Calvary Chapel 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 confirmed to His image by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are neither a denominational church, nor are we opposed to denominations as such, only to the over-emphasis of doctrinal differences that lead to division in the Body of Christ.

We believe the only true basis of Christian fellowship is Christ’s Agape love, which is greater than any differences we possess and without which we have no right to claim ourselves Christians.

We believe worship of God should be spiritual. Therefore, we remain flexible and yielded to the leading of the Holy Spirit to direct our worship.

We believe worship of God should be inspirational. Therefore, we give great place to music in our worship.

We believe worship of God should be intelligent. Therefore, our services are designed with great emphasis upon the teaching of the Word of God that He might instruct us how He should be worshiped.

We believe worship of God should be fruitful. Therefore, we look for His love in our lives as the supreme manifestation that we have truly been worshiping Him.

We believe in all the basic doctrines of historic Christianity.

We believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, that the Bible, Old and New Testaments are the inspired, infallible Word of God.

We believe that God is eternally existent in three distinct persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We believe that God 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 for the atonement of our sins by His substitutionary death on the cross, was bodily raised from the dead, ascended back to the right hand of the Father, and ever lives to make intercession for us.

We believe in the personal, visible, and pre-millennial second coming of Jesus Christ to the earth. We believe He will return with His saints and set up a kingdom of which there will be no end.

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 truly repents of sin and receives Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, trusting Him to save, that person is immediately born again and sealed by the Holy Spirit, all his/her sins are forgiven, and that person becomes a child of God, destined to spend eternity with the Lord.

We believe the ministry of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives as believers is of critical importance to our continued maturity in the faith “once and for all entrusted to the saints.” We see His work strongly revealed in the book of Acts to be of ongoing importance throughout the church age and confess our need for His help. We believe He came into our hearts at our conversion, but that we still need to learn how to walk in the Spirit and to live our lives filled with the Spirit.

We believe the impact of learning to do so is that He will teach us the things freely given us of God, help us bear good fruit unto God, and equip us to minister effectively to others. We believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit remain unchanging until the return of Jesus Christ but confess that we do not see the hand of God as powerfully as in the early church because, as His people, we have put more trust in gimmicks and in human ingenuity then in the power of God.

We believe the Holy Spirit still fills the hearts and lives of all truly surrendered believers, still distributes gifts to men as He wills, and is the desperately needed source of power for the will of God to be accomplished in our lives.