For the Love of Mike — by Sherwood Eliot Wirt

Lupines and Poppies

And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.
Acts 2:47

By the early 1980s, Calvary Chapel in San Diego had become one of the largest churches in the city, passing five thousand worshipers through its doors each week. Its Sunday school was teaching the Bible to fifteen hundred children and youths.

A magazine, Horizon, had been started and was reaching out with a lively gospel message adapted especially for readers in their twenties and thirties and picking up national journalistic awards. A nine-month school of evangelism was training for full-time evangelistic ministry.

A radio and television outreach was growing rapidly. A military ministry was sending out literature, Bible study tapes, and videotapes to naval personnel aboard ships and to servicemen's wives' groups. A hospitality ministry was feeding four hundred senior citizens twice each month at a "King's supper."

Home fellowship groups were meeting weekly in a hundred homes throughout the county. A new million-dollar

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education and family center, across the street from the place of worship, housed a variety of Christian activities. There were ministries to women, music lovers, prisoners, people off the street, individuals with personal problems.

But what if the growth continued? Was it destined to become another gigantic superchurch? Michael turned to the Scriptures for guidance and learned that nowhere did the early apostles specialize in attracting crowds or erecting buildings. Instead he found this word from the apostle Paul to young Timothy: "The things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 2:2). In other words, don't accumulate — proliferate!

Michael had already gathered together a remarkable team of qualified young men, many of whom had received training under Chuck Smith in Costa Mesa and had followed Michael to San Diego. Now it seemed that the Spirit of God was moving them out. Edward Smith, who once was master of Mansion Messiah and now was assisting his former deacon, began gathering a congregation near the ocean front in Encinitas. Don Schock went to Chula Vista on the Mexican border; Ray Bentley went east to his hometown of El Cajon; Glen Gundert went to Point Loma, Peter Mallinger to El Centro in the Imperial Valley, Jim Hesterly to Poway, Don Abshere to Escondido, Ron Spineto to Alpine, David Riley to La Mesa. Calvary Chapels were springing up like lupines and poppies after the California rain.

For a new church to be formed in a rapidly growing area like southern California is not unusual. The difference was that the people who made up these new congregations were, for the most part, young and had not been going to church. They weren't aware that churches existed that taught God's Word and exalted Jesus Christ and at the same time made them feel comfortable without

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expecting them to alter their appearance.

Let's assume it is one of those heavenly Sunday mornings in San Diego when earthly sin seems to slink out of sight. Palm fronds are waving in the sea breezes under the canopy of an ultramarine sky. We approach the old North Park theater on University Avenue and learn that Michael MacIntosh is preaching this morning. Hundreds of casually dressed young people are beginning to cluster on the sidewalk under the marquee. We follow them through the doors into the sloping auditorium, and as we find a seat next to some friendly people, we notice that the stage is occupied by a solitary young man perched on a stool and holding a guitar. The ancient, massive theater organ has been still for years.

The seats are filling up fast as soft singing commences.

We have come into His house
to call upon His name and worship Him.
Let's forget about ourselves
and concentrate on Him
and worship Him.¹

The singing goes on, not for ten minutes but for forty or more. Sometimes the worshipers clap in time; sometimes they lift their hands in adoration. The mood continues:

And Jesus said,
Come to the water, stand by My side.
I know you are thirsty; you won't be denied.
I felt every teardrop when in darkness you cried,
And I strove to remind you that for those tears I died.²

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After a while an associate pastor appears and speaks a brief word. Then an offering is taken. Now Michael MacIntosh in slacks and open shirt steps to the podium. Opening his Bible, he begins to speak in a pleasant, rapid voice. His words flow gracefully, his vocabulary is vivid and descriptive. His subject matter is a passage from the Bible, but he swings easily from the first century to the twentieth. Occasionally there is spontaneous applause and even laughter, but the message is a serious one that touches upon suffering, evil, and judgment. Forty minutes later Michael is inviting people to give themselves to God and surrender their lives to His Son, Jesus Christ. The audience begins to stir. Couples, singles, people of every age, runaways, long-haired, short-haired, prostitutes, drug addicts, all are streaming toward the front. Counselors join them, and the business of the kingdom goes on. Older persons are frequently seen among the inquirers, for the young in heart will not be denied what they missed in their past.

Now the congregation disperses, for another crowd has gathered on the sidewalk outside, and in the evening the auditorium will be filled again. And all week long the church's ministry will continue in prayer meetings, training classes, counseling sessions, team huddles, and home gatherings.

Gary Priest was a trainer of whales in San Diego. His exciting work took him not only around the pools at Sea World on the back of Shamu, but all around the United States and Canada on radio and television promotional

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tours. Ten years earlier Gary and his wife, Kathy, had been married in a Christian ceremony, but since then they had elbowed Jesus Christ out of their busy schedule. Kathy was a professional hair stylist, and one day a member of her exclusive clientele spoke to her about the love of Christ and invited her to a service in the North Park theater. Gary joined her. It did not take them long to recognize that they were listening to a different beat. "When we saw the love Christ has for His church shining through Pastor Mike, it lighted up our lives as well." One sad note darkened their marriage: three years of fertility tests and ten years of married life convinced Gary and Kathy that they would have no children. But then they found a verse in 1 Samuel: "Those who honor Me I will honor" (2:30). It doesn't always happen, but it did for them. A year after their own renewal of faith they were bringing their baby son, Austin, to the front of the theater for dedication to the Lord.

All this in San Diego, a vacation city that is supposed to be far more interested in football, baseball, dune buggies, eating, surfing, beaches, and boats than in God.

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