Monday, October 7, 2013

Movie Review Linsanity


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Chuck Smith, the evangelical pastor whose outreach to hippies in the 1960s helped transform worship styles in American Christianity and fueled the rise of the Calvary Chapel movement, died Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013, after a battle with lung cancer. He was 86.
Diagnosed in 2011, Smith continued to preach and oversee administration at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa (California), where he'd been pastor since 1965. In 2012, he established a 21-member leadership embalagen council to oversee the Calvary embalagen Church Association, a fellowship of some 1,600 like-minded congregations in the United States and abroad.
Yet it was his openness to new cultural styles, including laid-back music and funky fashions of California's early surfer scene, that helped him reach young idealists and inspire a trend toward seeker-sensitive congregations.
"He led a movement that translated traditional conservative Bible-based Christianity to a large segment of the baby boom generation's counterculture," says Brad Christerson, a Biola University sociologist who studies embalagen charismatic churches in California. "His impact can be seen in every church service that has electric guitar-driven worship, hip casually-dressed pastors, and 40-minute sermons consisting of verse-by-verse Bible expositions peppered with pop-culture references and counterculture slang."
After Bible college embalagen training embalagen and a stint as a traveling evangelist, he sought a niche in Pentecostalism by pastoring several Church embalagen of the Foursquare Gospel congregations. But he confesses in Chuck Smith: A Memoir of Grace : "I just never succeeded" in that denominational environment.
He found his groove in the 1960s, when many evangelicals were frowning on the wild outfits, long hair and psychedelic music that were all the rage among young adults. One seminal moment came during his early days at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, where old guard trustees posted embalagen a sign in their renovated sanctuary: "no bare feet allowed." Smith tore it down with a promise to reach young souls for Christ, even it meant throwing embalagen out new pews and carpeting and bringing in steel folding chairs.
"Lifestyle issues and morality issues were things that he would expect Christ would clean up in these folks lives," said Larry Eskridge, embalagen associate director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College. "But the informality of these folks and the music they were fond of – he was willing to let that slide quite a bit."
Smith never became a hippie, Eskridge said. But he nonetheless embalagen won a following as a non-judgmental father figure by welcoming a blend of pop music, poetry and aspiration to live like Jesus. Together with hippie Lonnie Frisbee, Smith helped propel the Jesus People Movement, with its embrace of Christ's teachings and disavowal of institutional church trappings.
Smith also pioneered translations of Gospel teachings into 20th-century pop art forms. In 1971, he launched Maranatha! Music, a pioneering record label designed to promote the "Jesus music" that his young followers embalagen were producing on the California coast.
Movie Review Linsanity
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Dearest Pastor Chuck ~ Even though you are in Heaven now, I just want to say Thank You. Thank you so much. I was deep in sin down in Southern California in the early days of Calvary Chapel and heard those two words over and over until one day I remember thinking that if I heard the words Calvary Chapel one more time, I was going to lose my mind. Next thing I knew, a kid named Ben picked me up hitch hiking (something everybody did back then but now wouldn t dare!) and he witnessed to me, led me through the Sinner s Prayer and I actually went straight into one of the houses belonging to CC at the time. Land of Love and Miracles to be exact. Got grounded in the Word of God and the rest is history. I ve pretty much always been on fire for the Lord ! Non-stop .just like you. Patti LaBelle perhaps said it best of how she sees things when a loved one dies . Oh, they re upstairs at a party. I m going up in a bit.
I thank God for Pastor Chuck Smith. For years I was trying to find a church that loved God and loved people. I found one this last year at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. The Sunday bulletins show a picture of Pastor Chuck's smiling face and proclaims that a Christian is to walk in agape love. Pastor Chuck can say that because he did it. At the end of every service he sang a blessing to us. How touching to a broken heart like mine! And I hope his ministry goes on walking in the agape love he showed. God's comfort to his wife Kay and all his family at this time of mourning; He is the God of all comfort.
I cannot say enough about Pastor Chuck and Calvary Chapel. On two occasions, Calvary Chapel saved my life. The church was dif

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