Statement of Faith

Calvary Chapel has been formed as a fellowship of believers in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our supreme desire is to know Christ and be conformed to His image by the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe the only true basis of Christian fellowship is Christ's agape love, which is greater than any of our differences, and without which we have no right to be called Christians.

We believe that worship of God should be spiritual. Therefore, we remain flexible and yielding to the leading of the Holy Spirit to direct our worship. We also believe that worship of God should be inspirational; thus, we use music in worship. We believe that worship of God should be intelligent. Therefore, our services are designed with great emphasis upon the teaching of the Word of God.

We do not allow interruption during the teaching of the Word (e.g., loud speaking in tongues or prophecy), as we do not believe that the Holy Spirit would interrupt Himself nor should anyone else.

We also believe that worship of God should be fruitful; thus, we look for His love in our lives as the greatest sign that we have been truly worshiping Him. We believe that the Scriptures (both Testaments) are the inspired, inerrant Word of God. We believe that God is eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that He is the personal, transcendent, and sovereign Creator of all things. We believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, that He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, provided the only means for the atonement of our sins by His vicarious death on the cross, was bodily resurrected by the power of the Holy Spirit, ascended back to the right hand of God the Father, and ever lives to make intercession for us.

We believe that, after Jesus ascended to heaven, He poured out His Holy Spirit on the believers in Jerusalem, enabling them to fulfill His command to preach the gospel to the entire world, an obligation shared by all believers today. We believe that all people are by nature separated from God and responsible for their own sin, but that salvation, redemption, and forgiveness are freely offered to all by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. When a person repents of sin and accepts Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord, trusting Him to save them, they are immediately born again and sealed by the Holy Spirit, all their sins are forgiven, and that person becomes a child of God, destined to spend eternity with the Lord.

We believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in the Scriptures, and that they are valid for today so long as they are exercised according to Scriptural guidelines. We as believers are to covet the best gifts, seeking to exercise them in an orderly fashion and in love, that the whole body of Christ might be edified. We believe that love is more important than the most spectacular of gifts, and without love, all exercise of spiritual gifts is worthless. We believe that church government should be simplistic rather than a complex bureaucracy; we depend on the Holy Spirit to lead, rather than on fleshly promotion.

We await the pre-tribulation rapture of the church, and we believe that the second coming of Christ with His saints to rule on the earth will be personal, pre-millennial, and visible. We are motivated by the above to holy living, heartfelt worship, committed service, diligent study of God's Word, regular fellowship, participation in baptism by immersion, and Holy Communion.

We reject

(1) The belief that true Christians can be demon possessed.

(2) "5-point Calvinism" - a hyper-Calvinistic view that leaves no room for free will; specifically, we reject the belief that Jesus' atonement was limited (we believe He died for all people), and we reject the assertion that God's wooing grace cannot be resisted or that He has elected some people to go to hell (we believe that anyone who wills to come to Christ may do so).

(3) "Positive confession" - the faith movement belief that God can be directed to heal or work miracles according to man's will.

(4) Human prophecy that supersedes the Scripture.

(5) The incorporation of humanistic and secular psychology and philosophy into Biblical teaching and counseling.

(6) The over-emphasis of spiritual gifts, and experiential sign and wonders to the exclusion of Biblical teaching and sound doctrine. We seek to teach the Word of God (both expository and topically) in such a way that its message can be applied to an individual's life, leading that person to greater maturity in Christ, and equipping them for ministry.