Extreme Calvary Chapel
10/19/06
Most Calvary Chapel Clergymen that I have known or come in contact with are genuinely nice people. Many Calvary Chapels pride themselves on being "laid back". However, even the nicest Calvary Chapel Pastors I've met keep an iron grasp on their Church. When the Moses authoritarian power structure promoted by the booklet called, “THE PHILOSOPHY OF MINISTRY OF CALVARY CHAPEL” is combined with a not-so-nice man, things can get bad.
Below is an email I received this week that represents one of the more extreme accounts I have heard or observed among Calvary Chapels.
Dear Jim,
You asked for emails if a reader had a cult type experience in an evangelical church. I have and it was a Calvary Chapel.
My husband and I were attracted to the verse-by-verse teaching style of Pastor Chuck Smith from a radio program broadcast in our area and invited a young pastor from another community into our home to lead a bible study that grew into a new Calvary Chapel church.
It has been a strange and painful journey this past 6 years. My husband and I were rewarded with "positions" in the church. My husband was the church administrator and later asked to be a deacon too. I was asked to initiate a bookstore within the church, which I did and operated successfully for 4 years. This young pastor was very ambitious, charismatic in personality and admitted to struggling with pride. He made it clear from the beginning that he had been chosen by God to lead this church and even though he had appointed a board and a group of deacons, he could fire them and start over at any time. He flaunted the fact that the "leadership" was special. There were retreats and get-aways. There were many "secret" meetings. He kept my husband out late many nights till near midnight or later in emergency leadership business. He called my husband multiple times a day (and night). He criticized my husband to me, in private, and to my husband, he would criticize me. . He began a discipleship group within the church called the Intern Program. This was supposed to be a bible study class for a year, for those who possibly felt "called" to full time ministry. The kicker was that anyone in the program was not allowed to tell him "no" to any request. That was actually in the form of a written contract that participants had to sign. I refused.
This pastor stopped by my husband's office almost every day, as it was near the church. He interfered so much with our personal lives that at one point, I said to my husband that there were 3 of us in our marriage bed......him and me with the pastor in the middle.
I was exasperated and finally suggested that my husband and myself get some outside Christian marriage counseling because this was destroying our marriage. It was the last straw when this pastor told my husband that he wanted to sit in on the sessions. I said "no". My husband and I separated. He moved out. I left the church. At this point in time, there were 4 of us, middle aged couples with long marriages, either separated or in the process of separating, under this pastor, out of a congregation of maybe 75 people. It was bizarre. The 4 of us ladies who were involved, met together once a month for a year to pray.
After being cut off and more or less "shunned" by friends at Calvary, I was welcomed into a fundamental Baptist church. After 2 years, I have pretty much recovered and grown beyond the experience under that controlling pastor. A few months ago, my estranged husband called and asked if I minded if he visited my church. My ladies group at the new church had been praying for my marriage for almost a year. They got to see their prayers answered. He began to visit and we began to date. My husband left Calvary Chapel and that other pastor, reconciled with me and joined the new church.
Of the 4 couples who were separated and headed for divorce, all left that Calvary Chapel and reconciled in other churches. God is good and still doing miracles!!
Marie (not her real name)
Calvary Chapel Clergy & Moses Authoritarianism