The Gospel
Swamp
A span of life is nothing. But the man
who lives that span,
he is something.
Chaim Potok, The Chosen
"The Pied Piper of the Jesus Generation," "the spiritual father to lost youth," "the pastor to the world's most unusual church" — many titles were given to Charles Smith, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, during the 1970s. For Michael MacIntosh, who had never really known a father, the man was an awesome figure to be revered at a distance; and at the same time he was a magnet. For the next five years Chuck Smith, as he was universally called, was to become the most important person in Michael's life. Out of a world filled with con men and quacks, here at last he found a plain, unassuming person who seemed to have neither pretense nor guile. With his stocky frame, the fringe around his handsome bald head, the disarming smile, the twinkle in his eye, and his astonishing knowledge of the Bible, Chuck Smith actually seemed to know what was going on. When he opened his Bible, a mantle of divine authority such as Michael could not question descended upon him. To shake hands with him seemed a little like shaking hands with God.
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What was true for Michael was also true for thousands of young men and women, many of whom had not been inside a church in years, if ever. In the early 1970s they came swarming into the church parking lot, dropping their joints outside, slumping into the pews, sticking their bare toes through the communion cup holders, and pouring their drugs down the church toilet. For them Costa Mesa was the New Jerusalem, and Chuck Smith was a new John the Baptist. Richard Ostling described the pastor for Time magazine: "Smith is a Bible teacher, not an old-style hell-fire and brimstone evangelist or a psychoanalyst. He is actually a balding Everyman. But he knows the traumas and failures of fragmenting society and family life, and the apocalyptic feeling that today assails many Americans" (Dec. 26, 1977).
Such a man hardly seems to have been a likely candidate to teach the "kandy-kolored tangerine-flake electric kool-aid acid generation" that produced the hippies, the flower children, and the Jesus freaks. Charles Ward Smith (born: June 25, 1927) started out to become a neurosurgeon, and in high school his outside reading consisted of books on the brain. Things were realigned for him at a Foursquare church youth retreat in the San Bernardino mountains, and he began attending Bible classes at a church college in Los Angeles. By the time he was twenty years old, he was out of school and pastoring a church in Prescott, Arizona, at a salary of fifteen dollars a week. By the year 1963 Smith had spent seventeen years in the ministry, was thirty-six years old, and felt totally discouraged. Instead of growing, he found his congregations were actually shrinking. He was sick of what he called "the stifling, restrictive role I was required to play" as a clergyman. Finally he resigned from his denomination's ministry and went into the building trade.
During his last pastorate in southern California, Smith
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had begun teaching the Bible in people's homes, evoking a positive response that was a welcome relief after the futility he experienced in church on Sundays. This home study activity he pursued, and he was invited to nearby communities to start new classes. He found that in a private house or apartment he could expound God's Word — and answer questions — for up to two hours, with the complete attention of his audience. Inevitably churches grew out of those Bible studies. After two years, he gave up working on houses and cleaning carpets and accepted a call to return to an independent church ministry. A small congregation located in a part of Costa Mesa known as "the gospel swamp" wanted his services, or at least part of it did. The vote was thirteen to twelve. Smith's wife, Kay, did not find the call convincing since she was rearing a family of four and he was proposing to leave a growing congregation of two hundred.
The phenomenal growth of Calvary Chapel, as the church was called, has yet to be fully documented. Teaching instead of preaching proved to be a popular switch. Sunday morning attendance grew steadily for a while, then took off. Calvary Chapel became the fountainhead of what was happening all along the West Coast as thousands of youths turned their backs on the drug scene and sought refuge in Jesus. They became known as "Jesus people," and their notoriety became contagious as the word spread eastward. At Calvary Chapel the word was: you don't have to be "different," you can come as you are. Chuck Smith went out of his way to befriend hippies, to listen to them and try to understand them. He told his congregation: "Our church lost a whole generation of young people with a negative, no-movie, no-dance gospel. Let us at Calvary not be guilty of the same mistake. Instead, let us trust God and emphasize the work of the
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Holy Spirit within individual lives. We want change to come from inside out."
Unconsciously, perhaps, Calvary Chapel was gearing up for a worldwide ministry, but at the moment the chief attraction was the teaching of Pastor Chuck. It might be a Psalm or Luke or Romans or First John he was expounding, but the principles and the pattern were the same. People opened their Bibles and followed his exegesis, and the sheep were fed. To walk into Calvary Chapel as Michael did that night in 1970 was to see a unique assortment of headbands, embroidered shirts, jeans, beards, long skirts, and long hair; but what you saw was nothing compared to what you heard. New musical groups were springing into existence, new choruses were being written and sung, guitars were twanging, and hour after hour drums were sounding the beat. The atmosphere was congenial to the Jesus generation; people said it was great.
Then came the announcement about the opening of the first "Christian commune," and within a few days Michael moved in. There was still, in Chuck Smith's view, a spaciness about him, a vagueness and an inability to concentrate on one subject. He was, in fact, a pool of ignorance on the subject of the Christian life; and yet for the first time in a long while Michael was comfortable. He felt he had found home.
