Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa
| Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa | |
|---|---|
| Location | Costa Mesa, California |
| Country | United States |
| Denomination | Calvary Chapel |
| Weekly attendance | 9,500 |
| Website | www |
| History | |
| Founded | 1965 |
| Founder(s) | Chuck Smith |
| Architecture | |
| Status | Church |
| Functional status | Active |
| Clergy | |
| Senior pastor(s) | Brian Brodersen |
Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa is a Christian megachurch located near the boundary between the cities of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana in Orange County. Although the church takes its name from its original facilities on the Costa Mesa side of the boundary, it is now in Santa Ana. It is the original Calvary Chapel, having grown since 1965 from a handful of people led by the original senior pastor Chuck Smith to become the "mother church" of over one thousand congregations worldwide.Outreach Magazine's list of the 100 Largest Churches in America lists attendance as 9,500, making it the thirty-ninth largest in America.
Chuck Smith started pastoring at Calvary Chapel in 1965 with a congregation of only twenty-five. Smith's style was to preach straight from the Bible, mostly without deviation. In 1968 Smith, who was looking for a way to bring Christ to the current generation of hippies and surfers, invited Lonnie and Connie Frisbee to work alongside John Nicholson and John Higgins to work with the hippies in the area at "The House of Miracles". Within a week it had 35 new converts. Lonnie's charismatic, Pentecostal style caused some disagreement within the church, since he seemed focused more on gaining converts and experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit than on teaching newer converts Biblical doctrine. Lonnie Frisbee's experiential charismatic approach was a key element in the foundation in Southern California of what was later termed the Jesus movement in the early part of the 1970s. Subsequent to Frisbee's arrival, Calvary Chapel claimed thousands of converts and newly baptized joined the movement which later spread throughout the United States and the rest of the world.
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