Calvary Chapel Alert for Pastors and Leaders
The Unfortunate Progression of Compromise and Ecumenical Relations
Note: This video was placed here June 8, 2023, to help clarify where our ministry stands pertaining to Calvary Chapel. There is also a page on our site titled Leaving Calvary Chapel, that graciously explains a bit more about my personal story.
—Chris Lawson
—Chris Lawson
The ministry of Spiritual Research Network and this webpage is not meant to bring unnecessary criticism to any pastors or church and ministry leaders within the Calvary Chapel movement. I know many of them are sincerely seeking to do all they can to faithfully preach and teach the Word of God, while seeking to have biblical and balanced churches. To the pastors and church leaders that are doing this today, I wholeheartedly commend you for your faithfulness to the Lord, His Word, and sound biblical principles.
Serving personally in various ways a pastor and missionary for nearly 25 years in the Calvary Chapel movement, I sought to abide faithfully in what Paul the Apostle commended the early believers to do—warn and preach and teach, be a watchman on the wall, and faithfully love and shepherd God's church.
Serving personally in various ways a pastor and missionary for nearly 25 years in the Calvary Chapel movement, I sought to abide faithfully in what Paul the Apostle commended the early believers to do—warn and preach and teach, be a watchman on the wall, and faithfully love and shepherd God's church.
“Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.” (Acts 20:26-32)
When seeing many of my fellow comrades within the Calvary Chapel movement turning a blind eye to massive compromises, myself and others stepped up and sought to warn the flock of God. However, within Calvary Chapel it was construed as being, "disloyal to Chuck Smith" and other pastors, and not being "submissive" to Calvary Chapel principles.
The question at hand was, was I going to be "loyal" to Pastor Chuck and the movement and the disgruntled pastors and leaders in error, or was I going to be loyal to Jesus Christ our Lord and His Word. Also, was I going to be faithful to God by implementing proactive decisions to expose, name, and separate from false teachers and their influences coming into the church fellowships, or was I to just go along with the leaders and their clear and shocking compromises. As myself and others heeded God's Word and exposed the errors and named names, few would listen. Astonishingly, many would not even look at the ample documentation that was provided.
The root of this problem comes from the fact that many leaders have embraced the Old Testament Moses/Aaron style of leadership, like Chuck Smith implemented, and have they taken it way too far. The result of this has been seen as a pattern for many years and sadly it has produced heavy-handed leadership that has adversely affected many people. If one man is "at the top" so-to-speak, and people bring correction, the church elders just blindly go along the man at the top. I saw this sort of thing going on for almost 25 years.
Documentation Provided
The links below here are simply posted for people to understand what has been happening for a long time now, as many pastors and leaders within the Calvary Chapel movement are allowing unbiblical teachings and materials to enter their fellowships.
My older Calvary Chapel Alert page has details about many issues within the Calvary Chapel movement. The link to this is listed a link below here. As previously stated, I did spend nearly 25 years within Calvary Chapel as a long-time pastor and missionary, as did Roger Oakland. We both tried many times to warn people and prevent massive compromise within Calvary Chapel. Neither Roger nor myself were listened to. Rather, we were stonewalled and blacklisted and both of us and our families suffered tremendous ministry repercussions. We also both lost friends and we both suffered greatly with the loss of missions funding for our overseas and USA based ministries.
Sandy Simpson from Apologetics Coordination Team (Deception In The Church website), and Mike Oppenheimer (Let Us Reason Ministries were also involved with Calvary Chapel's, and their attempts to lovingly warn leaders were simply cast off. Mike and Sandy both suffered great losses as well. All of us, as well Lighthouse Trails Research Project and as others who are not mentioned here, tried to help Calvary Chapel leaders become aware of many unbiblical advances and compromises that were being allowed within Calvary Chapel. Although we and others reached out with a mountain of extensive and solid research documentation—and biblical, loving admonitions, few to none would listen.
It is also important to recognize here that Lighthouse Trails Research Project (See blog and publishing too) sought extensively to inform Calvary Chapel leaders and warn many people. Sadly, many Calvary Chapel church pastors and leaders would simply not receive it. Much irrefutable documentation about false teachers, aberrant literature, and ecumenical compromises was provided, but again, few would even listen.
Documentation Sabotaged
My older Calvary Chapel Alert page and entire 300+ page website was internally sabotaged in 2018. To the best of our knowledge, it appears this website sabotage was done by the hosting company, not someone involved with Calvary Chapel. We just don't know. Anyway, the last entry that I could make on our Calvary Chapel Alert paged is dated at Dec 6, 2017. In tears I had to manually delete my entire website as it was deeply corrupted. I had helped many Christians in Scotland, England, the USA and Canada with my website, and it contained over 13 years of research and work. Pretty much the only thing that remains online from my older SRN website and research pages is on the Internet Wayback Machine.
Lastly, if you do happen to visit my older website, the links do take a few moments to load. There is more than enough information there to read to sound the alarm about the issues we were addressing. As it stands today, many leaders (and many others not mentioned) have not only not turned the Calvary Chapel ship around, they have run it across a dry rock exposed reef. Tragically, the ship is slowly sinking and many do not even see it. Just like on the evening that the RMS Titanic sank in the icy cold waters of the North Atlantic, the ships captain and officers refused to listen to the clear warnings that were sounded.
May God raise up faithful leaders who will continue to preach and teach His Word, and "earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints (Jude 3)."
Sincerely hoping that people take heed,
Chris Lawson
Jude 3-4
The question at hand was, was I going to be "loyal" to Pastor Chuck and the movement and the disgruntled pastors and leaders in error, or was I going to be loyal to Jesus Christ our Lord and His Word. Also, was I going to be faithful to God by implementing proactive decisions to expose, name, and separate from false teachers and their influences coming into the church fellowships, or was I to just go along with the leaders and their clear and shocking compromises. As myself and others heeded God's Word and exposed the errors and named names, few would listen. Astonishingly, many would not even look at the ample documentation that was provided.
The root of this problem comes from the fact that many leaders have embraced the Old Testament Moses/Aaron style of leadership, like Chuck Smith implemented, and have they taken it way too far. The result of this has been seen as a pattern for many years and sadly it has produced heavy-handed leadership that has adversely affected many people. If one man is "at the top" so-to-speak, and people bring correction, the church elders just blindly go along the man at the top. I saw this sort of thing going on for almost 25 years.
Documentation Provided
The links below here are simply posted for people to understand what has been happening for a long time now, as many pastors and leaders within the Calvary Chapel movement are allowing unbiblical teachings and materials to enter their fellowships.
My older Calvary Chapel Alert page has details about many issues within the Calvary Chapel movement. The link to this is listed a link below here. As previously stated, I did spend nearly 25 years within Calvary Chapel as a long-time pastor and missionary, as did Roger Oakland. We both tried many times to warn people and prevent massive compromise within Calvary Chapel. Neither Roger nor myself were listened to. Rather, we were stonewalled and blacklisted and both of us and our families suffered tremendous ministry repercussions. We also both lost friends and we both suffered greatly with the loss of missions funding for our overseas and USA based ministries.
Sandy Simpson from Apologetics Coordination Team (Deception In The Church website), and Mike Oppenheimer (Let Us Reason Ministries were also involved with Calvary Chapel's, and their attempts to lovingly warn leaders were simply cast off. Mike and Sandy both suffered great losses as well. All of us, as well Lighthouse Trails Research Project and as others who are not mentioned here, tried to help Calvary Chapel leaders become aware of many unbiblical advances and compromises that were being allowed within Calvary Chapel. Although we and others reached out with a mountain of extensive and solid research documentation—and biblical, loving admonitions, few to none would listen.
It is also important to recognize here that Lighthouse Trails Research Project (See blog and publishing too) sought extensively to inform Calvary Chapel leaders and warn many people. Sadly, many Calvary Chapel church pastors and leaders would simply not receive it. Much irrefutable documentation about false teachers, aberrant literature, and ecumenical compromises was provided, but again, few would even listen.
Documentation Sabotaged
My older Calvary Chapel Alert page and entire 300+ page website was internally sabotaged in 2018. To the best of our knowledge, it appears this website sabotage was done by the hosting company, not someone involved with Calvary Chapel. We just don't know. Anyway, the last entry that I could make on our Calvary Chapel Alert paged is dated at Dec 6, 2017. In tears I had to manually delete my entire website as it was deeply corrupted. I had helped many Christians in Scotland, England, the USA and Canada with my website, and it contained over 13 years of research and work. Pretty much the only thing that remains online from my older SRN website and research pages is on the Internet Wayback Machine.
Lastly, if you do happen to visit my older website, the links do take a few moments to load. There is more than enough information there to read to sound the alarm about the issues we were addressing. As it stands today, many leaders (and many others not mentioned) have not only not turned the Calvary Chapel ship around, they have run it across a dry rock exposed reef. Tragically, the ship is slowly sinking and many do not even see it. Just like on the evening that the RMS Titanic sank in the icy cold waters of the North Atlantic, the ships captain and officers refused to listen to the clear warnings that were sounded.
May God raise up faithful leaders who will continue to preach and teach His Word, and "earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints (Jude 3)."
Sincerely hoping that people take heed,
Chris Lawson
Jude 3-4
Commentary from Chris Lawson and others, Spiritual Research Network
View our older SRN Calvary Chapel Alert page on the Wayback Machine. Many links here need to be copied and pasted for the Vimeo and You Tube videos to work. You must right click on the link, copy, then cut-and-paste the link into a browser. The Vimeo and YouTube links won't work within the Wayback Machine.
Commentary from Roger Oakland, Understand The Times
View Roger Oakland's articles at Understand The Times on the Search Results page and in the Commentary section. My article, Leaving Calvary Chapel, which is linked to from Roger's site, links back to this page, here on this SRN website.
Commentary from Lighthouse Trails Research Project
View the Search Results on the Lighthouse Trails Blog and the Topical Index page. Also see their research website archive Search Results, and their blog and publishing site links, listed above in paragraph four.
Commentary from Mike Oppenheimer of Let Us Reason Ministries
View the Search Results on Mike Oppenheimer's website at LetUsReason.org.
Commentary from Sandy Simpson of Apologetics Coordination Team
Input your search topic here on the Search page on Sandy Simpson's website at DeceptionInTheChurch.com.
Search many important apologetics/discernment sites with one click.
Search many important apologetics/discernment sites with one click.
