my leg till blood really started gushing out. Then they slammed my face against the hood of my car, which in the hundred-degree summer heat caused scorching pain. Then they handcuffed my ankles and my hands together; then they handcuffed my hands to my ankles and threw me in the back of the car.
"The FBI came and looked at my leg and realized that though they had me for draft evasion, they did not have me for shooting an old lady I had been accused of shooting in attempted murder. The old lady had returned fire with a rifle, and she hit the suspect with a twenty-two caliber bullet. I was clearly shot by a thirty-eight bullet. This is where I saw God's hand beginning to move. The FBI let me go! And I never understood why they released me.
"But by the time I went back to the house, the gang members knew that I must have "narc'd" on them because I was released before they were. So I was out in the cold. That was when I started sleeping in the gutters. And I stayed so paranoid that I imagined the FBI was out to get me. And I still had to hide out from whoever it was that had the contract out on my life. So I continued living as an outlaw."
"I was sleeping in the gutter one day and a couple by the name of Shirley and Henry came out to their car, which was parked near me as I lay in the gutter. They picked me up and took me inside their house, gave me a shower, fed me. She told me she saw Jesus in my eyes. Then she called three different organizations and one of those was the Mansion Messiah House of Calvary Chapel. She asked which one I would like to go to. I replied, 'I don't know, Mansion Messiah sounds good.'
"They took me over to Mansion Messiah. I walked in with my gun stuck in the back of my pants. Immediately, this little squirt named Orville looked right in my eyes and said, 'Do you know Jesus?' And I said no. And then he said, 'Bow your head, we're going to ask Jesus into your heart.' And I said the sinner's prayer after him. That happened without anyone explaining the Gospel to me.
"Everything suddenly clicked. God just grabbed me, reached in and burned in my heart. It was the most incredible power I have ever experienced in my life. It was a tremendous burning sensation of an inner witness. It was something of the awesomeness of God's love. I can't even express it.
"At that moment God delivered me from drugs. I flushed ten thousand dollars' worth of drugs down the toilet that day. I have never touched any drugs since that time. I also threw my gun away in the ocean. The residents of Mansion Messiah buried my clothes, they smelled so bad. From then on, I started singing Christian songs by myself when I was just walking down the street.
"For the first time in years, I telephoned my mom that same day and told her that I had accepted Jesus Christ. As I was describing what had happened to me, she got down on her knees and said, 'Anything that can save you, I want it right now.' She came to the Lord over the phone. Then I witnessed to my dad and he said, 'I don't want to hear about it. I want to see it.' So for the next seventeen years, I never witnessed to him, I just lived a changed life. But when it looked like he was dying in the hospital of cancer, I told him I could no longer hold back from discussing Christ with him. His eternal destiny was at stake. It was then, finally, that he accepted the Lord. Since then he has survived surgery and lives on as a Christian. Those long years that my parents and I never had a relationship have been replaced by a healed relationship that we share together. In all these changes surrounding my life, it is hard to say what the greatest miracle is. Even my brother, Gary, came to know the Lord along with his wife, Judy."
Steve Mays comments in conclusion:
"It became a family joke when an aunt of mine, who was a Christian, would remind my parents of a prophecy about my life during some of my worst high school years. She said flatly that one day I would be a preacher. Now the impossible has happened. Not only am I, Steve Mays, a Christian, but I am a pastor as well. And who would have ever dreamed, during my most demonic years, that one day I would be pastoring a church that my own parents and brother would attend!"
But this blossoming ministry of Steve's did not happen overnight. In fact, more than once, it looked as though Steve would never even pastor a church.
In 1971 he became a resident of Mansion Messiah for a year, then switched over to another communal house for another year. It was then that Steve felt God's voice clearly tell him that he had been called to the ministry. But he had years of cobwebs to clear out of his head from drugs and general rebellion. Christian character had to be formed in Steve in a slow and costly way. There is no shortcut in this process.
Steve's first position that involved the responsibility of spiritual leadership came after he had spent over two years in two of our Costa Mesa houses. One day Steve felt led to go out to the California desert area of Victorville and start a Christian commune. He called my brother Paul and soon learned that they had been praying for someone to come out and start a commune.
Steve's desire was granted. Before too long, a house in Victorville was started with a total of thirty residents. Four Calvary Chapel pastors came out of its ministry. Steve also started a coffeehouse. Around this time, he started calling me weekly to bug me about giving him the go-ahead to start a church. But I did not feel be was ready. Indeed, when I finally did call him to come back to meet me one day in Costa Mesa, and Steve was fully expecting me to ask him to come on our staff. He was crushed when I advised him to start a gardening business. He returned to the Victorville commune devastated. In fact, he felt that after all his years of reckless abandon and sin, the only plan God had in store for his life was to punish him out on the desert. And, indeed, that was where he was living at the time, in the midst of his own desert experience.
But those desert years were very important in the Spirit's preparation of Steve for the ministry that God had in mind for him. Steve had a set of my commentary tapes on the whole Bible and he began to listen to several of them each day. These tapes triggered his desire to know the Bible. His thirst for God's Word became almost insatiable and he began to build his own library of Bible commentaries which today has become one of the most extensive of any minister I know. In the desert, Steve began to experience his inner spirit being satisfied by the Living Water.
Then, soon after the return to Victorville, an amazing thing happened. A pretty blonde named Gail Kroll showed up for a brief stay and then returned home. Immediately Steve was positive he felt God indicating to him, There is your wife. To double-check, he threw open the Bible and immediately read a Proverb stating, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing."
He still was dubious, so Steve put God to the test. He said, "Okay, Lord, if I phone her and it just happens to be her birthday, and not only that but that no one is celebrating it with her, and in fact, she is weeping over this over the phone, then I will believe." Steve phoned her and that was exactly what the situation was. He then asked, "Why don't you come out to Victorville and I will celebrate it with you?" Gail left immediately. When they were having a meal that evening, Steve was too nervous to eat. Gail thought he was going to invite her to stay in the Victorville commune. But instead he proposed to her. To his shock, she accepted with barely a moment's thought. In a week, Steve and Gail were married, my brother, Paul, performed the ceremony.
Not long after that I called Steve to his first church - in the desert. My son had started a church at 29 Palms and had moved on to Yuba City to start a ministry there. This was the last place Steve wanted to go. But he showed up, ponytail and all, to the desert community of a military base. Two years later, absolutely broken, he and Gail showed up at the Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa parking lot to find me. In silence, Steve dropped the keys to the church into my palm. The church had divided and finally closed. Steve thought that it was all over as far as being in the pastorate was concerned.
I immediately offered Steve the directorship of half of our Costa Mesa communal houses, including the House of Psalms, where he and Gail lived for seven years. Gail was heartbroken, because she was leaving a three-bedroom house to share a cramped house with forty other people. Their new kitchen became the meeting hall, so Gail did her dishwashing in the bathtub. But they also saw over a thousand changed lives pass through those communal houses. It was a sacrifice that had eternal rewards.
After those seven years Steve started a church in Buena Park, now known as Calvary Chapel of Cypress. Then, after two years, he was told by the Lord to leave and submit to another pastor. So for two years he was an assistant pastor at Hosanna Calvary Chapel of Bellflower. He had somehow lost his priorities, he felt, and was now rededicating his life to the Lord. But he was also afraid that he just wasn't material to be a senior pastor. He had tried this twice and failed. But God was not finished with Steve yet, a fact He would communicate to Steve in a beautiful and unique way, and then back it up circumstantially.
Steve had reached a point of despair in which he had finally given up ever having a church of his own. His final stipulation to the Lord was: "Chuck Smith is going to have to call me to the position." Then he went on a long overdue vacation.
As Steve was fishing, he started talking to the Lord and asking for some kind of sign: "If I am ever going to pastor again, Lord, I am going to have to catch a fish before this hook leaves the water." Steve started to reel his line in while the hook glinted under the surface. Just as the hook was about to break through the top of the water, Steve's eyes welled up with tears. No fish would bite it now, it was too late. Just as it was coming out of the water a tiny fish bit the hook. That tiny fish meant more to Steve than any five-pound bass. For Steve detected the voice of God speaking to his soul, confirming his request for a sign, and then saying, In a little moment, I will speak to you again.
When Steve returned from his vacation, he got the message that he was to call me or Don McClure. He was told over the phone that there had been a meeting of all the senior pastors at the last conference and that when the newly available position of pastor of the South Bay Calvary Chapel was discussed, his name was unanimously recommended. Steve was so excited he almost passed out.
Steve Mays got his church, and the board of senior pastors and I were the ones to recommend it. In 1980 he walked onto the premises of his new church. And Steve got more confirmation from the Lord. Suddenly in the sky he saw a Goodyear blimp. At that moment he heard the Lord speak to his heart, It's going to be a good year.
Then Steve told the Lord that the entire board of elders would have to resign so he could start from scratch.
That is exactly what happened. In 1980 Calvary Chapel of South Bay numbered 110 and occupied 1,500 square feet. Within a few years they moved to a bigger facility nearby, 15,000 square feet that they remodeled for $300,000 dollars, which is now debt free. By then the Goodyear people had heard the often told story of Steve's glimpsing the Goodyear blimp, so they took him up for a free ride.
It was not only a good year, but they have all been good years. The glorious harvest has come upon Steve Mays' ministry, and that church of only 110 per Sunday has grown to over 1,500.
Meanwhile the years that the powers of hell stole from Steve have been restored in a stunning way. The former dropout and quitter, as his high school coach once called him, was recently the key speaker at the Anaheim Sports Banquet. Steve's old coach gave him his letterman's jacket after seventeen years, and Steve addressed the entire football team about not giving up. Steve, who once loved baseball and who had a batting average of .450 in high school, got the chance recently to talk to the Los Angeles Dodgers, addressing the team in Dodger Stadium thanks to an invitation from his friend John Weirhaus and Victory Ministry.
Steve and Gail have two healthy children, blue-eyed blondes who don't have any sign of Steve's scars. They excel in sports, academics, and loving obedience. And Gail has a home she can be proud of, much nicer than the one she had to abandon at 29 Palms.
Steve now sees that God has flooded his life with almost more grace than he can contain. He is a living testimony. To use his own words, "By the grace of God, I have not only regained what Satan ripped off, but I have been given a greater abundance of positive effects than all the evil I heaped up in the past."
We have seen a life literally go from the gutter to grace. The only thing Steve carries on his body to remind him of his former years is that painful scar on his leg. To this day, it still hurts. It serves as a reminder to teach Steve gratitude. It also helps him to never forget the pit from which he came, and the greatness of God's grace that brought him out of that pit.
Zechariah speaks of the days when Zerubbabel had laid the foundations for the rebuilding of the new Temple as "the despised days of small things." Steve, for a time, was caught in that desire to build the walls before the foundation was laid. In this he learned that it is vitally important not to build out of sequence, but to dig deep and lay the foundation on the Rock.
Jon Courson stood on the banks of Yale Creek in the Applegate Valley of Oregon. This husky fellow was silhouetted against the vibrant green all around him, as his thick mane of red hair shone in the summer sun. Before him stood the members of a colony of young people who had built a treehouse community in the Applegate hills. They were standing in the nude in the middle of the river waiting to be baptized and resembled aging nature children as their long hair blew and glinted in the sunshine.
Jon felt conflict over whether or not to make an issue over their nudity. He went with his gut sense, and decided to overlook it. This group before him had for years been a community of pot-growers whose treehouse commune was on a large tract of land they owned. Their marijuana harvests had made large proceeds for them while their "Nirvana Community" had looked for enlightenment through Eastern yoga and native American shamanism. But the bubble of their dream had burst. Just when they had built their ideal community, a gaping vacuum appeared within their hearts. This huge utopian experiment had not satisfied their souls.
Then in the late seventies Jon Courson came to this wilderness with his wife, Terry. Soon, gently, this broad-shouldered Christian neighbor started to tell the treehouse-dwellers about the love of Christ as he met them by a beautiful stream. He would run his hands through the water and talk about his faith. They saw a strength and a hope shining in his eyes, a joy, that they had not found. Jon seemed to have no need for drugs or any other kicks. He was as solid to them as a California redwood. But his strength did not come from himself, but from the One whom he continually told them about.
With waves of mounting inner joy, Jon baptized each one of them in the name of Christ. They stood on the banks dripping and smiling ear to ear. That evening they would gather up all their marijuana and burn it in a huge bonfire.
Jon was oversee