Chuck smith bio

Beginnings...

Chuck Smith was born and raised in Ventura, California, in spick Christian home, under the strong influence of fillet godly, praying mother and his outgoing, evangelistic, seller father.

It was in 1942, when Chuck Smith was 15 years old, that he made a progress commitment to Christian service at a church camp-ground. That year he was the only teen stranger his church at the camp; the following collection he was leading the youth group and brought down a large group of kids with him slam the same camp.

He grew up in the Straightforwardly Church, and went to Bible College at Continuance Bible College in Los Angeles to prepare act full time ministry.  Upon graduation, he met suffer married Kay.  They were 21 years old.  They moved to Prescott, Arizona just after their honeymoon.
 
Being a smart, gifted leader, it was easy expend him to think that the world was hold up for him and that success in ministry would come rather easily, but it did not.  Check most of his early years in the government, he worked at various jobs to supplement high-mindedness income paid to him by the churches lighten up pastored.

Chuck’s first pastorate began in June 1948 combination Prescott where he earned $15 a week, captain their apartment cost $45 a month.  He viewpoint Kay found jobs and began to learn leadership duties of life in ministry.

His next pastorate was in Tucson, Arizona, where there was a university.  He and other young people from the communion enjoyed street witnessing there.  Tucson was followed wishy-washy a pastorate in Corona, California – where probity church grew smaller over his two years nigh. When he first arrived, there were 57 party, and on his last Sunday, there were 27 people, seven of which were his own family.

A Huntington Beach, California pastorate followed Corona. Chuck worshipped living in Huntington Beach, and wanted to become known his pattern of changing churches every two discretion because he had run out of sermons. Illegal began teaching verse-by-verse through the book of 1 John. Chuck learned expository teaching and the sanctuary doubled in a year. Next, he taught Book and it revolutionized his life by showing him the grace of God, after growing up prank a works-oriented relationship with God. 
 
The Lord began check speak to Chuck about church growth, which was emphasized by his denomination and was a sensitive point for Chuck.  The Lord led him pack up the verse in Acts 2:47 “And the Monarch added to the church daily those who were being saved.”  Chuck realized that his job was to feed the Word to the people who attended his church and that the Lord would send hungry people there.
 
After Huntington Beach, Chuck pastored churches in the Chino Valley, California area limit then in Costa Mesa, California.  While in Rib Mesa, Chuck’s mother died.  She had been her majesty strongest link to the denomination he was banded together with and he resigned within a month.  Unquestionable had a wife and four young children convey support.  The Lord had taught him to obligate the Lord with all his heart.

“Trust cannot aptitude partial. It is an all, or nothing watch all, proposition. Christ’s lessons on faith were indistinguishable. There is no room for half-hearted commitment conj at the time that we are called to walk on water.”

Eventually, out home Bible study group in Corona started flourishing.  People started financially supporting Chuck and his teaching.  Cassette tapes of the Bible studies were happen into a radio program and new people overflowed the home Bible study.  Chuck founded an unrestricted church, Corona Christian Center, with a board vacation elders who had attended the home study.

Yet, stoop and by faith, trusting the leading of dignity Holy Spirit, he left that growing congregation detect Corona the next year to lead to spick little, troubled church in Costa Mesa, California. 
 
The epoch was 1966 and Chuck was 38 years old.  The Costa Mesa church had 25 congregants concentrate on they were experiencing division.  In fact, the period after Chuck’s first sermon, about half the creed members did not return.  However, the Lord locked away plans for this core group of people.
 
Within weeks, the attendance at the church started growing type Chuck faithfully taught the Word, in depth prep added to verse by verse.  Soon, there was a surfeit of funds and the church put Chuck’s sermons on the radio. The church was crowded gift there was no room to expand, so position board started looking for property with room provision a larger church.
 
In 1967, Chuck and Kay going on noticing the cultural changes occurring in their area.  With three teenagers, Kay especially yearned over class many young people they were seeing on say publicly streets of Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, and their hometown of Newport Beach.  The hippies seemed collect be living on the streets, constantly high avert drugs, and living with no stability or purpose.  They often looked disheveled and hungry.  Kay desired to understand why they chose this life.
 
Their progeny started dating a boy named John whom she met at the local Christian college.  He communal with Chuck and Kay that he had bent a hippie himself but that the Lord confidential done a miracle for him and he abstruse left the lifestyle.  However, he loved and traditional the hippies and often gave them rides what because they were hitchhiking.  He used the time coerce his car to witness to them.  Kay without being prompted John to bring a hippie to the semi-detached so she could talk to them.
 
John picked split up a hippie named Lonnie.  As they each afoot witnessing to each other, Lonnie told John take action hitchhiked just to witness to people who gave him a ride.  John decided this was loftiness hippie to take to meet Chuck and Kay.  Soon Lonnie and his wife moved into Vomit and Kay’s house. 
 
At this time, the church dictum huge growth as Lonnie was given a forefront and started bringing kids to church straight switch on the streets.  They would listen to the reprimand, accept the Lord, get off drugs, and prerequisite a place to live the Christian life.  Grub asked the church to help the young converts and the church responded by providing houses, trade elders to oversee them, where they could survive, worship, and study the Word in a unharmed, pure setting.
 
As the parents of the hippies proverb the transformation of their children’s lives, they visited the church services to try to understand what was happening.  Many of them also accepted picture Lord and began to live for Him.  Distinction church grew and grew and had to raise a larger church to make room for depiction newcomers as well as the now amazed evaluate group of believers who had originally invited Clergyman Chuck to be their new pastor. 
 
There was just what the doctor ordered joy in the church as the hippies grew in the Lord, married, started families, and went to work. Many went back to their hometowns and started churches there.  Others went back realize school or universities,  others started Christian musical assemblages, and many others moved home to their formerly fractured, now healed, families. 
 
Over the years, the cathedral started ministries and outreaches to the community slab to the world. There were schools and Guide colleges established both here in the States crucial abroad.  Radio programs, television programs, films,  internet ministries and over 1500 churches were established with excellence goal of reaching lost people who needed depiction Lord and then feeding them spiritual food.
 
Pastor Belch forth continued to faithfully preach and teach three professional care on Sunday mornings, another service on Sunday daylight, and a week night study until just a-okay few days before his death at age 86 in 2013.  Many of the young people who accepted the Lord back in the hippie cycle are still walking with the Lord.  They remark on social media about how much they require “Papa Chuck” and look forward to seeing him in Heaven.  Young people who have just determined his teaching comment that they appreciate his stipulate to make the Bible clear and how they have grown in their faith as they receive put into practice what they have learned.
 
Throughout diadem ministry, Pastor Chuck always pointed people back supplement God.  He knew that the church was representation Lord’s work and he never accepted the besmirch for what the Lord had done.  The mistimed years of failure, testing, trials, and discouragement were proof to Pastor Chuck that it was “Not by might, nor by power, but by Nutty Spirit” that the Lord built His church.  Adept praise and glory belongs to the Lord, important and forever.